Central Florida Photo Ops

Four of us from the Photography Interest Group rolled out before dawn this morning to visit “The crown jewel of bird watching in Lake County”, Emeralda Marsh.   It’s a little over an hour drive on mostly rural roads from our normal meeting place in Oviedo through Central Florida to Tavares.  “Donuts” found this place on the web and it sounds really good.  He called ahead to ask about it and learned that the driving route through the marsh is only open from February through May – but we still decided to go ahead and explore it.  While up there, we also drove to and walked around Sawgrass Island Preserve.

It’s difficult to judge any place based on just one visit.  Even at the best known and consistent locations we occasionally have a hard time getting photos of wildlife.  Sometimes you just have to be patient and really work for your photos.  Today was one of those times – especially since we were in an area we weren’t familiar with.

It’s disappointing that the Esmeralda Marsh Interpretive Drive isn’t open all year.  I’m certain that would’ve made our trip much more successful.  As it was, we had to park and hike looking for scenic places and wildlife and we weren’t able to cover as much ground.  The end result was that for wildlife, today was somewhat of a bust.  We talked about returning next February when the driving route is open.

Over several hikes, we saw quite a lot of Florida scrub land and very few birds or other wildlife.  But photographers are resourceful and we did see many things worth taking photos of.  My photos seemed to develop a theme of “Things in people’s yards”, also known as TIPY.  I’ve created of a set of thirteen of these photos on Flickr (set, slideshow), and I’ve posted a few below.  If you go to the set on Flickr, you can see things like llamas, dogs, additional old farm equipment and a flower.  See the captions for details.

Old plow and horse.  It doesn’t look too much like a plow horse to me.

Old Blue Truck – We came across several old trucks this morning and this was the last one we found. Since it was blue, it completed my full spectrum RGB set. You can see the Red and Green trucks on my Flickr Feed.

Cattle Egret and Horse

Dragonfly in flight – I was waiting in the car for the rest of the group and noticed some dragonflies that were moving past the window. I decided to try and capture one in flight.

At the end of the trip, we found a close by Cracker Barrel restaurant and stopped to eat.  Today, we had fun.  We had breakfast.  We made some photos worth posting.  And we confirmed that even though you don’t always get what you want, if you try sometimes you find – you get what you need.

*With apologies to the Rolling Stones

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Lynn and I were in Indianapolis last weekend for the Midwest Sad Iron Collectors Club convention. Lynn did a presentation on trivets and got to meet a lot of her collector friends. I helped with the presentation, and did some tourist type things around Indianapolis while she was busy.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we both visited Mary Kate in Cincinnati. Tuesday night we went to the Prima Vista Italian restaurant where we had a wonderful meal overlooking the city’s skyline. Make sure to bring your camera. On Wednesday, we visited the Newport Aquarium , Hofsbrauhaus , and Skyline Chili . The Newport Aquarium is a nice place to make photographs. They have a large tank that you walk through, with fish of many descriptions swimming beside and over you and you can linger as long as you want. A fast lens with a polarizing filter to reduce reflections would help get better photos through the glass. The beer at this Hofsbrauhaus is just like I remember from the one in Munich.

Thursday, while Lynn went to the auction, I drove quite a distance (~3 hrs each way) from Indianapolis to Bowling Green Kentucky to visit the Corvette museum and factory. Along the way I went through Louisville, Ky – where they were holding a National Street Rod auto show – so there where some very interesting vehicles on the road with me. Factory tours are only $5, and the assembly line is fascinating, especially if you like cars. You can’t take pictures inside the factory, but the ones I took at the museum are here .

On Friday morning, we both went with other members of the MSICC on a tour of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and museum. My Brickyard pictures are here .

Friday afternoon Lynn was busy, so I drove over to Rockville, Indiana. Rockville is located in Parke county, about 50 miles west of Indianapolis. Parke County, has more covered bridges (30) than any other county making them “The Covered Bridge Capital of the World”.

Marshall Bridge, J. A. Britton, Builder, 1917

There is quite a bit of information about Parke County here . I wasn’t there at a good time of day (I had to be back at the convention for dinner – so I couldn’t wait around for sunset) but I made a few photographs anyway. If you go, you should plan to spend a day or two so you can scout out all the bridges and pick some to photograph at dawn and dusk. The tourist map they hand out isn’t the most useful. It was hard to locate some of the bridges. And some of them are way out in the country on narrow dirt roads. My bridge photos are here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.