Weekend at Ft Lauderdale

I had to go to Fort Lauderdale this weekend so I got up early Saturday morning and grabbed my gear and headed out to A1A to see what I could find. Since I didn't have a lot of time, I didn't end up with many shots but I did manage to try my luck with a couple of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images before the sun got too high (and bright!).

Needless to say, I hope to go back sometime when I have more time to stumble around - the area from Miami Beach to Boca Raton is rich with photo opportunities!

Boys of Summer

I wasn't too happy with the photos I got from the St Patricks Day spring training game so I circled today on the Clearwater Threshers schedule as an opportunity for me to go back and try again. I was able to convince my wife as well as my friend Robert to come along.

We got to the park about an hour before the game and got some excellent seats right behind the first base dugout for $6. There probably wasn't more than 500 people in attendance of this Class A Minor League game so we were able to pretty much sit where ever we wanted.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day out and the first pitch was at 1:00PM. The first inning was challenging as it was so bright out it was difficult to get a good exposure. Robert suggest switching to manual and purposely overexposing the photos by a stop to help eliminate some of the contrast. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy with the results.... well, all but the outcome of the game. The hometown Threshers got shut out by the Tampa Yankees 3-0.

Complete gallery of all of the shots

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

Gatorland

My mom wanted to go to Gatorland after she saw my friend Robert's photos of the park from a few weeks ago. We packed up the car and took the whole family (wife and father-in-law included).

We got to the park about 2:30 and were immediately impressed with the abundance and variety of animals. After making our way through the park, we got to the main attraction - the rookery.

It's breeding season and we saw plenty of eggs, but only one nest with newborns - judging by the size of them, they couldn't have been more than a day or two old.

The park normally closes at 5PM but if you pay an extra $10, you can stay 'after hours' and get to photograph the birds in the rookery. We got a treat when the park owner Bob selectively fed many of the numerous Alligators. He explained that he does this about once every 7 to 10 days to make sure that the smaller female alligators get enough to eat - who aren't part of the normal shows at the park because they are too small. Bob had three five gallon buckets full of meat and for fifteen minutes, it was absolute mayhem as the gators got their special treat. It was quite an impressive site!

(Click on the photos to see the full sized image on Flickr)

Rainy day - terrorize the cat!

It's been a relatively junky weekend weather-wise. Since I hadn't picked up my camera in almost two weeks, I thought it was time to try some lighting shots indoors. Luckily, we have the family coming over for dinner this afternoon so the dining room table was clean and I was able to use the glass surface to get some great reflections.

After shooting the standard still life shots, I wondered if I could lure the cat onto the table. A couple of treats did the trick and Pepper ended up being a model for about 15 or 20 shots. Of course, it also meant that it took me quite a bit longer in photoshop to clean up the crumbs as girlfriend isn't known for her eating decorum.

All of these shots I was shooting through an umbrella camera right, and had a bare flash at low power under the glass table shooting pretty much straight up. The shots of Pepper actually turned out pretty good - she's going to be extremely difficult to live with the next few weeks now that she's a fashion model! ;)

(Ckick on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)