One Day of Photography in Florida 5

This week I am sharing photos that illustrate the types of photographic subjects I see on a typical day in Florida and that Everything's a Picture. If you are interested, I uploaded several extra images of the pink flowers to my Blog yesterday.

As I moved from the tree with pink flowers, a palm tree caught my attention and I made several photos of the trunk. . I like the shapes and textures of the variety of bark on different types of palms and I suspect I have photographed most of the ones that grow near the roads I walk.

The close-up views of the white flowers show the shape of the petals as well as the reproductive parts. I am glad I made the third photo because it shows the height of the tree in relation to the palm in the background.

One Day of Photography in Florida 4

Further down the road a little, I came across one yard with two flowering trees, one of which had pink flowers while the other had white flowers. The early morning light was excellent for making photos of the flowers. If you look closely, you'll notice that both flowers are identical except for their colours. The pink buds in the second photo were almost ready to bloom that morning.

You will also notice that there are two different types of pink flowers in this sequence.

One Day of Photography in Florida 3

Walking in Florida is the best way to see photographs. If you are looking for photographic subjects from a car while driving, it can be dangerous. Often, later in the day, I will take the golf cart and take spins around Citrus Park. It isn't that I am lazy in the afternoons, but the sun is usually pretty hot and the golf cart provides shade so I don't get a sunburn. Of course, this series of photos were all made on the same morning walk in the order they were taken.

Seeing citrus fruit growing on the sides of the roads is unusual for me, so I make photographs of them often. Oranges, clementines, tangerines, lemons and grapefruit are interesting photographic subjects that I see on my walks. The giant grasses also make interesting photographs, especially in the early morning light. I make photos of these very tall grasses every year as well.

You can see houses in the background of the third image. This is one of the streets in Belle Villa, located in the north end of Citrus Park. There are a variety of palm trees growing all over the park and many of them look different when I photograph them year after year. The fourth photo shows a street in Belle Villa which is lined with interesting trees and plants and the last photo shows a close-up of a flower on one of the trees.

As you continue to view the photos in this series, think about the theme for my Photo of the Day - Everything's A Picture - and ask yourselves if you would have seen the scenes and stopped to make photos of them.

One Day of Photography in Florida 2

Yesterday's photos started my new One Day of Photography in Florida series. The photos in this series are in the order they were taken, allowing you to see what photos I saw one morning in Florida.

The white ibis sitting alone on top of a tree with the clear blue sky in the background caught my attention right away. I composed several photos but liked this one with the subjects in the right third of the image and the blue sky dominating the left side. It looks like the bird is looking out over a great expanse from its great height. If the bird were facing the opposite direction this photo wouldn't have worked as well.

As you can see in the second photo, there are lots of people out and about as the sun rises. I chose to turn left on Orchard Road and follow the people in the photo; of course I walked at a much slower pace because I was making photos. :) I have photographed many people walking around the park in the early morning light. You can see the terrain and types of trees I see on my walks. To the right of the photo is an orange orchard which is fenced, but I have taken many photos of birds, spiders, sunrises and rabbits while standing by the fence looking in.

Because there are lots of orange trees on this road, I always photograph oranges, or their blossoms, during my walks and have many images of the fruit in my collection.

I heard a red cardinal singing close by and was glad when it suddenly flew into a tree with few leaves. I had to be fast to get the shot because they were pretty skittish when I was there. Red cardinals are plentiful in the park and I am always trying to get better photos of them.

Florida

For the past few years my wife and I have travelled to Florida during Easter vacations but won't be going this year. In late-October to early-November I shared photos of one trip to the hills out back and the series received much positive feedback from you, so I thought I'd do the same for one-day of photos in Citrus Park in southwest Florida.

I get on the go just before sunrise (around 7ish) and walk until around 10 or 11 making photos of everything that attracts my attention. I chose to share photos of a the first morning we were there in April 2004, a day that we also went to the beach. I took nearly 500 photos that day and over the next few days, will share images that show the variety of subjects that I photograph in Florida. The photos are in the order that I took them.

The first two images show a brown thrasher singing as the sun began to rise. At first I thought that it was a mockingbird, but when I saw the brown markings on its chest, knew it was a different species.

There is a pond at the end of the street our friends live on, and it is usually quite calm early in the morning. I have made photographs of the reeds and their reflections every year, yet no two images are the same. What is similar is the stillness, which I try to capture. The third image shows the pond as the sun begins to rise above the trees in the background. These photos have a calming effect and show the peace and quiet I feel every day as I start my early morning photo expedition.

The blackbird was looking for food along the edge of the pond in the early morning light.

Winter Birds

For the last in this series of Winter Birds, I have chosen to share photos of three species that were feeding in front of my house. Keep in mind that all photos in this series were taken the same morning in a 5 minute time span. Making the photos was a lot of fun and I hope everyone has been enjoying the photos of birds that winter in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The first image shows an American Goldfinch in the process of breaking a sunflower seed. I have only seen this species in 2 of the 28 years I have lived in Holyrood. One Common Redpoll started to flap its wings just as I took the photo and the other shows a side view of a female eating a seed. The last two photos show pine siskins that were also enjoying the sunflower seeds that I put out for them earlier that morning.

For those of you who haven't seen birds of these species, they all are the same size, approximately 5". It is difficult to tell their sizes in these photos because there are no reference points with which to compare them.

Purple Finch

Purple Finches were also eating seeds off the ground directly in front of the basement window that same day in the winter of 2004. I thought I'd share a few more images of the colourful males taken from ground level.

My plan is to share a few more images of birds for another day or two before moving on. Someone asked how many photos I took that morning in order to capture such good close-ups. When I checked, I took around 230 images in a span of 5 minutes. The birds flew away when I first opened the window, and came back fairly shortly afterwards. I shot as fast as I could because one never knows when or if they will return. As I said already this week, I haven't seen them around for at least 5 years.