The Great Safari of '06

I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I have been having with the tripod I recently acquired, and my camera, now that I have learned how to shoot in the macro mode.  The camera tripod was an early birthday present I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

 

Yes, I said the “B” word.  I turned 55 since my last post.  I am now officially in the prime of my life.  I’m way over the hill.  I hit the ‘ole double nickel.  Yes, that’s my age, not the speed limit.  And the clichés and the adages go one, LOL.  Honestly, I don’t feel any older but I guess I am.

It’s a beautiful day at the marina and I finished my daily check list very early in order to go on a little photo safari around the property.  This shot above was taken not ten minutes ago just to give you a peek at how nice it is.  The temperatures are hitting the low to mid eighties for a high today and it will get down into the fifties tonight.  Here in southern Georgia, that’s a beautiful fall day.

 

I armed my self with camera and tripod and hopped into my golf cart to seek out the beauty hidden amidst the mundane.  I only had to travel about twenty feet from my dock shack to find my first target of opportunity.  It seemed hardly worth the use of the golf cart.

What you are looking at in this wide shot is an electric transformer, actually two of them, that supplies electricity to half of the marina.  Management decided to hide them behind these bushes which flower nicely and grow quickly.  Macro Man zeros in on his target!

 

 

Demonstrating his adept placement of tripod and the fact that he actually CAN center a subject in the frame, he goes in for the extreme close ups he has been stalking.

 

 

I got really carried away, so there are going to be quite a few of these in this post.  Sorry, but I threw in the very first shot above for those who stopped by just to see some boats and the water, LOL.

 

 

Here is a close up of the two blossoms.  For the next shot, I moved the tripod over and captured a vertical grouping of some of these flowers.

 

 

This next close up of the single blossom is one of my very favorite shots I’ve taken to date.

 

 

I took a few more shots for good measure and loaded my tripod and camera back into the golf cart and traveled to another far reach of the property.  Here, by a corner of a fence, is a grouping of orchid type lilies that caught my eye.  First the wide shot so you can see what I first saw before I once again became Macro Man.

 

 

Here are some close ups taken from the blossoms in this patch of flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to do some experimenting.  In this next shot, the flower is too high and I have to shoot up at it.  There is a bright background and because of this the blossom appears to be a little dark.  I turned on the flash option and pressed the shutter once more.  Here is the before and after.

 

 

 

I wanted to find a bit of autumn colors on the property, if I could.  I went to the other end of the main building at the marina and looked up to see that some leaves had changed colors in one of the trees.  I took a shot so you could get an idea of what the tree looked like, then, I zoomed in a bit.  Next, I went around the corner of the building and shot back at the tree with a different lighting situation and that produced quite a different shot, I think.

 

 

 

 

The last shot I will leave you with is one that I am really proud of.  I have admired the Spanish moss hanging from this one oak tree on the property for ages.  I’ve tried to shoot it a few times before and never felt I did justice to the subject.  I turned around after the last show of the changing leaves and realized I had never tried shooting the moss from this angle and snapped a shot that I think really captured the feeling of the old south.

 

 

The birthday celebrations were good. We had gone out to dinner for our recent anniversary, then a few weeks later for Sandy’s birthday.  I decided I wanted to stay home and order pizza, which we do not do very often anymore.  So, I had pizza, cheesecake and great company.  Now, somebody roll me over to the exercise equipment.  I have got to start working all of this off again!