The PenFan's PhotoBlog

We went to California, USA for holiday in mid Nov 1992.  Looking back that was exactly 25 years ago. We spent the last few days of our trip at my wife's classmate home in Los Angeles. In their house  They had a huge beautiful pet, a green Parrot called Ziggy that lived in their study. If my memories serve well I think parrot Ziggy was easily over 3 feet tall. Portrait of parrot Ziggy.  The mostly green plumage resembles a military parade uniform and earn this species of parrot the name military macaw.  This photo was taken in 1992 using Olympus OM-3 with  Olympus OM-Zuiko 35-105mm F3.5-F4.5 zoom lens on Fuji Velvia 35 mm slidefilm.        Parrot Ziggy belonged to the military macaw ( Ara militaris)  species of large beautiful Parrot.   Initially Ziggy was not comfortable with our presence but after two days it got accustomed to these two visitors from afar. I took some photos of this handsome big bird with my Olympus OM-...

I have some photos of Nikko Tosho-gu Shrine  a UNESCO world heritage site located in Nikko, Japan. This is the shrine with the three Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru -- the orignal Sanzaru wood carving on the top of the stable building. That is the wood carving of the  "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys -- the famous Three Wise Monkeys. There are around eight panels with wood carving of monkeys in various pose around the stable building but these three monkeys are the most talked about and everybody knows them. The photo of the three wise monkeys or sanzaru was taken almost 20 years ago during a one day tour to Nikko on a Saturday. The weather was really bad on that day. All traffic and tour buses going to the Nikko Toshogu Shrine were stopped by the traffic police for almost 2 hours due to heavy fogs and low visibility. When we arrived at the Nikko Toshogu shrine our tour leader was in...