Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival 2013
A week in the life a SCBWF photographer
I have spent the past week as a photographer for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. It was a great week for birding! The weather was fantastic! I got the chance to speak with many of the festival attendees. Many of them were from northern parts of the country, caught in the grip of a frigid cold snap, seeing temperatures well below zero! They all agreed it was way better to be birding in Florida. The birds were great as well, I will need to check the festival stats to see how many species were counted at this years festival. I was able to add a few new birds to my short, but growing life list. I’m more of a photographer than a birder, but I’m learning. It was a long and grueling week. My days started well before dawn and ended well past sunset. It took me a whole day of rest to recover! It was well worth the effort, I met lots of great people and took lots of photographs (over 2,600). It’s going to take me a while to get all of the photos ready, but as I do I’m going to share some of them, as well as my experiences here. This years SCBWF was awesome! This is my second year as a festival photographer, I have spent many years prior to that as a festival attendee. I always have a great time at the festival. I hope you will enjoy my thoughts and photos as much as I have enjoyed creating them.
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The Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival
I will once again be photographing the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. Birders from all over the United States attend the 6 day festival. Activities include workshops, field trips, class room presentations, keynote speakers and a large vendor area where birders can get up to date on all of the latest birding gear. The Raptor Project will be presenting their birds of prey show. There are workshops and field trips for photographers as well as birders. From novice to expert there is something for everyone. I will be following along with some of the field trips and taking photos of birders, birding and having fun. Check out the festival web site here. If you download the 2013 festival program PDF you will see some of my photographs. I had a lot of fun last year and I’m looking forward to this years festival. Here are a few of my photos from last years festival.
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Cassy’s Beautiful Flower
I love the way light affects things, and how we see them. That’s probably why I am drawn to photography. I find it interesting that an object can be so unremarkable, until just the right amount and type of light, coming from just the right angle, will make the unremarkable so remarkable. Our friend Cassy brought us this beautiful flower from one of her trees. We put it in a small wine glass and set it on the counter that night. It was a beautiful flower in any light, but the next morning the light coming through the window just made it come alive! Also the shadows and reflections caught my eye and I had to capture that moment in time. So I grabbed my camera and photographed Cassy’s beautiful flower.
Capturing that special moment in time is so important. Hours later the beautiful light was gone and Cassy’s beautiful flower had wilted. But Cassy’s beautiful flower will live forever in our memories and in this little magic box.
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Chandelier Plant
We have this strange plant in our yard that a friend gave us. I was not sure what it was called, I had to look it up. It was really small when she gave it to us, it had long thin leaves with little balls on them. It turns out that the little balls create a new plant when the fall off, so we now have many more plants than we started with. The plants that we started with have gotten really tall, they are 3-4 feet tall now. They have started blooming now too. They’ve got these very pretty red bell shaped blossoms on them. So of course I wanted to photograph them, so now that I have photographed them, I thought that I better check to see what they are. I did a quick Google search and found that they are called Chandelier plants among other names. So I thought I would share my Chandelier plants with you.
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Autumn in Florida, it does exist.
Back in October I was looking at a few of my favorite blogs and most of them had posted spectacular Autumn photos. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, the Autumn colors were spectacular! It was one of my favorite times of the year, not only for great photography, I just liked the Autumn. I have been living in Florida for 9 years now, so one of the things I have been missing was Autumn. So when I was looking at all of the beautiful Autumn images on the other blogs, I started thinking about Autumn and being in Florida. I have found if you know where and when to look, you will find little hints of Autumn here and there. You will not see the beautiful grandiose, colorful landscapes that you find in the north, but just little splashes of color scattered here and there. If you go looking for Autumn in Florida in October, you’re not going to find it. This year it started a bit early, we had an early cold snap and I think that may have triggered an earlier than normal Autumn. It seemed to get going in mid to late November. I have noticed in past years that it has been getting started in late November to early December and peaking around Christmas. I think because it starts so late and is not the bold statement that occurs in the north, most people overlook it. Also it gets spread out over a longer period of time. I took these photos just in the last week. So if you find yourself in Florida for Christmas, don’t think winter, think Autumn.
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My New Web Site!
I have started a website with Fine Art America. I have only added a few photos at this point just to see how things go, I hope to be adding more soon. So I hope you will stop by and check it out! http://roy-thoman.artistwebsites.com/
Thanks, Roy
roy thoman photography 