By John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Bill Inskeep prepares to photograph a lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. His dream is to travel to Africa, though his family has more tame vacation plans. The Cincinnati Enquirer/TONY JONES

Bill Inskeep has a dream vacation in mind, although it "may not necessarily be the same as the rest of the family's," he says.

Righto, says his wife, Christy, who pictures herself relaxing on a Hawaiian beach.

The children? Taylor, 8; Morgan, 6; Ryan, 3; and Amanda, who's almost a year old, likely would have a swell time hanging with Mickey, Goofy, Donald, Cinderella and the Disney gang.

But back to Bill. The 37-year-old Delhi Township man, a quality assurance manager for a pharmaceutical company, would, if he could, venture to the wilds of Africa. "Either the Serengeti or the Okavango Delta," he says.

He can think of no better place to shoot animals - with a camera.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed.

"That would be the ultimate. I'd like to go with people from the (Cincinnati) zoo. I've seen some of the pictures they've brought back. They're just incredible."

Photographing animals is something he enjoys immensely.

"He takes more animal pictures than kid pictures," chuckles Christy, a pharmacist who is now a full-time mom. "We have thousands of pictures of animals, don't we, kids?"

They're cataloged alphabetically by animal. Many were shot at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, a place Bill has been visiting since childhood.

When his children began taking classes there several years ago, Bill accompanied them. He discovered that he, too, could have up-close contact with animals. Which led him to enroll in adult classes.

One class, offered in conjunction with Pete's Photo World, was aimed at photo buffs. Bill flips through an album of photos he made that day.

There's a tarantula, a scorpion, Japanese macaques, polar bears and ... hmmm. A photo in which the entire frame is filled with spots.

When he shot that one, Bill was in an enclosure with a full-grown cheetah.

"It walked around, rubbed up against me, sniffed me, then went on about its business," Bill says. Then he and other participants aimed their cameras and began shooting.

In other classes, Bill has watched a zoo veterinarian perform an ultrasound test on an Indian rhino.

He has fed Emi, the Sumatran rhino that made history in 2001 by giving birth to Andalas, the first such animal bred and born in captivity since 1889. Bill most recently got a behind-the-scenes look at gorillas.

"It's been incredible. I've been burped on by penguins and pooped on by several animals, like hedgehogs," Bill says.

Besides their frequent visits to the Cincinnati Zoo, the Inskeeps have trekked to zoos in San Diego, Texas, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Chicago and Columbus.

The couple, married for 11 years, celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in the Bahamas - and snuck in a visit to a zoo there.

Africa would be the ultimate. The zoo is planning a trip to Kenya in November.

Bill Inskeep won't be going. He has four young children to put through college.

"Hopefully, someday I'll get there," he says.

In the meantime, he's going wild at the zoo.

E-mail jjohnston@enquirer.com