One of the volunteers at Merritt Island encouraged me to make the 2-hour trip again today, only to visit the Lake Woodruff NWR instead. She said that the both the pileated woodpeckers and swallowtail kites were abundant and that babies had been spotted. Despite being tired from yesterday and not looking forward to another long drive, I loaded up and headed out. When I arrived at the Visitor’s Center, there was my friend from Merritt. She and her husband just moved onto the property. She gave me the scoop and also let me know that even the alligators were hatching early. Excited to see what was in store, I hopped back in the car and drove the next 1-2 miles to the first parking lot, for the Mayaka Loop. As I was unloading, I was pleasantly surprised by the sounds and sights of my beloved pileated woodpecker! There were two of them right at the edge of the parking lot. The lighting really wasn’t working with me and to be honest, I could barely see them against the trees. Fortunately, the Sony saw a lot better than I did. I was surprised when I got home and could actually make […]
Or maybe Space Coast. Faced with a long, holiday weekend, I decided it would be good to rent a supertelephoto lens. I got my hands on the Sony 200-600 and I have to say that it’s a beast. I hopped in the car, pointed it south, and drove for two hours until I reached the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The NWR borders Kennedy Space Center and the Canaveral National Seashore. I stopped at the makeshift Visitor’s Center (the real one is undergoing construction) and the ladies were very helpful. They told me which areas to visit for certain animals and gave me a great route to take. I was surprised that most of the trails are hard-packed road so you drive most of the time. I turned left right out of the parking lot onto my first loop, Gator Creek. While I didn’t see any gators, I did see some birds right off the bat. They didn’t seem too bothered by my presence. I left Gator Creek and headed towards the Seashore, turning off onto Black Point Wildlife Drive. This is a very nice, 7-mile drive with a nice brochure and numbered stops to tell you about the area. […]
Today was a pretty good day. I wanted to get some photos in since I figured I’d be sticking around the house with Easter. A quick check of the local events calendar showed this mural event in what’s known as the Phoenix Arts District. This is a location I’ve visited before but I found a whole different area what I hadn’t explored. There was a ton more to see and the artists were out en masse working on new pieces. There are plenty of abandoned and partially demolished buildings for the murals to be done on. Of course, if you’ve read many of my posts, you know that I love abandoned buildings. There really was some outstanding work. I was also surprised at the artists. There were families, buff gym guys, solo women, and what looked like groups of friends. It was clear that this was their passion. Some worked out of their cars. Others had elaborate trailers. There was some serious energy going into these pieces. Some of the pieces were just insane. Or looked like they were going to be. The event ran until 6pm and I left around 4. I will definitely be going back to see […]
The time is changing. The weather is warming. Spring is upon us and it’s bringing a sundry of festivals with it. Last weekend kicked things off and this weekend we have another music festival. The Blues festival is right around the corner. It seems like every weekend has multiple festivals to tickle your fancy. Music. Seafood. Strawberries. You name it. There’s bound to be a festival for you out there. This weekend, I headed out to the Natural Life Music Festival at Jacksonville Beach’s Seawalk Pavilion. I wasn’t familiar with anyone in the lineup, but they still entertained. Heck, I even found myself tapping my foot to the beat a couple of times. This is going to be the first in a series. I’m thinking of calling it Festivals on Film. We’ll see if it sticks. Regardless, it was an opportunity for me to take out my Leica M6. I had a Summicron 35/2 v3 and several rolls of Kodak Gold 200. I shot everything at box speed. I didn’t stay for the entire day since it’s a small area and I felt like I just kept running into the same people. There were still some interesting characters out there, […]
I was scrolling through Facebook last night when an ad popped up for the 8th Annual Hastings Blvd Car Show and I felt like it’d be a cool thing to check out. I’m always looking for something to do on the weekend that allows me to take some nice pictures. So what the heck is a Hastings? Hastings is a small town in North Florida. It’s got a population of less than a thousand and it’s another one of those towns I’ve driven through countless times but never took the time to stop. The day started off pretty bad. I had this great vision to capture a nice timelapse with my GoPro only to realize that I’d forgotten the screw to secure it to the mount. I managed to find a hollow wall anchor in the car that actually held it in place, though. Win! Well, not for long. I was using the media mount and there seems to be some sort of issue with it. Every time I’d turn it on, it would just keep cutting and powering back on. As soon as I took it out of the media mount, it’d work great. Ok, no problem. Ditch the […]
