This place has been on my mind to visit for a while now. It’s not a place to go in the summer when the sun is relentless, even if you are driving and hopping in and out of the car for pictures all day. As it turned out this particular day was quite windy, and therefore chilly, but I thought it was a great location to take my friend and her new camera with its great zoom.
This first gator view was across the water. I thought my friend might be freaked out, but she was too busy taking pictures to panic.I loved the little grebe.Anhingas, they are everywhere,The colors on this grackle caught our eye. Shot through the windshield. Apparently the camera ignored the dirty glass, isn’t technology grand?Ibis, in formation.An Osprey hunting. I have no idea why the sky was so dark in this shot.Did the osprey find his lunch? This one did anyhow.A snowy egret, with her golden slipper on display.A tricolor heron, pausing for a moment in the sun.Merlin says that this is a Wilson’s Snipe. A first for me!
We drove home and stopped at our favorite, and only, place to get a ‘South Shore Pizza’ here in Florida. Kathy agreed it was up to par. I left Brockton, MA at age 20, and longed for this fabulous pizza ever since, always being sure to visit the Cape Cod Cafe when I’m ‘home’. Now I can get one whenever the urge strikes!
A book, and a beer, out on the lanai on a beautiful afternoon turned into this..
I mean, who could resist? She looks so sweet and innocent.Now she is daring the rest of the birds to come to her feeder.
I bought the Bird Buddy after dithering over it for a while. We saw birds fly through the yard from one neighbor’s house to the other, but they seldom even posed on the fence. It was expensive, and addictive too. We’ve added a bird bath, and an extra perch for more landing spaces. Millet is what I’m thinking we need. Maybe painted buntings will find us. We are a stopping off point for migrating birds on their way further south. Even if you don’t intend it, you can’t live here long without becoming a bird brain.
Well, almost that time again. The time when our drive to Clearwater for our Tuesday night photography club meeting coincides with the sunset. That means that as we make the long trip down Edgewater Drive I will be shooting photos out the car window with my iPhone. The last time I did that the sunset was fabulous, and I held the phone out the window a bit further and didn’t see myself in the side mirror, or I could crop myself out of the picture. This time we were a bit early for the really great color to have developed quite yet, and I was reluctant to hold my brand new iPhone 14 Pro Max far enough out the window to get myself out of the picture. Maybe I ought to sit in the back seat next time. Nice evening, fun meeting.
We weren’t going very fast, but too fast to have any control over what the scene was actually going to be.We were early because we intended to stop for photos just a couple of blocks from the meeting place. This looked like a very nice sunset developing, and if there was any place at all to pull over we probably would have.Now that the weather is cooler we will have to ride our electric vehicles down the bike path from one end of this drive to the other, stopping for pictures of course. Maybe not on a Tuesday though, so we can take all the time we need to enjoy the ride.
The other day I decided that it was about time I went out to do something, anything. But right about then my phone app informed me that it was raining, only it wasn’t. I looked out to see dark clouds overtaking the sky, but leaving sunlit white clouds in a still beautiful blue sky. So I grabbed the new phone, the one that has an amazing new camera that does work, even if I can’t use it as an actual phone at the moment. One of the abilities of the new iPhone 14 pro max is the ability to take a 48 MP photo, so I set it to do just that and rushed to the park and shot a few photos of that gorgeous sky.
I hoped the depth of that sky would come through.I disturbed the ducks who were all sitting on the bank minding their own business.More sky, just because.I wondered how that sky would look in black and white. I hope I can take the black and white class the next time my club offers it.
There was a problem though. At 48 MP WordPress couldn’t process the images as they were, and my post never uploaded, or even saved in WordPress. I guess it gave up and sent it into trash. So these are the reduced size photos that made WordPress happy, and makes me wonder what the heck you do with a 48 MP photo. Print it probably, another example of a technology that I haven’t mastered as of yet. It wasn’t my intention to have to deal with a new phone, camera, and even lens, all at the same time, but that’s where I am at the moment.
And, by the way, I made it back into the house just as the skies opened.
Good old Pine Island. I decided that since I’d been there for so many sunsets over the years and paid nothing, that maybe I owed them so I wasn’t going to complain about the $5 charge to get in. But with sunset after 7 PM I suppose the toll taker must have gone home. The payment window was shut. And, as I always say, Pine Island never disappoints.
I anticipated seeing the mail boxes in the feature photo, but I expected that if they were still displayed this way they would be tired and worn. Instead it looks as if they have recently had a facelift. And it seems like there are more of them than there used to be. Someone in that neighborhood is quite creative.
Once I arrived on the beach I followed my ears to find this young man and his pan drum. A delightful sound, which I expected to find was a stringed instrument. A lovely sound, perfect for the circumstance. And as he played the beach goers were excited to see dolphins off in the distance, much too far out for me to try to get pictures of them. Often the sunset itself play second fiddle to whatever else is going on at the time. In this case it was another photo shoot. The dad on the left, the photographer on the left in back, and the very pregnant mom-to-be in her gauzy robe with her pregnant belly proudly displayed. While I love a fun photo shoot, I really cringe over some of these subjects. I think my age is showing.There were lots of seagulls on the beach, and the people frequently sent them into the air. But what should have been a good photo op lost something because they all seemed to be flying away from me. Not this Ruddy Turnstone though. They are my favorites so this was fine with me.The moon drew attention from the beach goers also.Love an (almost full moon.Back to the parents to be. A more traditional pose.Among all the seagulls I spotted a Willet.And the sunset. It was nice enough, but it had a lot of competition.The end of another fun evening at Pine Island.
I got a bit excited the other day. I had my new mirrorless camera and I did what I swore I wouldn’t do, I bought another lens that’s made for that camera. On sale of course, so I feel a bit better about it. The thing about the lens I’ve loved for so long is that I can keep it on the camera all the time. Butterflies or birds on a far off branch, I’m ready to take a shot. But mirrorless is the way things are going in the world of cameras, and they are much lighter weight as well as more technically advanced. And I hadn’t upgraded for over three years. It’s a huge step up, even if it wasn’t the most expensive option out there. It was a huge upgrade for me. So I was anxious to try it out, and John Chestnut Park was a sure bet for some birds. But it presented some challenges since my subjects were really too close to me for the best shots with the new lens. I went home a little disappointed, but not discouraged.
Autofocus struggles to find a little bird against a busy background. I’ll try manual focus next time. And mechanical shutter.How cute is this one? A tufted titmouse I think.These guys posed like crazy, but I’m not used to how you set the focus points on the new camera, so I cut off beaks and tails. So many more failed shots than usual.This guy wasn’t supposed to look like a predator coming to eat you. In reality he was heading for me because so many people feed them, but I’m not one of them.Way too many failed shots of this very cooperative Downey woodpecker.Can’t resist a bright flower against a perfect background.
Many cliches come to mind. Practice makes perfect. If at first you don’t succeed try, try again. I was so busy being disappointed with all the failed shots that I didn’t notice that all the shots weren’t failures. Practice, practice, practice.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 