One day during last year’s hot summer months, LuAnne Weiss’s daughters Claire and Lydia showed up at home with three tiny toads that they had extracted from Greentree Pond—aptly named Forrest, Hopper and Sunny. “I wasn’t really surprised,” Weiss says.
The terrified toads were properly set up in a deluxe salad-spinner home complete with free all-you-can-eat mealworms and an “exercise pond,” because the girls thought they needed water. Soon, the toads caught the unwanted attention of the two housecats, Livvy and Gerty.
According to Weiss, these felines loomed over the enclosure staring through the plastic for hours, having finally found some worthy entertainment around the family home. “The toads clung to the sides of the pond as though it had just gone down with the Titanic,” Weiss says. The cats seemed perfectly content and mesmerized watching the little leathery toads, so this was the scene when Weiss seized the moment: She aimed her camera and snapped the picture.
With graphic design training and years of publishing experience under her belt, it was easy for Weiss to form her passion for photography. She started by snapping thousands of pictures of her children. Since the beginning, Weiss has grown quite fond of photography. “It’s a joy to work in such beautiful surroundings and a joy to be doing exactly what fits me,” she says.
While Weiss is off to new adventures with her camera and the toads are back in the wild having to rely on instinct once again, one thing remains the same: She and her family still use that salad spinner.
