I missed a very pretty sunset the other night, which may be why I rousted myself out the next morning for a walk at sunrise. The feature photo is the view as I arrived at the park a half hour early for the sunrise. It was still dark, but the lights in the houses looked so pretty, especially the ones directly across the water. The broken clouds in the sky gave me hope that the sunrise colors would show up, but they didn’t. What I did see out there were upside-down birds. Reflections in the water, of birds that I couldn’t see against the shadows of the weeds behind them. But the refections were clear as a bell. So that amused me. I was disappointed not to see chalk drawings on the pavement. If there had been some the rain overnight had washed them away. I’m thinking of getting some sidewalk chalk and leaving messages of my own…
I walked for a half hour and returned to the park. The sky was getting light, and an egret caught my eye.I stuck around in case the sky lit up, but it never did.Maybe it was the Halloween season that made me feel like the bird reflections were a bit spooky .
I’m happy to say that my Lightroom problem was operator error, pointed out to me by my friend. It was fixed with a simple click. It’s good to have friends who know their way around a camera, and/or Lightroom.
They were preparing for Halloween at the zoo the day we were there. And it was toddler day, which explains all the little kids owe saw…
Spooky garden scene for the kids.Even spookier.Dr. Hoo Doo.Big blue spiderAnd now this. Mask or no mask?Colobus monkey costumes?Whoever they are they are enjoying the view.Who would fit into an elephant costume except another elephant.Definitely a mask!Most colorful costume prize winner.Really Riplee.His antics were so cute.I forget the full name of these guys, but Schmidt is in there somewhere.My only shot from the safari ride around the zoo.Just a nice flower, with a teeny tiny bee in the center,
Lightroom has added some powerful new features in this week’s update. Our Photo guru is planning on teaching a class to show us what’s available and what we can do with these new features. I will be stuck until then though because I uploaded the file but now I’ve lost Lightroom all together. These are photos I had worked on before. I haven’t resorted to total panic, yet…
The other day it dawned on me that it’s been quite a while since I checked up on Riplee. You remember him, the baby orangutan who was born last November 15th, so he is nearly a year old. I think that each time I’ve been back to ZooTampa I’ve hoped to see him displaying his own baby-orangutan self, but up until yesterday each visit had him still in his mother’s arms. The infancy lasts longer than I might have thought. But this visit, I hoped, would be different. And it was.
We arrived early enough to catch the orangutans enjoying heads of romaine, and slim branches covered in tasty leaves. As evidenced by the enthusiasm they displayed.At first glance Riplee seemed to be coming in second to the head of romaine his mother, DeeDee, held. You can probably guess that I took pictures almost constantly once Dee Dee turned around and I could see the baby, but it was hard to get one that showed his face at that point.
After taking many, many pictures we decided to walk through the rest of the zoo to see what we could see, but when we returned we found that Dee Dee and her mother were sitting side by side up on a large post with their backs to us. Riplee was between them, holding onto two ropes and appearing to be wishing to climb them. Now this was the sort of photo I’d been hoping for the last few times I’d been to the zoo.
It was so exciting to see him on his own, so to speak. The only thing was that once I looked at my pictures in the computer I realized that Riplee’s poses were not modest, not a bit. I wasn’t sure which photos to use on social media in that circumstance, but lucky for me I had so many that I was able to find some that were cute and also preserved his dignity.He not only wanted to climb the ropes, he also seemed to be willing to taste them too.He climbed ever higher, while his mother, by all indications, paid no attention. It shouldn’t have been surprising since n their native Borneo their name means’ tree people’, because they live most of their lives in the tree canopy above them.Somehow he found things to taste as he climbed.Eventually he reached the tippy-top, and suddenly there was mom, who took charge and got him down.
This little guy will be so much fun to continue to visit. If orangutans hadn’t already been a favorite of mine they certainly would be now.
Some days end in a blaze of glory. Is that day proud of itself for being such a spectacular day from beginning to end? Other days slip away quietly. Perhaps not exactly hoping that no one will notice, but possibly it feels shyly apologetic for not having made more of itself all day long. I relate more to the latter, facing the world from behind the lens of my camera, then communicating with the world from the anonymity of my computer screen. Some days are more inspired than others…
I was chauffeur driven for a week in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, which means I was taking pictures from the car, a lot of pictures. Now when I look at my pictures I have some that never did fit into any post I made already, but I liked them, so here goes. The feature photo is one of the four tunnels we drove through every day we were in NC. Two tunnels were longer, but that doesn’t make for as interesting of a picture.
Mingus Mill. A destination in the park, but one that didn’t yield as many pictures for some reason.I loved seeing these silos along the roadside in Bryson City. After wishing to stop each time we drove past I finally said something and my driver kindly obliged.This view escaped us the first couple of times we passed by, but once we noticed it we made it a point to stop for a picture.The actual water wheel in action. Just for show at a shopping area.This is a view into the house at the farm museum at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. I noticed this boy standing still, looking into the room, after the rest of the family had moved on. I wondered, hoped really, that he was trying to imagine life in those days.Just a flower that caught my eye.This carving is outside the Indian museum in Cherokee, NC.
I’m so glad that we made this trip. My computer is full of images of lovely fall scenery. I was initially disappointed that all the hills weren’t ablaze with color, but once I found myself traveling through tunnels of foliage overhead I was quite happy with the fall foliage we did see. It was a nice trip, but it’s also nice to be home…
It was several weeks ago that a friend and I cruised past the eagle nest so I could show him where it was, and I was dismayed to see the barest skeleton of a nest remaining. There was so little of it left that I wondered if they would choose a new spot to rebuild. But when I returned on Tuesday I was happy to see a rather healthy looking nest, even if no one was on it. Two photographers I know were there already, but up the street a way and busy taking pictures of a single eagle on a snag. They said that the eagles seemed to have finished working on the nest, for the most part anyhow, and were leaving for longer periods, making for fewer photo ops. One had left the area a while ago, they said, and while I was still setting up they saw that eagle return to the nest with a stick. In the feature photo you see that eagle on high alert. The other photographers thought there might be some action because an osprey had just flown in and landed on a snag overlooking the nest. If there had been eggs in the nest there certainly would have been some excitement, but the osprey stayed a few minutes and then flew on, and the eagle relaxed and started preening. And posing. So a quick but successful visit with the eagles on a cool Florida morning. Soon we’ll be on the lookout for eggs, and lots more photo ops to come.
The interloper.Grooming.I don’t deliberately try to catch them in silly postures, but when I do…Back to being regal looking.More posing.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 