JANUARY 2010
The depths of winter seem to have settled in for much of the United States and while we don’t feel the full effects here in South Florida, we have actually set or tied records for both the coldest and warmest temperatures for the month. Shooting finally began to pick up as the breeding cycle for many of our local birds got started in earnest and activity picked up in general.
Personally it turned into a body maintenance month with some minor surgery to remove some barnacles caused by way too many years in the sun. Happily it all seems to have gone fine but it kept me shooting locally with a fair amount of success.
One of the most exciting thing was getting a new computer. I have always wanted to build one so I finally tried that and I am happy to report that it worked great. I put together a fairly fast computer pretty much tailored for Photoshop work. It has 12 Gigs of ram and a fairly fast processor mounted on a late model Asus board. I have never been so productive! Things that used to take what seemed like days to complete now are just a key click away.
February is Japan and in following the weather it appears to have been quite cold up north but the sea ice looks as if it is moving in place nicely. It really is quite exciting!
Great photography and living to all!
December 2009
Well 2009 is gone and while not quickly forgotten, I for one am not that sorry to see it go. It was man interesting and not easy year to get through. I probably traveled less than many years in the past but still managed to do some really interesting photography. Sometimes is not at all bad to re-evaluate where you are in your chosen craft. I hope that one and all have a great 2010 with lots of promise and success.
I continue to add images to the web site from the past year and New Stuff has a few added this month. It has been a fairly good year publishing wise with all of the publications that I usually deal with having used a few images this year and the gallery I work with in Key West having a good year in spite of the pressures on the tourist industry in general. All in all I am excited to be starting a new year with lots of promise and excitement.
Great photography and living to all!
NOVEMBER 2009
November was a very nice month with some good shooting on the west coast of Florida. I went to the Fort Myers area for a few days and at first it looked as if I might get skunked but after walking the length of Estero Lagoon and not seeing one bird I found a flock of about twelve Snowy Plovers who seemed to enjoy the attention of a photographer wallowing in the mud in front of them. One Piping Plover full of bands stopped by briefly but then moved on.
In the afternoons I went out to the Lighthouse end of Sanibel Island and walked for a mile in the opposite direction without finding more than a few Sanderlings. Around 430 in the afternoon something drove the bait fish and what seemed to be ten thousand Gulls, Terns, Herons, and Egrets converged on the beach in a feeding frenzy. They covered roughly a quarter to a half mile of the beach. I have only seen anything similar one other time and it was really special to see. In the last forty five minutes of light I managed to fill a 12 gig card.
I keep making progress on the images from my Western trip and a few more appear in New Stuff again this month.
October, 2009
After getting home from Utah and Arizona at almost the middle of October, I have been busy processing images from the trip. I think I got some really good stuff while I was out there. I did take a few days to go over to Fort DeSoto last week but I apparently mis-timed the cold front and was nearly skunked. There were only a few Sanderlings and two Reddish Egrets, both a White Morph and a “standard”.
I’ll be getting new images up on ht e web site each month over the next few months. A few of them can be seen under “New Stuff”.
September 2009
Early in September I hit the road to head west and cover some of the things that I had missed on my trip west in May and June. I started out by visiting a place I had always been curious about, Canyon de Chelly, on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Chinle, Arizona. The Canyon is truly spectacular and quite an impressive sight. There are still a number of families that live and farm in the canyon so access is restricted except wit a local guide. I shared a Jeep with a guide with a couple of photographers from the D.C area so I did have a chance to see a bit of the canyon and do some fun photography.
I spent the next few weeks in and around Cedar Mesa in Utah exploring and photographing some of the Anasazi or Ancient Puebloan ruins. They are almost universally located in difficult to reach ledges and alcoves in the cliffs of the canyons throughout the Colorado Plateau. They were all abandoned by the year 1300 AD but many are in remarkably good shape. It is I suspect one of those quests that could take a lifetime to pursue.
A friend, Richard Lindekins (http://www.richworldphoto.com/index.php) joined me in Page, Arizona and we spent a few days exploring Lake Powell in his boat. The Lake is a magnificent engineering feat and quite impressive to see, and I am sure the water it holds is valuable to many interests but I found that I was not totally comfortable with the high water ring around the edges and the artificiality of it. My perception has probably been tainted by all of the things I have read about the formation of the Lake. I did have an opportunity to do some good photography around Rainbow Bridge, a place that is quite sacred to the Navajo Tribe and a number of other tribes. Thanks again to Richard and his boat. While in the Page area there was finally a chance to see and shoot Lower Antelope Canyon on the Navajo Indian Reservation. It is easily accessible and beautiful to see.
