The Insistent Leaf
Sometimes, when I take photographs, I have a specific purpose in mind. There is some sort of event or place that I set out to photograph. Sometimes, a subject will speak to me; it will demand that I photograph it. Mostly because it is bathed in awesome light and has some incredible shadows. Sometimes, I haven’t photographed anything for a while and my addiction can no longer fight the urge to photograph something. The other day my craving to photograph something had reached it’s boiling point. Just at that moment a leaf on a vine growing on my fence spoke to me. It was back-lit by the early evening sun. The light had created some interesting shadows along the veins of the leaf. It was literally begging me to photograph it. So I grabbed my camera and off I went to the back yard to photograph this insistent leaf. As I took some photos of the leaf, I heard the pleas of some of the other plants. They too wished to be photographed. Not wanting to offend my other plants, I photographed them as well. My plants and my cravings were satisfied, for now.
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Photo #10,000
I took my camera for a walk on the boardwalk at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I was just shooting anything that I found interesting. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I had a nice walk, taking some photos. At home when I downloaded my photos, I thought I had lost half of them. The first photo was one that I had taken half-way through my walk. I thought “well this is odd.” As I looked a bit more closely, I realized what had happened. Halfway through my walk I had taken photo #9,999 with this camera, so the camera started numbering the photos over again at 001. So here is the 10,000 photo that I have taken with my D600.
Also here are some of the other photos that I took on my photo walk.
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Frog and Reptile Macro Workshop with Mike Matthews Photography
The organizers of the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival expanded the photography offerings for the 2016 festival. One of the photographers that joined the festival this year was Mike Matthews. (click here to see Mikes web site.) Mike conducted an amazing macro workshop with an interesting cast of characters.
Mike brought with him 10 to 15 species of exotic reptiles and amphibians like this very cool three horned chameleon.
He not only brought along some very cool subjects to photograph, he also brought the sets to photograph them in. There was a whole room full of small props and backdrops. Mike would expertly place one of the reptiles in the set then you instantly have a great photograph. Mike enjoys teaching photographers the tricks of the trade. He was very helpful with camera exposure settings as well as lens and flash selections. A well placed drop of water on a lizard’s mouth would create a fantastic image as the lizard licked the drop with its tongue. This was a great workshop! Not only were you able to learn all about the wonderful world of macro photography, but you came away with some world class images. Another one of the many reasons why you need to get your butt to the 2017 SCBWF!
I want to thank Mike for allowing me to follow him around and photograph his workshop. He helped me get some good photos as well as helping his workshop attendees get good photos. I only wish I would have had more time to see some of his other cute little friends.
Click on photos to see bigger.
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I don’t always get the photo!
I needed to get a good photo of a red shoulder hawk. I was at the Tosohatchee Wildlife Management area a few weeks ago and I saw a nice one. The hawk was hunting in a location that would make it easy to get a good photo. So when I needed to get a red shoulder, I thought I would return to the TWMA. Hopefully my friend, the red shoulder hawk, would still be there. I knew it was a long shot; things rarely work out the way we want them to. I arrived at the Tosohatchee in the morning to take advantage of the morning light. I drove to the place where the he had been hunting on my previous trip. Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be seen. I drove deeper into the TWMA to maybe find another hawk. I did see a kestrel, but he was too far away to get a good photo. I thought this may be a good time to go back and check on my red shoulder friend. I drove back to his hunting grounds and still no hawk. I still had lots of time, so I thought I would drive around and see what else I might find. I only got a few yards and I saw a pretty swallowtail butterfly on a thistle. I got out of the car and started to photograph the butterfly.
I took quite a few photos when I finally looked around me. There was not just the one butterfly; there were 15 – 20 of them on thistles all around me.
I was having fun with the butterflies when I heard my hawk calling close by. For the longest time I could only hear it calling to its mate. Then I saw it flying over the trees. The hawk was heading toward the area that I had seen him in before. I followed his flight through the trees. I was looking through the trees and I saw him. He landed in a dead tree. The tree that he landed on, although it was in plain sight, it was way too far away to get a good photo. We sat and watched each other for the longest time.
He looked at me and I looked at him. He must not have been totally looking at me. He jumped off of his tree and down to the ground, as if he found something to pounce on. I watched for the longest time, but I never saw him again that day. I failed on this trip to get my hawk photo, but just because you fail at your main objective, that doesn’t mean the whole trip needs to be a failure. Even though I wasn’t able to take any great photos, I still saw lots of cool things and had a great time in the field!
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- I ended up seeing over a dozen hawks that day.
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- I saw this eagle sitting on a power line tower. The eagle stared at me through the steel bars of the tower for a long time before it flew.
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- I saw some pretty purple flowers.
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- I saw some pretty yellow flowers.
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- I saw some cute and fuzzy critters.
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- I saw some not so cute and fuzzy critters. But don’t tell the armadillo that it isn’t cute.
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- I saw some mean and nasy critters.
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- I saw a space alien.
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- I saw some cute and not so fuzzy critters.
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- The one that flew away. Why do birds wait until you set your exposure, focus, and then fly before you get the photo?
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- THE END!
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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.
roy thoman photography 