Florida: Photographic Road Trip planned for November!

July 19, 2011

Join myself and Marvin Bouknight, staff naturalist @ Old Field Plantation, for a 3 day, 2 night photo adventure  to central and south Florida. To avoid any redundancy please read what Marvin has written about our recent scouting trip and the upcoming photo adventure. We will focus on good working field techniques and natural history information on all species viewed and photographed. We will discuss use of lighting, composition, proper exposure, lens selection and much more for all outdoor nature and wildlife photography. These images were made last week in July! This is not the best time for wildlife action in south Florida but November is, we hope you will join us :-)

 Great White Heron

 Meadowlark

 Burrowing Owl

 Swallowtail Kite

 Sand Hill Crane

 Crested Caracara

Tomkins Island Seabird Rookery Tour -White Pelican

On one of my recent photo safaris to Tomkins Island @ the mouth of the Savannah River I was thrilled to see a large group of White Pelicans! They are known to be along our coast during winter and spring months but not so much this time of year. We were able to observe these birds from a distance while drifting in the tidal currents with our motor off. We must have watched & photographed for around 10 minutes before they finally took flight and headed north.  Still in beautiful breeding plumage, it was quite a thrill : -)

These images were made with a Canon 7D and a F4 500mm lens (hand held) 400 ISO f6.7 @ 1/4000 sec

See more of my work and all of my seasonal photo safaris @ my website: Southernlight

Seabird Rookery Photo Safaris

July "Photo of the Month" column

Great Egret Portrait                       

Photo of the month / Eric Horan

July/ 2011 Lowcountry Calendar

Using a tripod mounted 500 mm lens, I made this image of the Great Egret on a visit to the Savannah Wildlife Refuge. I followed her as she fished the waters edge. For some time, I purposely kept her between the sun and myself to maintain the strong back lighting. Behind the bird you can see the pale blue sky reflected in the water. All this made for a high key portrait with a limited color palette. A natural backlight, the bird’s gesture, and a monochromatic color palette were the image qualities I used to create this portrait.

 

PHOTO TIP

Good wildlife photography requires a diverse and variable set of skills and choices.  With each situation, you will have to employ different ones in various combinations to enhance your success.  Anticipation, patience, knowledge of subject, stalking, listening, lens selection, color mix, control of light, composition elements and camera position are a sampling of ingredients. For this shot, I used a combination that included choice of lens, camera position, back lighting, subject knowledge and anticipation of the bird’s movement in order to isolate the Great Egret against this natural backdrop for a studio-like portrait.

To see more about Eric Horan, his images and his Lowcountry Wildlife Photo Safaris, please visit us at www.southernlight.biz.