In 1991, I purchased my first SLR. I was in the Navy and had come home on leave. I knew that I’d be traveling the world and I wanted to make sure that I’d be able to capture it all. I walked into Wal-Mart and walked out with a Canon EOS Rebel. It was an absolutely fabulous camera. This camera literally traveled the world with me. I had both a 35-80 and a 75-300 and they made a great combination. They weren’t the greatest lenses ever made, but for a poor sailor with an incredibly low income at the time, they were fantastic. I also had a pretty extensive collection of Cokin filters. Everything you could image. I had graduated filters, starlight, neutral density, and more. I built a nice collection of images from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. I had the opportunity to take pictures in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and many more exotic locations. It was so cool to see with my own eyes places I’d only seen in books. In the last image in this set, wild camels are roaming the banks of the Suez Canal, for example. I’m still in the process […]
I hate to see a weekend go to waste, but things weren’t looking so good yesterday. Not only was it pretty cold (high in the 50s, which is cold for us) but the skies were cloudy and overcast. This morning, I woke up to colder temps, but sunny skies. After breakfast and coffee, I loaded up and headed to St. Augustine to see if I could capture any new images on familiar grounds. Arriving in the early afternoon, I was rewarded with some pretty good lighting and shadows along St. George Street, the main tourist thoroughfare. The crowds weren’t too bad considering it’s still somewhat the holiday season. Unfortunately, many of the ideas I had never fully came to fruition. I’d hoped to take advantage of some nice juxtapositions of light and shadow with color-coordinated subjects but the crowd didn’t seem inclined to cooperate. I probably ended up capturing more empty scenes than I’d planned for. There is a landmark I’ve wanted to stop at so many times yet I never made the effort. And now I can’t. The Kings Head British Pub, an icon located on US1 between Jacksonville and St. Augustine has been providing British fare, beer, and […]
Ok, this isn’t my story of how I stormed Normandy on June 6th, 1944. No, this is the story of how I spent my longest day trip scouring for photo opportunities. I use the app Geotag Photos to record a GPX track that I can use to tag my images with GPS coordinates through my ingest workflow with Photo Mechanic. Yesterday’s track was only 99.64 miles but it took me just over 6 hours to travel. And that doesn’t include my travel to/from the start/end points. It was, indeed, a long day. But it was very productive. Worthington Springs My first stop was Worthington Springs. This is a very small community with less than 400 residents. It was incorporated in 1963 and is close to the banks of the Santa Fe River. I’d wanted to get some pictures of horses and spotted some very soon after turning off of the interstate. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to pull over quickly when you have other cars bearing down on you. Fortunately, I was rewarded a few miles down the road with the largest gathering of horses I think I’ve ever seen. The photo below doesn’t capture the scope of it since […]
New beginnings. Resolutions. Fresh starts. January 1st is different things to different people, but we can probably all agree that it provides a time for reflection as we start a new year. What went right over the past twelve months? What adjustments do we need to make? Are we on the right track to meet our goals, whatever they may be? For me, today marked two points: first, that time to reflect on last year’s photographic growth (hopefully) and second, the last day of my vacation. I dread the idea of having to actually set an alarm for the morning. To help clear my mind, I headed back out to look for fresh, new photo opportunities. Today’s target, the beach. There was a lot going on today. I decided to skip the pier initially because of the line to get in. I headed down the boardwalk in search of new things. I thought I’d see if I could find any interesting reflections with the sand dunes and people walking around. Some people wanted to be part of the action instead of just a reflection. 🙂 The annual Deck The Chairs event just wrapped up so I thought I’d take a […]
