Greater Kudu

Greater Kudu

This magnificent animal was photographed at the Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, FL. My daughter and son-in-law decided to take a mini-vacation in South Florida and lucky for me, I was able to join them for a couple days.

We had gone to Busch Gardens in Tampa last Saturday and was very disappointed. Most of the animals were gone, or the exhibits were closed due to the holiday celebration and the crowd with school out was outrageous! There was nothing but long lines everywhere. It took 45 minutes just to get through the line to get our lunch. I expected that, but with most of the animal exhibits gone or closed and the ones that were open behind glass, is a factor for me to cancel my long-running annual pass. I've had it since 1988, and have always enjoyed the park because of the animal exhibits. I think I'll be going one more time just to see if all the exhibits remain closed, then I'm going to cancel my membership. If not, I'll hang on to it for another year or so.

Anyway, back to the Lion Country Safari. This place was only $30/per person to get in, and a great place to go. Families in particular will enjoy it, and it's only 3 hrs. (but well worth the trip) to Loxahatchee from St Petersburg. It starts with a car safari where the animals roam free, and the humans are locked in their cars. They give everyone a CD to play as you drive through at 8mph explaining what each animal is and a little bit about them. After the safari, you park your car and go into an amusement park where you can feed several animals, a petting zoo, and fish feeding. From there, you can walk over to the water park. It's small, but one can easily spend several hours there. The amusement park and water park are designed for kids, but we adults enjoyed it as well.

The photo is of one of the animals from the safari. It is a Greater Kudu. They are from Southern and Eastern Africa and the second largest Antelope. They weigh up to 690 lbs. Box sexes have the spinal crests, but only the males have a beard. Their horns curl around 2 1/2 times and average 4 ft long. The are herbaceous eating many kinds of leaves, herbs, fallen fruits, vines, tubers, succulents, flowers, and sometimes varied with a little new grass.

This one came quite close to the car allowing me to get a great shot of him.

Paper Wasp

This image was made at my regular Monday Night meetup. While photographing Monarch caterpillars, I noticed this Paper Wasp on this Butterfly Weed bush. He appears to be eating aphids or some kind of larvae.

This bush is covered with aphids, caterpillars, eggs and various sorts of minute creatures that can't be easily seen with the naked eye.

Even with the wind by the water, I managed to hand hold my 90mm macro lens in one hand while holding onto the stem of the bush to keep it still with the other hand. It was no easy feat, but I got the job done. I'm pretty proud of myself for that one. :)

Paper Wasps are much more tolerant of people and minor disturbances than are hornets and yellow jackets, which means they're less apt to sting according to the Audubon Field Guide to Insects and Spiders. All I know is I was pretty close to this guy, and he completely ignored me.

Settings used for this image ISO 400 to help get a fast shutter speed and to stop any movement, flash to get more light on the insect, and also to arrest movement, aperture priority, partial metering on the wasp, 1/250 at F9 for better depth of field--especially with a macro lens at 90mm.

Honey Bees and Nest

During a walk on one of the trails at Boca Ciega Millennium Park in Seminole, my friends and I came upon this bees' nest high up in a tree.

You can imagine this was shot with a very, long lens. I'm allergic to bee stings, so I didn't want to aggravate these little buggers. All I could think of was that movie, "My Girl", with McCauly Culkin (spelling probably wrong).

I've never seen a nest with the honey combs sticking out of it before and thought this was kind of interesting. There must be thousands of bees on this thing! It's definitely a bee keeper's dream.

Honey anyone?

Settings used for this shot were F7.1 (my sharpest aperture) at 1/30th and ISO 100. Because I was using partial metering, and the yellows and sky were blowing out (according to my histogram), I used a compensation adjustment of -1 1/3 stops. The focal length was 194mm with my 55-250mm lens.

Pilings

While I was at The Pier with my friend, Frank, a week-and-a-half ago, I spotted the reflections of these pilings in the water. I rarely shoot anything like this, but for some unexplainable reason, I just happened to like the way they looked.

It's not my usual style, but like I've mentioned in several blogs lately, I've been working on my creativity instead of just walking up to something that looks neat, snap it and quickly walk away. I have a name for that kind of shooting. I call it a "walk up shooter". It's just this type of shooting that I've been trying to work on for several months now. I'm doing a whole lot more thinking and planning a shot before I squeeze that shutter button. Does it work? I'm not sure, but I do like this one. How do you all feel? Let me know in your comments. It would be imteresting to hear someone else's opinion.

Settings used for this shot were handheld 1/2000 at F5.6, Aperture Priority in spot focusing mode (on the reflections), ISO 400 at 240mm with my 55-250mm lens and +1/3 exposure compensation, which I judged by my histogram which was a little to the left side.

It's sometimes difficult to judge your exposure in your viewfinder window. Always trust your histogram. It never lies.