A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens
Life on my own, on the Nature Coast of Florida, and beyond…
This doesn’t really qualify as a photo op coming to me, which I always say that I love when that happens. But when we were heading home from our fun dinner with the photo group the other night we saw this sunset happening as we drove through Dunedin and we had to stop, if only for a few minutes. Funny how the meeting is always at 6, but I’ve also been known to take iPhone photos out the car window as we are driving to the meeting. Either way, it’s always a nice surprise…
Saturday was our last scheduled photo walk to Tampa Bay Downs, and we were happy to not have to rush out as early as we usually do when we are meeting with the group. But when we were ready to leave I found I’d left the car keys in the house, so I set the camera down in the tricycle basket while I went to retrieve them. You know what happens next, right? Yes, I forgot to pick the camera back up and off we went without it. I didn’t realize what I’d done until I went to get the camera out of the back of the car when we got there. Bernie asked if I’d rather just go home, but I figured I’d just use my phone and take photos of the people instead of the races. Only my phone was down to 14% battery power. Sigh, but all was not lost since his phone was charged.
Here was a candidate right off the bat…
I guess I now had hair on the brain…
This tee shirt caused me to stalk this guy before I finally got a picture…
Really? Heels at the track when you have a kid to chase around? Or ever for that matter?
We wound up sitting up in the grandstand, which turned out to be a better vantage point than we thought. Even with the phone the photos were interesting, mostly because of the sky.
I even got a couple of horses with all four feet off the ground.
I stalked that little cutie as her family was heading away from me. If anyone had been paying attention I’d probably have been arrested. There is virtually no seating that is out of the sun except for the grandstand. I suspect that that’s where we’ll be sitting when next season’s photo walks start up again. The breeze was fabulous. Not a bad day all in all…
I was on the other side of town today so I thought I’d go to the botanical garden and see if I could take some macro photos. We had a class on macro the other day, and I told myself that the lenses I already had would do just fine to try my hand at it. Flowers stay still you see, so you can even use your tripod and see how you do. But then a butterfly starts flitting around, and you spot a woodpecker in a far tree, and that’s the end of that. Had a very interesting conversation, well, I listened, the young man talked, about the miracle of nature and whether God is responsible. His time in the service has him struggling with this, he said. Words of wisdom didn’t come to me, I hope listening was enough…
I spy, with my little eye, movement in the shrubbery. I search with my fully extended zoom lens, and ask myself if I really saw a little eye looking out of that shrubbery. And I did! A baby black crowned night heron. A prize ‘catch’, since we all know they are tucked away in there, but finding them is the trick. And then mom is somehow there also, so I set the camera to take bursts of photos and thought I would have lots of pictures of baby heron chicks and their mom to choose from. But there was only one, and I suppose I ought to be happy to have gotten one at least.
Not bedtime for us however. We headed to Ford’s Garage for a beer and some apps. Nice day…
I went shoe shopping at Dillard’s yesterday. The shoe department was huge, and there were many, many choices, almost none of which were ‘me’. I’ve never worn a pair of heels like these in my life, and now doesn’t seem be the time to start. But then I spotted them, hanging on the wall… Oofos. They followed me home…
We have been seeing photos of cedar waxwings for a couple of weeks now since this is a stopping off point for them on their migration route. But it wasn’t until yesterday that we went out to look for them. And we found them. The whole flock lifted off from the trees and swooped a couple of times, and flew away just as we were arriving and not prepared with our cameras ready. We were told they would be back, and so will we now that we know where to look for them. But earlier in the day and better prepared to wait them out if need be. But what we did see were some red-winged black birds in the rushes, and a gray catbird came and posed for me also. A very helpful photographer gave us some pointers for next time, and then I was happy to be able to identify several birds for a couple armed with binoculars who were new to watching the birds.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 