Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Worldwide Photo Walk - 2009

Scott Kelby is a photographer, artist, teacher and trainer who developed an idea last year. Let's get people together in cities and towns around the world for a few hours on the same day with their cameras and see what happens. This year, Saturday, July 18th was the second annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk and 36,800 of us participated! In Jacksonville, 50 of us were guided around downtown by Jim Brady. We were challenged to look at familiar (to many of us) sights in unfamiliar ways. What a blast. Below is a small sampling of the 100 or so images that came out of my camera in the two hours before it rained...

Above: Jacksonville's Main Street Bridge, spanning the Saint Johns River - looking south from the north bank near the Jacksonville Landing.

Above: The principle photographer for the Jacksonville Times-Union, our daily newspaper, shooting the shooters....

Above: Couldn't resist the colors in the Siouxie and the Banshees sticker -- haven't seen one of these in years!

Above: The Bank of America Tower -- the predominant building in the downtown Jacksonville skyline.

These and more of my photos from the day can be viewed on my website here. Until next time...

Thursday, July 9, 2009

It's About Time...

... or lack of that precious commodity these days. Little time to create blog posts, what with everything going on in this ready-to-slow-down life. Writing... yeah, lot's of lyrics suddenly dropping into my head. Not to mention melodies to go with them. Landing like a dragonfly on a wounded porterweed stalk...

It clearly takes more time to memorize a song these days than it used to. A real agitation sometimes -- but worth the effort. I've turned the process into a kind of meditation and it does bring a bit of peace... Then we have a weekend-long practice with the band to get ready for our appearance as the featured act at the Royal Palm Beach Folk and Acoustic Music Festival. Getting my guitar chops back into shape. Float like a....

...and in between I'll be heading into the studio to record some of the new stuff. Hopefully the energy will hold out. Have obligations to photography clients too, not to mention work (the activity that makes the rest of this all possible). We're into budget preparation season, and in this economy it makes a tough process that much more of a challenge. But when you do the right things for the right reasons, it's worth the aches and pains. Though right now my eyes pretty much look like this...
All of the images are from our backyard butterfly gardens, that are finally starting to become active. Dragonfly up top, gulf fritillary in the middle, and a fiery skipper third. All shot hand-held with a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro lens. Up close and personal. So we'll let you know how it goes.......... simple.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Local Focus July 1: Gators and Birds...

The Saint Augustine Alligator Farm might strike you at first as being one of those trite, old, U.S. Highway 1 roadside Florida attractions from the 1960s, designed to trap unwary tourists and separate them from their vanishing financial resources.

Not so!

In addition to being quite the cool little, well run, professionally staffed zoological park (yes, inhabited by hundreds of Florida Alligators -- among many other rare and exotic creatures), Nature's perfect processes have conspired to create an absolutely amazing, unplanned (by the park) environmental phenomenon. A large section of the park's wetland areas are inhabited by (hungry) free-ranging gators. A wooden causeway built into the heart of the area allows visitors to view the reptiles in their native habitat, and, yes, put a quarter into the little machine and toss a handful of treats into the snapping jaws below. The primitive area is dotted with a wide variety of north Florida regional flora, including majestic live oak, and tall palms. The combination of trees and gators created a perfect rookery habitat for the Florida native birds...

Every spring, hundreds and hundreds of great white egrets, snowy egrets (like the one above), cattle egrets, little blue herons, great blue herons, tricolor herons (like the one below with eggs), and wood storks fly in to build their nests, lay, incubate and hatch their eggs and raise their young above the watchful protection of the alligators that keep the bird's natural predators away.

In return, the gators get the occasional egg and feather breakfast (survival of the fittest in action), and hundreds of photographers flock in to observe and photograph every bit of it. The birds a so unintimidated by the stream of humanity gawking at their courtship rituals that some nests are built with a few yards of the causeway.

We made two visits this year, the most recent was last Saturday -- and it produced the photos posted here. Nature in action.... simple!

More photos from the 2009 rookery season can be found on my website here: RiverRoadPhoto