I obtained a permit for back country camping at White Sands so it was easy to do sunrise and sunset. It is an interesting Park with white dunes of gypsum stretching for miles. After a few days at White Sands National Monument the long drive across Texas got me started back home. Along the way, I saw some beautiful Cypress swamps in Louisiana that look as if they are worth spending some time investigating.
August 2009
August is August in South Florida. It is very hot but it is at least humid. It is a time to contemplate hurricane preparations, watch a little baseball, and plan on an exciting and productive upcoming season. From reading some of the birding sites it seems that some of the early migrants are starting to show up on the northwest coast of Florida. As I look back at some of the images I have gotten over the years I have actually done quite well in late summer and early fall with some of the shorebirds over at Fort Desoto. It is probably time for me to shake off my lethargy and get back to shooting. Not that it is really a chore. LOL
I have started a slow but steady exploration of Florida Bay with the inflateable but haven’t quite found what I am looking for yet which gives me a great excuse to go back again and again.
JULY, 2009
July was a great month the Swallow-tailed Kites managed to fledge one chick and it was great to see him learn to fly. I could easily identify with his early difficulties with landings although a few of them were so bad it made me cringe a bit. The Snail Kites at Loxahatchee have managed to fledge two chicks but so far they have not strayed far from the nest. It has been interesting meeting so many photographers from this area gathered to photograph these endangered birds.
I have been getting my small Avon inflatable to do some boat shooting over the next year. I have spent some time on Florida Bay and Tampa Bay and it will probably give me some access to areas that are not available now.
Some of the images from my trip out west to Arizona, Utah, and Colorado are on the website under New Stuff
June, 2009
June brought some much needed computer time to process some of the images that I shot on my Western tour. I’m quite pleased with most of the photos I took and I will start posting them in the next month or so.
One exciting note, there has been a Swallow-tailed Kite nest not far from where I live. The single chick fledged this past week and it has been both fun and educational to watch the chick learning to fly and become a “real” bird under the watchful eyes of his parents. Both adult birds take an active role in the chicks up bringing and training. It will take a while for the chick to land with any grace and even longer to soar with the effortless grace of his parents.
The word is that the Snail Kites have returned to Loxahatchee NWR again this year and I am going to check on them later this month. It does seem that a number of species are breeding and nesting later this year but I don’t have any scientific evidence to support that feeling.
MAY, 2009
This May brought a whole new adventure that took me from South Florida out to the Western United States. I left South Florida and drove to Houston to visit for a few days and then headed west. While I grew up in Texas it is easy to forget just how big a state it is. I spent 13 hours going from Houston to El Paso with just a few detours to see some of the “Hill Country”. It was too late in the season to see any of the flowers that the region is famous for but I think that both flowers and photographing on the ranches in the area would be great next spring.
I then drove and spent the next week or ten days photographing Hummingbirds and other species in Southeast Arizona in the Huachuca and Santa Rita Mountains. From there I headed north and spent a few weeks shooting Landscapes and Scenic images in the Canyon and Red Rock country of Northern Arizona and Southeastern Utah around the Four Corners area.. I spent more time than I had planned in the Vermillion Cliffs and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments but it is that sort of flexibility that I was trying to get by driving. It is a rugged but beautiful part of the world. I missed almost all of the Anasazi ruins that I planned to photograph when an early monsoon weather pattern made many of the roads and washes that I planned to use impassable.
In a case of art imitating real life, an old goat chasing young goats, I then went up to Colorado to chase Mountain Goats on Mount Evans just west of Denver. It was interesting to have three inches of snow on my car early in June and a slightly different temperature than I might have had here in Florida.
All in all a successful trip and a great overview of the Four Corners area I hope to spend more time there in the future. I will be posting images over the next few months and will put links from trip notes back to the images.
APRIL, 2009
This April things really started to get busy in Florida. I spent some productive time in Everglades National Park, mostly in Flamingo and had some great luck with shorebirds in Echo Pond and there were Osprey everywhere. One interesting thing was late one afternoon a flock of a thousand Willets came in to one of the beaches as a place to rest during migration. They were huddled along a narrow section of beach hunkered down out of the wind and most were asleep. They were all gone in the morning.
