8/4/26 Denver Zoo

This was my 42nd birthday and I went to the Denver Zoo with a friend and brought along my trusty Canon A-1 with a 50mm F1.8 Canon lens and loaded with Kodak UltraMax 400 film. In my 9/29/26 blog post I mentioned that I met someone at the zoo who ended up giving me a bunch of photographic equipment, so let me tell you the story of how that happened. Near the end of our visit we decided to go to the Lorikeet adventure where you can walk around inside of an enclosure with the birds. In the very first part of the path through the enclosure a bird pooped on my hand. I am given to understand that this is a sign of good luck and I am inclined to believe that because of what happened next. I turned the corner and found a sink to wash my hands in then continued down the path, and that is when I saw Holly. She had a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and earlier I had been telling my friend that I wanted to get a Mark II for film scanning. Holly heard this and said that I should go for the IV instead. We got to talking and I came to learn that she is a retiring photographer and she had been wanting to give some of her equipment away to someone and she had decided that it would be me! We met up later and I got a bunch of equipment from her. It was mostly for studio portrait photography, but one thing stood out, a Sekonic light meter. I won’t go into what it is worth except to say that it is not cheap. Sekonic makes the best light meters, I have always wanted one, but even used ones have been out of my budget. Instead I had been using an app on my phone, and while it does the job, it cannot compare. Holly, if you see this, I cannot thank you enough for the gifts you have given me!