Imagination POP

Last Monday, I went to the Brookfield Zoo here in Chicagoland for the first time. From the North Parking Lot, you walk down an incline into a tunnel that goes under West 31st Street. Many colorful, fantastic murals decorate the walls.

This brought back childhood memories of our family trips to the Toledo Zoo, where we also descended into a tunnel from the parking lot and came up at the zoo entrance. I remembered feeling as if we were leaving behind the familiar and ordinary and entering a realm of the unexpected and extraordinary.

At the end of the tunnel, up the ramp on the right, I saw a sculpture of a lion crushing a snake. Just then a boy came running back, leaving his mom and sisters 30 yards ahead. He climbed up on the back of the lion, and a smile lit up his face as he gazed forward.

I was on a mission to capture animals in action, and this seemed the antithesis: a little boy, a stone animal sculpture and a sign. But it was to be my favorite image that day, a reflection of the magic in a child’s imagination. .

Pentax K-5, Tamron 17-50mm at 50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/500s Av