Western Rueppell's Vulture

I'm starting to worry here at the moment that you might be getting sick of photos of flowers, so I thought I'd shock you out of your "flower-daze" with this photo of a vulture. Yes, a vulture! This handsome guy is a Western Rueppell's Vulture, which I know for a fact because I had the good sense to also take a photo of the sign in front of his enclosure at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. These guys come from the northern two-thirds of Africa...so the sign says. (I'm not an ornithologist yet.)

If you're wondering how I got this photo looking like this, after adjusting for white balance and color in Photoshop, I then created some layers to help me darken the background, and I finished up by putting some "omni" lights in a couple of places that I wanted lightened up. Had to do all of this because the zoo wouldn't let me take him to the studio for a photo shoot.

See this Western Rueppell's Vulture in all his glory in the Birds Photo Gallery.