It's a Pelican, Right?

Pelican • Boynton Beach, Fla. • 2/29/16

We went to Florida a couple of weeks ago to stay for ten days and got back last week. February's the cruelest month in America's Northeast. Which is why so many of my buddies and neighbors become snowbirds... Most of them December through March. Work's never allowed us to do it, so their winter tans have always fed a lot of envy. Thanks to an invitation from friends, we finally took the AutoTrain on its overnight run from Virginia to Sanford, Fla. then drove down to the Palm Beach/Boynton Beach area.

It's weird to walk through bone chilling winter winds into the train's door, and walk out into mid summer. And since the ride's through darkness, you can't see the snow disappear and the palm trees sprout. It's as if you nod off in the arctic and awake in the tropics. It's kinda/ like a Twilight Zone thing.

Anyways... Tropics have their own beasties... Like this girl sitting beside our restaurant's dock in hopes that something tasty'll drop. She was about five feet away at twilight and easy to grab through my  Canon 7D's  EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) normal lens. Of course I snapped up the dynamic range in CCPC. 

Once You've seen one elephant...

Queen Elizabeth Park, Uganda

I guess I'm not a wildlife photographer.

See this guy (or gal, I didn't really ask)? He was meandering toward our bus that idled on a road. Why does the elephant cross the road? He didn't seem interested in the question and I wondered if he get annoyed to have to walk around us. This was not a baby. He shoulders were maybe ten or more feet high. You ever seen one of these in the wild? It's different from a zoo. In this park we're in the locked box. Actually the park is a great big locked box. Most of the world knows the story of Cecil the Zimbabwean lion shot by a Minnesota dentist,right? That kill was legal since it happened just outside of a wild game park. Meaning that these animals can free-range as long as they stay behind the reservation's fences. And that differs from a zoo, how?

It's said that Dr. Teeth had ordered up an elephant for the next day, but the guides couldn't deliver. My guides said that animals who leave this park will get killed. Seems they annoy farmers who routinely poison them. In fact, farmers who live inside the park are killing lions and have killed off the hyenas for the same reason.

Uganda is in the equatorial heart of Africa where I imagined beasts like this roaming through dense jungles. Even though my business took us over a lot of the country, I never saw a jungle. And outside of the parks the animal life was about the same as here in Lancaster County. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. There ain't many buffalo, moose, or bear free-ranging around our farmland or cities. Can't recall the last time anyone got bit by a poisonous snake, or even by a cranky 'coon. People are kind of anti-social animals.

But anyway, now I have hundreds of pictures of big game - so, what do I do with them? I didn't need to fly for twenty hours to see pictures like this one. They're everywhere. So I've got an idle inventory in a world without a demand. Okay, so here's an elephant ambling toward a road.

Big Deal!                                

Swan... Um... Egret Lake

Okay, I stalked her. Poked my 300mm lens through the leaves to her secret spot across the lagoon. She preened and primped... Maybe unaware of me... Maybe figuring the water was wide enough to keep a lurking human an easy take-off away.

They call ponds and lakes, lagoons in Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head island where South Carolina - almost Georgia - summer wetted down the air. If you're outdoors, southern seacoast's grow humidity thicker than the syrup folks pour over breakfast grits. And the heat keeps the air hotter than the bikinis make their beaches.

It's where lots of gin mixes with even more tonic as afternoons commit muscles to low gear. It's when the smarter birds find secret spot to digest their morning breakfasts and recharge for a twilight wade back into the lagoons, oh... and into wherever people were stupid enough to stock coy ponds.

So that gal up there wasn't about to let me get her to do anything unladylike. Which is why I'd mistaken her glowing-white body for a swan and figured that I'd be able to create a post called, "Swan Lake". Wrong... It's actually "Egret Lagoon" where the big birds prowl among alligators for fun and profit.

And so, realizing the story wasn't about swans I figured I'd find me an egret at work in the marshes to work into a painting that captured an impression of both the bird, its hunting, and the POP! of southern American summer color.

A day or so after I invaded the privacy of that beauty up above... I found this guy working his way slow as suitor on a first date toward his prize. And once again my Canon 7D's EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens did its job. Which is a capture that I couldn't have made years ago without a tripod. But the combination of image stabilizers and the camera's processors let me grab tight hold of the moment. Which, thanks to a lot of PhotoShop processing combined with the melding of a number of layers of AlienSkin's SnapArt filtering and texturing, I was able to make my concept visual.

Hot, huh? 

Don't Tease 'Em!

Along Hilton Head bike trails...

Summer's Started

Down in Hilton Head, SC last week. Summer comes to Dixie with an early muscle, especially in the Low Country... along the the Atlantic Coast. Hilton Head Island's shaped like a running shoe and we stay very near it's flat instep. Once a bog, it's flat and canal-irrigated to draw the brackish water back to the sea. If the ground's not everywhere as damp as once-upon-a-time the air's still wetter than a stoop-laborer's back And twice as thick. Mid-day's are for beaches, pools, and air-conditioned spots cluttered with books and adult beverages.

Bike Shed

Out back we store ... Well, have you noticed that the word "shed" is double entendre? As a noun, it's a place where we keep stuff. As a verb it's the act of discarding. A bike shed sort of promises both of those things. And this flat island teases you into believing that you'll shed the vacation belt-lime baggage if you''ll peddle your bike from the shed. Getit? In a way, nothing says island summer like this lazy morning image of those backsides poking out and teasing me to wrap my fat legs around their fat saddles. And yeah, why not, huh?

Jungle Glade

To circle the jungle between me and the sea. And the way it dares me to leave the bike and wander trails that wind somewhere. Which I almost did except a snake rolled and wriggled out of those leaves there to the lower right and coiled blink-fast onto the trail and then off into that underbrush. So much for the dare... Back to the biking... When, just to my right,  I heard water plop down from the bike-path's bank and jerking around I saw...

Primordial Lurk

this thing and peddled like hell away, parked, and tip-toed back, my Canon 7D with it's 70-300mm lens cranked all the way out. Through which... I watched it, it watched me, I focused, shot, and backed way up. After gasping a bunch, I went back and kept shooting while it lay there watching, only its eyes flicked, the rest of that body flat... still... cocked... and stinking up the thick swampy air. You know the word, fetid? Yeah, now imagine this thing's breath and you've got a match.

Night Watch

Oh yeah... Wildlife thinking reminds me that I probably forgot to post this wild herd I captured in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth Park. Okay, that was last summer and there are crocs, not gators in Africa so the segue's kind of hard to explain. Hmmmm... But these pix are all summery, right? RIGHT! So it's a theme :-)