This past Sunday I rode along with the Kendall Camera Club to Biscayne National Park for a photography workshop led by park volunteer and professional photographer Arend Thibodeau. I had a great time learning about Biscayne National Park and seeing what photo opportunities exist near the visitor center.
Biscayne National Park is 95% water. The non-water portion primarily consists of small islands stretching throughout Biscayne Bay. For this workshop, we stayed on the mainland and focused on the enviroment surrounding The Dante Fascell Visitor Center.
The water in Biscayne Bay is clear blue and teaming with aquatic wildlife. We started our workshop by walking a mangrove surrounded boardwalk and walking trail that takes you along the shores of Biscayne Bay. Depending on the tide, there are great landscape opportunities in the late afternoon if you have a low sun angle and billowing clouds. The shoreline is covered in mangrove roots and rocks making for some interesting foreground subjects for any landscape shot. I also used some of the park benches as a foreground object and liked the effect.
There were a fair number of terns, gulls, egrets and cormorants if birds are what you are looking for. However, there are much better photography locations for birds such as Everglades National Park. There are also very large land crabs that are present in the park but they are very elusive and non-cooperative. Lastly, for those photographers who like people, the boardwalk and walking path also had a good number of fisherman or others just enjoying the park making candid people shots another option while here.
On the other side of the Dante Fascell Visitor center is a concrete walking path around the parking lot that is surrounded by various palm trees and other natural plants that make for some easy access flora and fauna shots.
I had a good time discovering Biscayne National Park and hope to go back again when I have better light and more interesting clouds. We were there around mid-day with very little cloud cover resulting in very contrasty landscapes with harsh light and dark shadows. Below are some of the shots I captured while walking around.
Click on the Thumbnails for full size images.
