The
Florida Everglades, a destination in Florida I have wanted to visit for several
years. Being as much into avian
photography as I am I found it strange that I was actually going down there to
concentrate 90% of the time into the beautiful and unique looking landscapes
down there. While my travels went much
better then how they did last month when I went to Ocean Shore, the weather did
not work out in my favor as I had hoped.
None the less, my friend and I made the best of it. I was accompanied by Don Hamilton who lives
in Florida and spends every other weekend in the Everglades during the winter
time. As another friend of mine said, we
were “hardcore” because we were camping down there during our stay…chilly stay. A lot of people thought I was crazy thinking
I was going to be eaten by an Alligator or one of those Pythons they have all
over down there. Honestly I had those
thoughts a couple times thinking, “am I crazy sleeping out here in the middle
of now where?” No cell reception down
there, at least Verizon. We had to drive
to Anhinga Trail in order to get cell reception. Up until my trip there, the furthest south I
had been in Florida was Naples when my wife and I visited Corkscrew
Sanctuary.
So
anyways, I flew in on Thursday to a complete overcast. My friend picked me up
from the airport and we were off for some shooting for the late afternoon into
evening. We stopped by to visit the
Burrowing Owls. We spent the late
afternoon into evening there. Most of my
shots I was not happy with due to the lighting that we had. Even using flash (more so then I would
usually use) I was not real please with those shots. We headed back and crossed our fingers that
the weather would improve some over the next few days.
We
left the next morning at 5am for the Everglades in a drizzle. That would be the story on and off for almost
the entire weekend. We arrived to the
Everglades just before sunrise, no sunrise to be seen that day or really any of
the other days with the exception of Sunday.
We set up camp in the late afternoon after exploring the area. We were originally going to stay for two
night but only ended up staying for one night due to the showers and cool
weather that we encountered during our stay.
None the less, I came back with a few good shots from the area, including
some stellar images of a Red-Shouldered Hawk. Not the stellar landscape images that I had hoped
for but sure can’t complain when you come home with some good wildlife
images.
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| A Turkey Vulture that thought he was a bus!! |
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| Double-Crested Comorant |
We
did get a fairly decent sunset opportunity on Saturday evening before we left. At
a favorite location of my friend in Everglades National Park is where I
captured this sunset.
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| Sunset at Everglades National Park |
Sunday we focused
on a sunrise opportunity on the east coast. We got skunked on the sunrise (boy I thought
avian photography was frustrating!) I
decided to try my hand at some timed exposures I have seen others do along the
coast line. I came away with one image
that I was happy with the results.
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| Ocean 'scape in Jupiter Florida, receding tide |
We then followed that up with some photos of
Orchids and Sunday evening we went back to visit the Burrowing Owls and got some sweet light at the end of the evening. Unfortunately we were in a location that did not offer us any good photo opportunities for the sunset. It was beautiful to see none the less.
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| Acker's Sweetie Orchid (hybrid) |
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| Burrowing Owl at sunset |
