Hello All...

Yesterday and today were great photography days!  I went to the Apopka Wildlife Drive, (yesterday late afternoon and today early afternoon), and had an amazing photography day!!

The beginning of the drive is quite uneventful.  The dirt road was very dry, causing dust to come up from every car and with the wind blowing about 10-15 mph, it was quite the dusty adventure.

I took numerous photographs along the way.  There were many different herons; Green, Great Blue and Snowy, along with many American Coots and Common Moorhens.  Those pictures don't excite me as much as they used to, but I still cannot pass up a posing subject.

My favorite find of the two days was a Least Bittern.  This bird is normally found deep in the cattails with it's neck stretched to the sky, faux swaying to simulate wind.  It's rare to find one walking about searching for morsels of food, albeit fish or mussels or bugs.







All in all it was an awesome photography day, capped off by an Anhinga with a freshly caught fish, (I think some sort of catfish).

I did see a large male Otter, but it retreated back into the brush before I could take it's picture.  Perhaps next time....

Hello faithful and not quite abandoned followers!

It's been quite a while since I've both had the time and material for a blog entry.  I apologize to the faithful and also to the not-so-faithful followers.  I will try to do better in the future!

A lot has happened to me since my last entry.  I was gifted an amazing new camera, (a Canon 7D Mark II) and I purchased a 70-200mm 2.8 lens!  My photography, as you can imagine, took a giant leap upwards in both quality and quantity!!  The images are cleaner and due to the amazing amount of light I can now capture, my eye seems to have gotten better also!  Now there is still a lot of improvement that I need to make, (the camera is so technical that it'll take me six months to learn all it can do, and even longer to somewhat master the settings for any particular shot.

Anyway, here's one from the other night.  Now understand that it's not a great subject matter, (two dogs playing), but it does show some of the abilities of the camera in catching action and capturing it in a crystal clear fashion!

I have also gone out and attached my 2x converter to it, making the lens a 400mm at 4.0 aperture.  What a beast!  I'm very impressed at it's ability to focus fast and silently!  Here's one example of a House Finch taken at about 25 feet.

There will be more coming.  Please stay tuned...

Well Hello Again!!!  It's been over a year since I've taken the time to sit down and write anything on this blog.  If you are still reading, (and I don't blame you if you aren't), then I will make all attempts to keep posting much more regularly.

Last week, a good friend suggested a "photo date"; that is, meet and go somewhere fun and take lots and lots of photographs.  That is exactly what we did!

It was a very warm Sunday morning and I decided early that I would climb out of my comfort zone and leave the zoom lenses behind.  My lens of choice for the day was the Canon 18-55mm kit lens.  This lens came with my first Canon 20D about nine years ago and has been bouncing around in my camera bag ever since.  I took it out, cleaned it off and put it on the camera.  It felt strange.  I've never shot with a lens this short for any length of time.  This will be quite interesting.

My friend had recently purchased a new Fuji camera and a new 16mm lens.  I had quite a bit of reservation trying to keep up with newer technology, with an eleven year old camera and equally old lens.

We first went to a large antique show/flea market in the area.  There weren't a lot of people there, but many of the vendors seemed to give us the 'stink eye' when they saw our cameras.  We answered numerous questions; "Why are you taking pictures?" and "What are those pictures for?"  We were very polite and no one stopped us, but we were put in a few uncomfortable situations by being followed and watched.

Here are a few of my shots from the day.  I have to admit, the 18-55mm lens was quite impressive to me.  The focus was sharp and the macro was amazing.  I can't wait to do it again.