After waiting far too long for outboard engine parts, I finally got my old inflatable up and running and managed a short shakedown week on Tampa Bay photographing the Roseate Spoonbill, Brown Pelicans, and White Ibis nesting colony.
Locally right here in Broward County a friend found a nesting Swallow Tailed kite and the Great Egrets have hatched all of their chicks at Long Key County Park all in all it has been great to be really busy shooting again.
March, 2009
The season in Florida seems to still be slower than many years but I was able to spend more time in Everglades National Park with some success. I had some great shooting on Marco Island with the migrating shorebirds. You will note the opening image of the two Dunlins having a battle royal for roughly a second or two. It is amazing how fast these little guys move the entire sequence lasted for just long enough to fill the buffer on the 1D Mk III at 10 frames a second. And the one on the cover was the one with both in the frame and the best of the group. Almost everything in “New Stuff” came from Bosque del Apache taken last December. It was one of the really great years at Bosque with Southerly winds and warm temperatures the whole time I was there.
FEBRUARY, 2009
February finally saw more of the things that Florida winter bird photography is famous for. I spent time at Fort DeSoto, Fort Myers and the Florida Everglades. All were fairly productive with most species starting to get some nice breeding plumage and good photography opportunities. The Gulls and Terns at Fort DeSoto were just changing over to breeding plumage and the Reddish Egrets are quite far along with nice pink on the bills.
Echo Pond in the Everglades was getting some good action with Roseatte Spoonbills but they were all at the “wrong side” of the pond during the four days I was there. The photographers I met while I was there said I “shoulda’ been here last week”. Ah well next trip we’ll get them. I did see a fascinating sight on the beach near the walk in campground a flock of one thousand plus Willets in migration. They were all resting and were gone in the morning. Most of us are used to seeing Willets in ones and twos on lots of beaches but a flock of this size was really impressive. I was joined in Everglades National Park for a day or two by good friend and fellow photographer Jeff Wendorff ( http://jeffwendorff.com )and we had a lot of great chances to shoot around Flamingo.
JANUARY, 2009
January saw the photo opportunities get better in Florida. I spent a number of days in North Central Florida at Payne’s Prairie State Park which is quite pretty and unusual but not especially photographer friendly. They will not open their gate until eight AM and close them at five or five thirty PM. There is about an hour walk to most subjects of interest so because of the late start and early finish, a photographer is condemned to shoot in hard light. It is an interesting place and had thousands of Sandhill Cranes and roughly a dozen Whooping Cranes although only two were out and about when I was there.
Almost a week in the Fort Myers was moderately successful with a few new things and a few good days and one with almost nothing. I got some good tips from locals and tried a number of new areas. I guess when things are slow in the normal areas it is a great opportunity to try some new places and ideas. One of the things that I worked with and had a chance to learn more about was light painting with a spotlight at night.
DECEMBER, 2008
I’m just back from the first ten days of December in Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. It is the winter home of 8,000 Sandhill Cranes, 15,000 White Geese (Snow Geese, Lesser Snow Geese, and Ross’s Geese) and 39,000 assorted Ducks. It was the perfect place to cure an attack of the photo funk that had struck me after having to cancel a road trip through the west earlier this fall. I was fortunate to have good weather with rather mild temperatures and a day or so of south winds for shooting at the north end of the reserve near the planted corn fields, plus one or two mornings of some of the magical light that New Mexico is famous for.
One of the reasons for going was to visit with Take Matsuo from Japan who is a world famous birding guide and one of the kindest gentlest souls I have ever met. He also helps as our guide and translator on the Japan tour in February. He has been so great to us in Japan that it was fun to show him some of our American West and its flora and fauna. I had a chance to see lots of old friends and acquaintances so it was both a social and photographic success. I did have a chance to shoot with Cheryl Opperman and she is a complete professional and a delight to work with in the field. Ali Darvish was there to help keep everyone entertained and after wowing us with some of the work he did at the Beijing Olympics he continues to amaze by seeing things that most of us miss. I would give a link to his web site but it doesn’t exist yet. He volunteered to do some photo work for a High School in the Tampa area and has now become their photographer, mascot and good luck charm as they move towards their second state football championship. It was fun to see Doug Walsh of Infinity Photo Tours. We talk regularly on the phone but with his travel schedule we don’t get a chance to actually spend time together except when doing tours together.
All in all a great trip and rejuvenation, Bosque continues its magic this year. We are almost at the end of 2008, certainly a year of change and challenge, At this point 2009 certainly appears to have many more challenges and we can only hope that it has lots of positive change. I hope that 2009 is a great and fulfilling year for us all.
