Tag: Florida

Naples, Florida Colorful Beach Sunset

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I attended the 29th Annual Everglades Coalition Conference in Naples, Florida this past weekend.  This is my second time attending this conference and I really enjoyed learning more about conservation, preservation and restoration issues affecting the Florida Everglades.  I also spent some time promoting the new National Park Trolley that was recently launched by the City of Homestead.  I will have another blog post specifically discussing this conference.

The purpose of this blog post is to post a few pictures I took while attending the conference.  I was able to run out to the beach Thursday night before the kick-off reception to capture what turned out to be an amazing sunset.  There was a large cloud bank out over the water that seemed like it might block the setting sun.  I looked up the azimuth of the sunset and checked it with my compass.  It turned out the sun was going to set just on the edge of the cloud bank.  I set up my camera and tripod using some nearby rocks as a foreground subject and hoped that the sun would light up the clouds once it sand below the horizon.  I got lucky and the sunset was beautiful to witness.

I used a slow shutter speed to cause the water to blur and give the image a more dramatic feel.  I used an aperture of f18 or higher to slow the shutter speed but also to give me a nice sun star as the sun sank low on the horizon.  Lastly, I used HDR to capture the full dynamic range and allow for me to see the foreground rocks as something other than black silhouettes.  I was happy with the resulting photos and will likely add one of them to my gallery of images on my website.

I also took a few shots late Friday afternoon after the conference dinner to utilize the almost full moon and empty beach.  I liked the result but would have preferred a cloudless sky or puffy clouds to the thin wispy clouds that were present.  I tried to turn the camera at an angle that would capture as little clouds as possible and more stars.  The resulting image was fun to capture and I will make a note to try and do some more full moon light photography in the future.

Click on Thumbnail for full size image.

 

Everglades Sunrise, Birds in Flight and Cypress Dome Walk

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I went out last week to capture a sunrise down in Flamingo, Florida.  I took a few reflection pictures across the water as the sun came up.  After the sunrise I went to Eco Pond to try and capture some bird in flight pictures.  The birds have started to thin out after reaching a peak a few weeks ago.  There were still a good number of Roseate Spoonbills, Egrets, Heron’s and other birds but not like there had been the last few weeks.  I ended up with a few I liked.

After the birds stopped performing, I started heading back toward the park entrance.  I made one last stop to explore a cypress dome I had never walked into before.  It was a great find and I plan on going back to try and take more pictures there in the future.  Inside the cypress dome, I found resident gators, birds, and three water moccasins.  I also found numerous orchids of different varieties including some very large and rare cigar orchids.