I went with a friend today, back to the place that I first took a photography class about 7 years ago. I made friends in that class that are still good friends all these years later. The subject of the class was ‘bird photography’, and I venture to say that Ive taken quite a few bird photos since then. The birds were quite cooperative today, returning to the feeders again and again. Plus I got to try out a 1.4 extender for my Canon r7. Before I tried it I was totally sure that I didn’t NEED one, but now I’m not so sure. As much, if not more, reach than my old 150-600, and weighs a LOT less. I think I’m hooked.
This Yellow-Throated Warbler is practicing his gymnastic moves,A Carolina Chickadee has the feeder to his or her self.Doesn’t this Cardinal look like the picture of innocence? Who, me?This is a newly constructed bird house. It look like someone has moved in.
I’ve had a busy week, what with several photo op trips and getting married and all. I’m a bit of a fraud these days since most of what I said about this blog when I started is no longer true. I’m not on the Nature Coast anymore, but I’m still pretty close by. And I’m not on my own any more, which is as much a surprise to me as anybody. I was proud of myself for handling my sudden widowhood as well as I did, and now I’m proud of myself for recognizing how lucky I am to have found someone who so perfectly fits into this life I’ve made for myself. Sometimes life just falls into place…
Our photography group was incredibly active before covid, and we have now begun to schedule photo walks while we pray for them not to be rained out. After I joined I attended all the classes and photowalks that I could manage, and that has been a blessing to me with the new friends I have made. So last night we set out to St. Pete for the night photo walk extra early, to beat the traffic. This despite some very ominous skies in just the direction we were headed. We parked two hours early, and just then we heard a crack of thunder just over head. But, amazingly, the storm didn’t materialize and the clouds blew inland. And quite a few other photo-walk starved members showed up for a fun evening.
We met near the St. Pete Pier and rode the free trolley to the end of the pier to grab a light dinner and kill some time before the shoot.The fisherman on the left has caught a shark a day since last April, or so said the trolley drivers. The fisherman knew that they were talking about him so he came over and got out his phone to show us photos of his prize catches.This is our spot to meet the group. Silly me, I touched the ‘papers’ on the bench since I thought they had gotten all wet in the short rain that we did have… but they were part of the sculpture.And then we walked along the busy downtown streets, peeking into doorways, and at fun store fronts, as well as busy bars and restaurants.I will confess that I was hot and sweaty, and struggling with an extra heavy tripod that I have no intention of borrowing again. My fellow photographers were shooting up at buildings, and squatting on their heels to get the angles they were looking for. I was barely keeping up, and when I got a chance to shoot I didn’t even set up the tripod, I just used it as a monopod and I was sure I wouldn’t get any usable shots at all. That I did came as a huge surprise to me.I almost skipped shooting this doorway but my friend told me to take the shot and he’d wait with me.This was my last shot and my favorite. We were returning to the car about a half hour after sunset and I liked this view. Another shot taken on the run, I think I’m loving my new camera.
The group stopped at one of the bars we had walked past and all had a drink together. Or maybe two even. I think I wasn’t the only one to be happy to be out shooting in a group again. And to think of the months of nice weather we have ahead of us, and all the places we might go, makes me happy.
It’s the coast of Maine that is referred to as the rocky coast, but my childhood favorite beaches of Duxbury, Green Harbor, and Brant Rock are nothing if not rocky. I took Charley to Duxbury on a day when the beach was especially rocky and he was singularly unimpressed. But the two of us Brockton kids share a love of the same places, even if we didn’t ever know each other until 70+ years later. So we roamed, got lost, and roamed some more. And had lunch at Friiendly’s which we didn’t realize still existed. They did, in fact, have Fribbles on the menu, but I resisted, this time anyhow. The feature photo is the Scituate light, a place I never saw until this visit. Just up the coast. We have a wedding to go to this afternoon. Imagine the excitement of this morning for the bride and groom. Then tomorrow we will head up the coast to the actual rocky coast of Maine, where we will explore, and probably get lost, some more.
This stone depicts the grounding of the ship Etrusco on March 16, 1956. My friend remembers this happening, but he is, ahem, older than I am so I don’t remember this at all. The ship ran aground during a ‘devastating St. Patrick’s Day blizzard’, and the gallant members of the Civil Defense communications staff in Scituate managed to keep the lines of communication going which allowed all 30 members of the crew to be rescued.I hoped to get another view of the lighthouse, and it’s there, in the center, dwarfed by the ships masts. Kind of a Where’s Waldo thing.Rocks and more rocks.Brant Rock looking north.And again but looking south.The Fairview Inn, where my parents and their friends would go to get away from us kids when we all stayed in cottages at Duxbury Beach for the same couple of magical weeks each summer.I hadn’t realized I had captured an image of one of the watch towers along the coast. Dating from WW2, and in the process of being restored.And two Brockton kids wouldn’t head back to Brockton to meet up with old friends at the Cape Cod Cafe without a cruise through Fields Park. I said I hoped I’d see the swans. That you will see Canada Geese is a given.Just one of the families of swans that we saw.Tower Hill, where many Brockton kids tobogganed down the hill into the golf course in the winter.