OCTOBER, 2008
Ouch! Another month and almost another year slips by. They seem to pass awfully fast these days. I have made some progress with the drop down menus in the Galleries which was part of the internal upgrades to the web site that I have been working on.
We have been fortunate in South Florida to have the first recorded nesting of the Caribbean Lest Grebe right in Palm Beach County. They are apparently not real image conscience because they chose an out of the way kind of non-descript pond. I should have some of the photos up shortly. Fort Desoto in St. Petersburg has had lots of birds lately with a lot of migrating shorebirds. I finally got a few of the Pileated Woodpecker nest from last winter. They can be found under This Link.
JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 2008
July, August and well into September have been pretty quiet around Florida. The slow season plus a few back problems have kept my shooting to a minimum for far too long. I have also done some internal updates to the web site that make it much more efficient and that always takes a lot longer than expected. Thank goodness the busier part of the season is coming up. Cabin fever has been taking its toll.
I have been working a lot of the images that I have been shooting over the past year and you can see quite a few of them by clicking on "Here" .
JUNE, 2008
Well it has been good to be home for a while after a long trip out west. Things have been fairly active in Florida and I think that the overall state of the wildlife world is in a state of flux. I found that the nesting Piping Plovers in Nebraska were running about two weeks late with their nests and I received a note from a friend in the UK who found the same thing in Churchill, Manitoba where the whole migration cycle was out of whack.
The news in South Florida has been reporting that, because of the drought, the Snail Kites are more endangered this year than they have been in a long time. It is therefore, especially pleasing that this year there have been a number of Snail Kite nests close enough to shoot in the Everglades. The nests themselves are a bit far away but it has been fun watching and shooting them coming and going.
It is amazing that there always seems to be something to do and learn on the computer so I seem to always stay busy no matter what is happening out in the field.
May, 2008
May was quite a month. I have wanted to do a trip to the upper Midwest for sometime and finally had a chance to travel up to Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, and New Mexico. I had planned to go to Wyoming to see some of Cody and Yellowstone but the weather gods seem to have other ideas. Every time I started to head further west the weather would get really bad out that way. I guess I had conveniently forgotten that the Midwest can be rather windy but I received constant reminders while I was out there. I even had a few days with the winds up in the fifty mile per hour range.
I was going to some of the really remote National Wildlife Refuges out there so I camped for most of the trip. Much to my surprise camping turned out to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the entire trip. There were a few days that caused me to question whether it had been a good decision but it was especially nice to be shooting in the morning in a matter of minutes instead of a forty mile drive away.
An area that was a fascinating surprise was the Pawnee National Grasslands in Colorado. The grasslands are what the name implies but full of diverse wildlife and habitat.
I managed to come back with twelve new species of birds and five or six new species of mammals. I finally had a chance to see American Avocets in full breeding plumage and was immediately smitten. They are absolutely beautiful.
All in all a successful trip with a bit more driving than most would choose but it gave me a chance to see some things I might have missed otherwise
April, 2008
Things in Florida certainly picked up in April. All of the local areas in South Florida have been much more active including Long Key with 8 or 9 active Great Egret nests, some with chicks. There was a Pileated Woodpecker nest with three chicks in Flamingo, Everglades National Park, and three Snowy Plover Nests that hatched over four days on Sanibel Island. The link also includes some of the other shorebirds that were on the beach on Sanibel. I am always excited to see Red Knots in any plumage but especially when they are in or changing to breeding plumage. Their numbers have plummeted so dramatically in recent years that I root for them any time I see them. I understand that there have even been some Warblers passing through Fort DeSoto.
One of the things I have been doing differently in my travels is something I haven't done since I lived in the mountains of New England or did under government supervision when I was in the Marine Corps, and that is camp out in a tent. I am planning a trip to some of the more remote reaches of the Mid-West and Western United States, and wanted (or needed) to practice before getting too far away. It has been cool and not too humid in Florida this spring so it has so far been a very pleasant experience. It is a little difficult to do without internet and a few other "civilized" conveniences but is very "do-able".
March, 2008
I am pleased to report that the shooting has improved a lot in Florida in the past three or four weeks. Ding Darling has had some good activity for the first time in many years with some White Pelicans and Roseate Spoonbills in evidence. It is still not a guarantee since the birds may still be a long way away but at least there have been some opportunities. I have spent some time at Gatorland in Orlando, and the founder's son Mike Godwit has gone a long way to make it much more photographer friendly. I have been there a number of times in recent weeks with a good friend Jeff Wendorff and we have had some great success. I spent some time in the Joe Overstreet Road area and have had some great days with the Snail Kites and Osprey even having both Bald Eagles and Northern Caracaras close along the road. There were even five Whooping Cranes in sight flying North of the road one morning.
