I don't know what the deal with shoes thrown over a powerline is. I see them all over the place. These three were on a wire behind Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa. When I've worn out a pair of shoes, I just throw them away, not up in the air. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong.
I went to Rockabilly Ruckus last night, a concert benefiting local public radio station WMNF, and they had a small car show out front. One of my favorite old cars is a '59 Cadillac, which they didn't have, but they did have a couple of '60 models, and that's what we've got here. The fins shrunk dramatically in that single year, but they're still way up in the air, and capable of killing pedestrians who get in the way of a backwards-moving car. And that license plate is great! More pictures to come from all the great bands I saw after the car show. I think I shot way, way too many pictures.
This is the hawk that has recently been seen around where I work. Nearly every day he's sitting outside, making all kinds of noise, flying back and forth, establishing a noisy presence in the area. I haven't found a nest yet, nor have I even seen his mate, but I figure it's inevitable. Maybe baby hawklings are in the works, one can only hope. I believe this is a common red-shoulder hawk, but I could be mistaken. I need to see him on the wing more clearly to see if maybe he's a red-tail instead. We found a rat in a trap the other day that wasn't dead yet, and we stuck him outside on the grass. Within half an hour, Mr. Hawk here had scooped him up and had a nice little meal. We later found the skin and tail in a pile where he'd left them. I wish there was some way to get him to come inside and save us from having to first trap the rats.
Last weekend when I went flower shooting, it happened to be at low tide, and Selby Gardens is right on Sarasota Bay. I spotted these two horse conchs in the mud on an exposed piece of bottom and thought they were pretty impressive. Hard to tell the scale in this shot, but each of those spiral shells is nearly a foot from point to end. It's pretty rare to find these guys this big, and even rarer to find them empty so you can take them home, but it does happen. These two were alive and well, if a bit high and dry until the tide came back in. I'm not sure, but I suspect maybe they were together for a little bit of mating, but it could just be a coincidence that they were in such close proximity.
And this is the end of my Valentine's Day flower spectacular! Hope you've enjoyed all the flower close-ups. Now I can go to sleep, it's been a long day!
Well, it wouldn't be Valentine's Day without a rose, now would it? So here's the first rose of the day, from the rose garden at the Ringling Museum.
I've changed venues slightly at this point. Instead of shooting flowers at Selby Gardens, I'm shooting flowers inside the Ringling Estate. And this time, I think I know the name of the flower. I think this is an Ice Flower, or something like that. I first saw these in San Francisco almost ten years ago. I think they were an invasive exotic from South Africa. I don't remember all the details, but I know they make pretty pictures.
Enough with the purple, I think it's time for some yellow. Many of these shots show the very narrow range of focus when shooting macro lens at a wide aperture. Only some of the shot is in focus at a given time. I had a hard time holding the camera still, too, and add in a little wind at the same time, and I was lucky that any of these shots came out at all. But on the whole, I've been pretty happy with them.
What's that? You didn't get enough purple before? No problem, here are a few more for you.
Hope you're having a great Valentine's Day!
I think butterflies loose a little of their beauty when you get too close to them. They start to look more like bugs and less like flying works of art. I might be able to get a clearer picture if they weren't constantly moving...
A little more purple for you, this time from a much smaller flower. The fuzzy purple glow in the foreground and background are more flowers, way out of focus. Cool effect, I thought.
OK, the reason I was out looking for flowers yesterday was in hopes of finding one of these. This is a bombax tree, and it puts out these giant red flowers right about this time of year. This one had only started blooming, and all the flowers were 50 feet off the ground. Thus, all you can see are the backs of them, and I think they loose a little something in the distance. But I had to show you my motivation.
OK, so this isn't a flower. It's a leaf, and it's got some sort of fungus on it that's making these spots. But I still thought it was colorful enough to shoot and share with you.
Another blossom from the bromeliad family. Which reminds me, it's got to be getting about time for another plant show and sale at the local exotic plant nursery. That's always good for some great flower pictures.
The flowers at Selby Gardens are many and varied. No idea what this is, but it's cool looking.
Lucky number 13 and halfway through today's Valentine's Day flower spectacular. Hope you're enjoying some of these great pictures. This is some sort of bromeliad, no idea which one, and I shot it at Selby Gardens. They've got lots and lots of great things to see and shoot.
Don't forget that I'm taking all these flower pictures with a 100mm macro lens. Those flowers above are less than a quarter inch across. I'm amazed at how well come of these came out. There are plenty of ugly ones that I'm not showing you, but most of them came out surprisingly well.
Sort of the opposite of a black-background picture. In this case, the flower in the foreground is relatively dark, so when I expose for it, the background gets too bright. It's not a bad look, but I think I prefer the black background.
There's that black background again. I think there have to be three or more stops of difference between the foreground and the background for it to go black like that. The flower was illuminated in the sun, and the background was in dark shade. It's great when things work out like that.