At first we didn’t think we had people in common, even though we grew up in the same home town. But my cousin’s husband proved to be the link between my friend and his long-lost best friend from childhood, so our little reunion at the Cape Cod Cafe last night was worthy of a Hallmark movie. It’s so good to be ‘home’…
A reader recently told me not to worry about using ‘old’ pictures, though the ones we were talking about that day were only a month old. These photos were found on an SD card that I apparently had put away upon getting a ‘better’ SD card. The photos were from 11-9-2019, and were taken at Pine Island. It seems I have abandoned Pine Island for sunset photography these days. I haven’t been back since they decided to keep charging the $5/car entrance fee even when you are arriving 20 minutes before sunset. But these photos have reminded me how much I enjoyed the sunsets there, and of the connections I’ve made there also, so perhaps I will rethink my position on paying the fee. I probably used these photos in a blog post back then, but seeing them on the card doesn’t give me a clue about that. And Lightroom has had some fabulous upgrades to use since then. The skies look very much like our current skies, so there is that at least. I sometimes feel as if I temporarily lost, and then found, myself these last few years. All in all, being found is a good thing.
The feature photo is of the beach and sky to the left of the actual sunset. This photo is taken to the right, which would make it towards the north. Very different sky.It was early yet, but down in the corner you see people settled into their chairs to watch the show.I don’t know if I expected as pretty a sunset as it turned out to be.Not a lot of people waiting for sunset, but some.Low tide adds some interest to the scene.Finally the sun was dropping below the clouds.Another photographer with his own perspective on the sunset.Touchdown! Finally.I took many more shots as that sky darkened. But this is my last shot from the parking lot as I got ready to leave.
Pine Island is now calling me. Not tonight though. We will be (hopefully) celebrating a Lightning win at one of our favorite places to belly up to the bar tonight. Or drowning our sorrows, it remains to be seen.
I never thought of myself as particularly OCD, but it seems I am when it comes to my photos. I always want to use them in the order in which they were taken. And God forbid that I went out for pictures and then happened across a situation where I got more and ‘better’ pictures afterwards. That’s what constitutes a dilemma for me. So I already had pictures from the Tampa rookery when I left for my recent trip to NH, and I only got around to looking at the rookery pictures today. They are from Mother’s Day, judging by the ducklings in the feature photo. Would anyone have known that these aren’t current pictures? Of course not, but I know they aren’t current and it bothers me. But not enough to just chuck them and go out for newer pictures.
Do you think she was counting heads? There were 14 of these little cuties at the time. I haven’t seen them since to see how many are still tagging after mom.I don’t know that I’d ever have noticed this juvenile black crowned night heron chick if another photographer hadn’t pointed it out to me. It stayed on that branch the whole time we were there, so I went back and took more pictures of him every now and then, but he mostly just sat there.I thought he just sat there but then I came across this picture.This rookery has some birds I don’t commonly see, such as this young glossy ibis. I was fully prepared to call him a reddish egret until I noticed that long, curved beak.The reason there seems to be so many tricolor herons at this rookery is probably because many of them are juveniles who are flapping their wings and zooming around the area.Not to be outdone in the flapping department is this juvie wood stork, who still yells for his Mama.This snowy egret isn’t so flappy as it is fluffy.Note the ‘golden slippers’, which are how I check myself as to who I’m looking at.Eventually these little wood storks grow into their beaks.
My interest in birds snuck up on me. I bought a DSLR first, spur of the moment (it was Christmas after all), and when I sat in my backyard with the camera birds were what was there to pose for pictures. I’m not sure I’d ever heard the word ‘rookery’ until I started paying attention to the photos online, and then found the camera club. A long time ago I realized, and sort of kicked myself over the realization, that I never actually made a plan in life, I just let myself go where the wind blew me. Now I see it blew me right where I belong.
If I’m being honest I can’t say that I went to the horse races on Saturday with much expectation of taking pictures of the races themselves. Short people are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to trying so shoot over the three sets of barriers that separate the onlookers from the track. So I figured I’d shoot the scene, or people, but I didn’t expect to shoot birds.
Now this was a race that a short person could shoot. We had a clear leader until he stopped to peck in the dirt.So many racetracks.Before the first race they were hosing down the horses after their walk and this one wanted no part of it, prompting a little girl standing next to me to tell her mother, “That one is being naughty.”My friend likes to pay attention to the jockey’s faces, so I paid attention too, and I think this jockey wasn’t happy to see his horse being naughty. We aren’t allowed to go down to the final turn anymore, so this was the best I could do from my vantage point. And the naughty boy didn’t win.So for the second race we walked up onto a balcony which gave us a better view, and was in the shade! For some reason I had paid attention to the horse and jockey with the red and white striped jacket. And he was first out of the gates.This was a much better viewing angle at the turn.It was only when I reviewed the pictures this morning that I actually enjoyed the races themselves, frame by frame. So I was a little disappointed to see the horse and rider I had noticed be overtaken and lose the race.This was the third race, and when we saw that it was a turf race I hurried back to the balcony or I wouldn’t get any decent shots at all. Little did I know that this would be the race I enjoyed the most. Pay attention to #1, with the jockey in the green jacket and red hat.As they came around that first turn #1 was holding her own.As they came closer I thought she was boxed in.And even more boxed in. This was crazy. I had checked my pictures to look for the winner of this race so I could follow their progress, but now I thought I’d been mistaken.A horse was pulling away and ‘my’ horse was falling back. But they had to circle the track again, so at this point I stayed upstairs but moved down to have a clear view of the finish line.And here we are at the finish line. #1 is the winner! I wish I had pictures of how she managed to move through the pack.Here is our winner, young and female, with a girlish voice, so excited as she hugged the (female) owners in the winner’s circle. Someone in the crowd was wondering out loud if she was riding any more horses that day.We stayed for one more race. I stood with one foot on a curbing and one on the fence post to take this last shot. Don’t I wish we could stand on the rail where the official track photographer stands.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 