Jonathan Zenor Photography

A few weeks ago I decided to get some more pets, because our 2 cats and 2 snakes were not enough.  During a trip to the pet store to get food for the snakes we decided to get some hamsters to add to our collection of pets.  I would prefer to get a dog, but since that is not really an option right now I thought hamsters would do.  Actually the original idea came from me watching my son watch the hamsters and mice in the pet store.  So I bought two of the little guys and brought them home.  Along with being something else for Malikai and our cats to play with, it gives me another subject to take pictures of.

Photographing hamsters does not seem to be too tough of a job but there are a few challenges involved.  Because of their size it is hard to get close up shots where they fill the full frame.  A Macro lens might come in handy to help get sharp images up close, but I have not tried that yet.  I actually plan on trying that this weekend and of course I will let you know how it goes.  I have not had a lot of experience with macro shots, but I do have one lens I got for Christmas I can use.

Other than that hamsters are easy to take photos of.

The Hamsters

The first two hamsters we got (we have since bought two more) are Syrian hamsters. The beige one is named Houdini because he tries to escape every chance he gets, and has gotten fairly successful at it if we are not careful.  The other hamster, well, we don’t have a name for him yet.  I am horrible at coming up with names.

Malikai (our son) and our cats love to watch the hamsters, as well as trying to break into the cage and kick them when they are in the hamster ball.  We could have gotten fish instead, but they would not have been nearly as interactive.  Ever see a fish wheeling around in a ball on the floor or being carried off by a cat?  Well, you might have seen the latter of the two, but still the point is that hamsters are more interactive than fish would have been.

Currently we have both Syrian hamsters in the same cage, which I know everyone says never to do it, but so far it has worked out.  We do have an extra cage to split them up if they do start to fight, but so far they seem to be in the 1% of Syrian hamsters that actually get along with each other.  Either that or they are not yet old enough to develop that sense of wanting to be isolated and the fighting will begin in the next week or two.  So we watch closely and wait to see what happens.  With plenty of  space to run around in they seem to do fine together.

Well that is about all that I have to say about these two hamsters.  Here are the final pictures that we have for now.  Any ideas on what the name of the multi-colored hamster should be?