I never used to go to the photo club meetings on Tuesday night. I told myself that I didn’t want to spend the gas/mileage if I wasn’t going to be able to take pictures. But my husband has been a member of the group longer than I have been, the group is how we met even though we grew up in the same town in MA many years ago. He liked the Tuesday night meetings, which are mostly social and usually quite entertaining. So imagine my surprise one Tuesday evening as we a drove to meet the group and I saw this scene on Edgewater Drive with the sun setting perfectly. I picked up my phone and started shooting out the passenger window, so I got photos after all. One of the reasons I looked forward to the time change this year is that I anticipated taking this drive with the sun setting, and last night it happened.
Imagine living nearby and taking this walk every night.This gal has the right idea.I think we ought to ride the scooter and trike up this road for the sunset one night.We got to our destination a bit early so we drove to the end of the street and caught the last bit of the sunset there.I didn’t anticipate this scene as we drove back up the street to meet the group.
A 5:30 sunset is perfect timing for this scenario, so I’ll try again. Maybe another week or two might work out, but then I’ll have to go back to anticipating this opportunity for another year.
It was the first weekend of racing of the year at Tampa Bay Downs. Always a fun destination and especially on an absolutely perfect day for it. Our favorite vantage spot gives a nice view of the track, and is in the shade which saves us on a ‘normal’ day at the track. On this day, with the breeze, it was almost chilly. Often I find people in the crowd to be as interesting as the races, and there were a few candidates this day also.
The guy on the right? His vest front was the same fabric as her outfit. A uniform? Or just a fashion statement?I tried to see what new destination this might be, but alas, Puerto Rico, and not a road trip.Vince Halliday Strong. So I looked it up this morning and he is a jockey who suffered devastating injuries in a race last summer, but is recovering nicely.This gray horse, #9, had caught my eye. Gray horses always catch my eye. I suppose it might be because there are so few of them, so they stand out. The leader of our photo group says the gray horses never win.And this time was no exception. He finished all by himself, dead last.This gray horse was last going into the turn.He made a move, but it wasn’t enough.I thought I’d try a few close ups, to capture their expressions. This horse cooperated nicely.Oh the dilemma, three gray horses in the same race. Numbers 1, 2, and 3!Not sure where #3 is.I always want to get at least one shot of them coming around the turn and right at you.Now here is a winner, Samy Camacho. His third win of the day, or so I heard. The winningest jockey at the track, again, overheard. Almost $30,000,000 in career earnings so far, I looked him up.His two kids were in the winners circle with him.
At $3 to get in this isn’t an expensive way to spend the day. Unless you bet of course…
Not to be skunked by missing the sunrise two days in a row I headed out, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The sky just got better and better, and then the birds started flying through.Truly spectacular, and right here in the neighborhood.I walked down to see this egret on my way home.
I hosted the Thanksgiving gathering for a lot of years in a row, for varying numbers of people. So this year should be a piece of cake, but I’m finding myself wondering what order to do things in and how to schedule oven space. I have lots of good memories of Thanksgiving, when I was a kid with nothing to do but eat the delicious dinner my Aunt Jenny cooked, or when I was up at 5 AM (back before it became the norm for me) making the stuffing. Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family. Let’s make more good memories.
My weather app said ‘mostly clear.’ That may have been true for somewhere in Pasco County, but not where I was. Actually I looked out the dining room window and saw a star shining pretty brightly before I headed out, but in the time it took me to get dressed and walk to the park the fog was rolling in.
The lights across the pond looked pretty, so I sat on the bench to wait.There was lots of quacking going on out there. I tried to tell myself that there was a pink-ish glow in the sky.More ducks than usual, I thought.And then I had to admit that the fog was descending, so I headed for home.
Didn’t I just say that I thought we were due to see the hawk soon? I said it out loud, but did I say it here? And yes, I do realize that there is no law of probability that governs what our feathered friends are doing at any given moment in time. But I said he was due, and that thought had me distressed that I had left my camera in place beside the computer with the 18-150mm lens on it. Nice and light and a pleasure to carry, but not enough reach to zoom and not need to crop the heck out of your pictures to get the composition you might want. But I did procrastinate, and so when I happened to see the hawk fly in and land on the back fence I had to go change lenses. Twice as it happened. My mirrorless camera and my old favorite lens haven’t been playing well together lately so a second lens switch was done, and he still was out there. I was taking a few pictures through the sliding glass doors and the screening on the lanai, but intending to open the slider as quietly as possible and try for a better shot, but I didn’t get the chance. All along he appeared to be scouting the neighboring yard for a tasty morsel, but maybe he gave up on that idea because he suddenly swooped off and flew up and away behind the big trees back there. But he was due, and he showed up, and all is right with my world.
Next time I hope he chooses a better spot to land for the sake of my photos.
We missed the point initially. The Veteran’s Day event we were heading to Zephyrhills to see was actually a WW2 reenactment. It was sponsored by the Zephyrhills Museum of Military History. I don’t know why this military display made such an impact on me, but for a few minutes as I looked around I was struck with the notion that my father must have experienced scenes just like this. Only there was a real war going on, and he was dependent on this sort of equipment, and soldiers that looked like these, to help deliver him and all of Patton’s Army home from the war. He was wounded somewhere in France, and as a little girl I was fascinated by the scar on his left shoulder that was shaped like a cross. Fascinated, but having no idea what it really represented. And later on I was too caught up in my own girlish dramas to ever even wonder about it. But there I was all these years later finding myself thinking that I was there with him, seeing this through his eyes, for just a moment…
The realization that this scene represented something my father might have witnessed made me especially impatient with the onlookers in their brightly colored clothing who kept trying to spoil my photo op. But the new ‘generative fill’ tool in Photoshop let me get the image I wanted to get.I got a gigantic kick out of the guy reclining with a cigar on the left hand front wheel, so I took a lot of pictures, and AI allowed me to remove an entire family from the picture. But the announcer explained that this gun could fire a 100 pound projectile up to 14 miles. He told the kids to pay attention in math class because back then when our troops called for artillery back up, their positions, and the positions of the enemy, had to be calculated on the spot in order to effectively protect the troops. They had to take into account the distance, the weather, and heaven knows what else to position that gun to do the job that was called for. And the positioning was done by hand, imagine that responsibility for a young soldier in a war so very far from home.They may have been re-enactors, but I felt like I was seeing the real thing.The field was set up to replicate a mine field, and the tanks paraded around the perimeter before they demonstrated the fire power.This gave us a good opportunity to see each tank for photo ops.All along I kept seeing the small planes in the sky and thought they were part of the event, but they were from a nearby airfield and the plane in front was pulling that glider to get it airborne.I guess this one was ready for any terrain it encountered.A piece of British equipment was also represented.This is as close as I got to getting the fire from the gun in any of my pictures. All hundred or so of them. And they had passed out earplugs to the crowd ahead of the shooting.I wonder what thoughts these future soldiers had as they experienced a little of what the soldiers who came before them encountered.
We first came on Saturday, and it was very hot, and the actual reenactment was postponed an extra hour because of an equipment problem. It was no wonder since the ‘youngest’ piece of equipment there was 79 years old. And the heat was taking a toll on everyone, audience and enactors alike, so we decided to go home and come back the next day. But when we returned on Sunday, better prepared with the scooter and trike, plus water, and just in time for the event itself, we discovered that the German enactors had had an especially difficult time the day before and were not there on Sunday. No doubt their uniforms made a difficult day even harder to take, and we weren’t disappointed. So we thoroughly enjoyed our day, and I especially appreciated the momentary connection I felt with my father, which came out of the blue and did my heart good.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 