February, 2008
In February things started turning around in Florida, and got a bit more normal than it has been this year. Whether it is global warming or some other cycle, it has not been a "normal" year for photography here in Florida. I lead my first photo tour to Japan in the second half of the month of February. It was a success for all concerned. We had a great group of people who were all receptive to the cultural differences and great photo opportunities that Japan offers. We all (me included) managed to get some wonderful images of the Snow Monkeys, Japanese Cranes, Steller's Sea Eagles, Whooper Swans, and White-tailed Sea Eagles.The pack ice was close to the shore of Hokkaido giving three days of maximum shooting time in the ice for the rare Eagles that winter along that shore. The tour was put together by Infinity Photo Tours and they did a fine job of organization.We are going to do it again next year and I am really looking forward to it. If you want to do a superb photo tour of Northern Japan let me know. I will get the images from the trip on the web site by the end of March, and I will put a link here for the images.
December, 2007 and January, 2008
Between the Holidays and a bout of the flu December and January were so slow that I was too lazy to even type that they were slow. Probably a case of the less you do, the less you want to do. Even some of my usual haunts were unproductive this year. It has forced me to get out and explore some new areas. I was even told that I have a colony of Skimmers just a few minutes from where I live when the wind stops blowing in a day or so I'll get over and see how it looks. I even found a Heron/Egret rookery (Thanks to Michael Wolf) ten minutes from where I live that looks as if it will be very productive.
November, 2007
I was in Colorado the end of October and came home early in November. I spent three or four days in Rocky Mountain National Park shooting scenics and local birds and the did a Raptor shoot with both old new friends. The whole trip was a great experience although my timing was imperfect as the day I arrived they closed the main road across the park for the season.It was the day the first serious snowstorm of the season hit. All of my notes were for the part of the park that was closed but I managed to find more than enough to do in the area that was open. The action in Florida is starting to pick up in early December so I am starting to get serious about shooting locally for the first time in a while..
October, 2007
Well things are still a bit slow in Florida although I had a great morning in Central Florida with a juvenile Snail Kite that was having an even better morning. He was grabbing a snail about every 10 minutes and completely unconcerned with my presence. All in all quite exciting. I followed up with some good shooting at Estero Lagoon where there were around six Roseate Spoonbills active and a selection of waders in the area.
I have put some new Shorebird images up that can be found under New Stuff or in the Shorebirds Gallery.
John
September, 2007
Things slow down a bit this time of the year in South Florida, so it is a great time to catch up on processing and working on images. I've made a trip or two to Fort Desoto and will run up to central Florida in the next few days. I did put a few new images up in Marsh Birds that you might enjoy.
John
Newfoundland, Last Two Weeks of July, 2007
I was in Newfoundland for the last two weeks of July and spent the entire time exploring the Avalon Peninsula. It is the piece of land that juts from the Southeast corner of Newfoundland and includes the charming capital city of St. John’s. Very little time was spent in the city, and the rest of Newfoundland is sparsely populated and easy to travel. I had never been there before but it is possibly the friendliest place I have ever visited. The drive from one end of the peninsula to the other was quite beautiful and enjoyable and made even better by the wonderful people.
The trip was quite productive. I originally planned the trip to catch the breeding Northern Gannets but I discovered that there are a surprising number of Atlantic Puffins around the island, and had great success with both species. With Newfoundland’s location just north of the confluence of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador currents it can get a bit foggy. As a matter of fact a local explained that they produce so much fog that they export it all over the world. The weather is a bit of a challenge but the fog is an opportunity to work on all kinds of different photographic situations. The sight of 38,000 nesting Gannets on a sunny day at Cape Saint Mary’s Ecological Reserve, with all their smell and noise, is quite magical.
To see the images click on the Newfoundland Gallery or on the link below.
Newfoundland
John
July 2007, Cornell Nature Photography Web Site Redesigned !
Because of the site redesign the only trips I've made were from the refrigerator to the computer and back. It would never have happened if not for the terrific technical support of Adrian Ellis of Lightbox. I will update this section as soon as I have anything to report. In the mean time enjoy the new and searchable web site.
John
