Chance of a Lifetime

Since moving to Florida, I have felt myself in a wonderland (without any Queen of Hearts or beheadings).  Flowers that died every winter in the North grew to huge masses and had to be cut back once or twice a year.  There were areas where the scrub was drab olive with very sharp edges, sharp enough to slice skin through jeans and venomous enough to send a fellow student to the hospital after being impaled by an end spine.  

The most incredible gift that I discovered were the birds.  There are tiny finches--the size of hummingbirds--that flutter about in an ephemeral cloud--reminding me of honeybees massing to follow a queen to form a new hive.  There are also raptors--lady hawks, falcons and even, by the rivers, golden eagles--which account for the dearth of squirrels and scarcity of marsh rabbits in our neighborhood.

Anhingas cut through through the dark canal waters like seals and then waddle up along the edges to a high spot where they point their faces into the sun and spread sparse wings to catch the breeze and dry.  Also in the deep canals you see tall, elegant, snowy white egrets, wading up past their knees, heads cocked and frozen until I the split second when they punch the water and suddenly appear tossing a fish down their long, thin throats.  

The biggest surprise was the sandhill cranes.  Almost able to look me straight in the eye, we have come to an agreement--they do not help me dig up the gardens, I supply daily amounts of cracked corn, milo and other assorted seeds from a scoop made out of a plastic milk jug. Many of these cranes have visited year after year and when their chicks are the same size (sometimes bigger) and mobile enough to keep up with them, these new birds arrive with their parents to glean from the offered food.  

Twice I have seen parents with chicks . . . It's has been the only chance I've had to record in photographs a family so recently cormpleted.

Magic.

Heard at Church this morning:

"You can't bless yourself with the  priesthood but you can bless others."

                                                                                     John Smarinsky--Stuart Florida Stake Presidency

Inspiration and a Push

This Wednesday and the Wednesday before that, I took lessons from John Lopinot--professional photographer--and dad of the young woman who makes my one acre look like  million bucks.  The reality of his coming--like a deadline in a college class--made me dig back through the boat-load of photographs I've taken over the last seven years. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Nathan spotted these ducklings near the edge of the lake.  I love the spikes of green, the ripples coming away from them as they move--and the focus of light on the lead duckling.

This was one of my first photos of the barn my sister managed in Minnesota.  If I were a painter, I would have painted a sky like this, the diagonals of grass cut lines with the road, and the red square above the round steel bin.

I was visiting my daughter and her family near D.C. and we went to the Smithsonian.  I caught her as she walked from the window and across the hall through the frame of a modern sculpture.  This is such a good portrait of her--she is an artist herself, utterly unconcerned with fashion trends. When we were planning her wedding, she wanted to wear white overalls . . .

Were I to prep this for a print, I would crop off the left, emptier side where the scissors are.  I like the movement of the burnished kitchen faucet handle, meeting the line of the leaves at a 90 degree angle--leading the eye from the top rose to spiral around under the two red roses--and then back to the center rose, tipped with red from the low lighting and long exposure.

This is technically not a good photograph.  I am shooting from dark to dark, lit behind by bright sunlight.  The details of the cranes' eyes, beaks and feathers are difficult to make out.  I do like the story of the picture, though--male watches over the pregnant female while she rests during the heat of the day.

I know that many people do not like squirrels.  My own husband has a violent dislike for them ever since they tried to eat the wood shingle roof of our Kansas City, MO home.  Unfortunately for him, I quite like them--they are quick and curious and will come close to me if they trust . . . and I have raw peanuts to offer.  For this shot, I laid down on the sidewalk in front of the subject.  It was late afternoon and the shadows in the photograph make it one of my favorites.

For some reason I cannot fathom, this wild marsh rabbit (native to Florida) came to live in our yard one summer and would sit still and watch me as I sat still and photographed him.  I have miniature rabbits in the house as pets--they are sweet, but not the same as this wild gift of tolerance.

Mushrooms pop up all over our yard--it is wet here and the wind blows in some pretty amazing fungi.  This group reminded me of standing in line--everyone crushing forward to find out what they were standing in line to see.