Well, here we are. It’s time for the last photowalk of the year. 2024 is coming to and end. I struggled as usual to decide where to go and finally ended up at my regular stomping ground, downtown. I didn’t stay too long. I knew I had to get home in time to make dinner with friends so I put $4 on the parking meter to cover me for a couple of hours and set out. I really wanted to make this a fresh experience. I don’t want to just shoot the same things until everyone, myself included, is sick of seeing them. You have to really stretch and look for new things. Maybe it’s an alley you’ve never stumbled upon. Maybe it’s the glow of a neon sign you’ve ignored every other time you’ve walked by. One thing that I always seem drawn to is shapes and patterns. I love shadows and leaving it to the viewer to decide what cast it. I definitely found myself in new places just by wandering a few extra blocks. I suppose it’s true, there’s a lot to see around us if we only open our eyes. It doesn’t have to be serious, […]
I’ve had the Leica M4 loaded up with a roll of Santacolor 100 film since I started my vacation but the weather has been nasty and cloudy for the most part. Today, however, the skies cleared, the sun rolled out, and I grabbed my bag and ran for the door. I had a two options for nearby towns that I thought would be good candidates for Christmas decorations and opted for one to the north. It was an hour trip to get there but I lucked out and scored a spot not far from the Historic Downtown district. Unfortunately, I was surprised at the lack of decorations. It’s a very popular area, especially during the holidays, and I was expecting a lot more. I wandered about 10 blocks or so before turning around and heading back down the other way. It wasn’t all for naught, however. I met a cool, older gentleman with three adorable dachsunds. It was a mother, father, and their daughter. Apparently they’re a very rare type of dapple dachsund and the male is the only AKC registered one in the US. They were very cute and the daughter was more than happy to hop up on […]
Every time a new year rolls around, I look for a way to improve things. Whether that’s my outlook on life in general, a certain area of my photography, or whatever floats my boat. As 2025 looms just a couple of short days away, I think I’ve settled on Zen. I’m not really speaking in terms of the religious aspects, and I’m not ready to convert to Buddhism. I’m talking more in the sense of awakening my creativity. Digging deep to find out who I am. What, with respect to photography, makes me tick? As I look at the thousands of images which make up my portfolio, what motivates me? What’s my style? Do I have a style? Learn to see what is. Something I want to do is, pardon the phrase, to be more focused. The weather has been hit or miss since Thanksgiving so I’ve been spending a lot of time cleaning up my Photo Mechanic and Capture One catalogs. Something that has become painfully clear is that I hit the shutter button far too frequently. It’s time to embrace the spirit of my Leicas and slow down. I actually purchased a screen cover to turn my M10 […]
Not a whole lot to say today. I spent a little time pulling gear together that I think I might be hauling to Arizona and Utah in a couple of weeks. One of the things I’m really looking forward to is seeing what places like the Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion look like with Portra 400. That’s right, I’m stocking up on film! Since I want my unexposed film hand searched by TSA, I don’t want anything in the camera. I knew that I had some shots left on the roll in the Nikon F3 that I needed to wrap up. I went out to the beach yesterday to do just that. Well, technically I was at the “town center”. But close enough. And I did actually walk out to the beach. So here are a few shots from the M10 and filmicized (?) with DXO FilmPack 7. I think they came out pretty good. I’m not sure the mural turned out quite how I’d seen it in my mind, but I definitely like the beach and pizza colors. Let me know what you think!
I recently embarked upon a journey to my past. Where it all began. Film. It all started with a Canon EOS Rebel. I had joined the military and was home on leave. I grew up near a lot of Air Force bases so I took my freshly minted military credentials and headed to the Exchange. I walked out with the Rebel kit and it began a love affair. I took that camera all over the world. One of the few benefits of being in the military. It’s taken pictures across Europe. Spain. France. Italy. I’ve carried it through the Middle East. Egypt. Jordan. It was a great camera and I still have it to this day. Though I’ve been shooting digital for many years now, I’ve felt a resurgence in my desire to shoot film. I’ve been picking up film here and there and Santa (aka mom) presented me with some Ilford HP5 and Kodak Tri-X. I’ve also picked up some expired film on Etsy. Film definitely slows you down. I’m more intentional with the firing of the shutter. My son ribs me because of the work I do. Taking the picture is just the beginning. Next is countless minutes […]
