Still More Kitten Photos

Hannah, the newest one, loves people, playing, purring and sleeping.

Hayley, the veteran, will be enormous. Nearly six pounds already.

A few vertical oriented shots.

Hayley Cat

Been Too Long

Wow. More than two months since I last posted. Full-time work has put a crimp in my photography. But I dragged myself out of bed early last Saturday to shoot some youth football. I had to bail out at halftime of the second game to get ready for work. So I didn't take nearly as many shots as I did last time we shot at this venue.

I got there around 9 and the first game didn't start until at least 9:30 so I squeezed off a few shots of kids practicing catching as someone tossed a ball up in the air to them.

Lettuce Lake Park and USF Botanical Gardens

The photo club I shoot with had an outing at Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa Sunday. I was late so I missed some of the best light, as well as the company of my fellow shooters.

I didn't see a lot at the park so I ventured over to the USF Botanical Gardens where I had a little better luck, though by then I was battling the midday sun. The second of the caterpillar shots I took with flash — yes, even in bright sunlight! — to get rid of shadows.

Lowry Park Zoo Photos

Sunday I braved the throngs that converge on Lowry Park Zoo every time it has a $5 admission day. Regular price is $20.95. I shot 785 photos and it took until now to find enough to make a slide show.

I'm not blaming the new camera, a Sony A550, for this. I need to read the directions to see if I'm doing something to cause too many of the images to appear washed out. I do like that whenever you press a button on the camera, the LCD screen shows a description of its function.

One thing I stumbled across was something called the smart teleconverter. A teleconverter is an attachment that increases how far your lens can zoom. Most come in magnifications of 1.4 or 2X. The A550 has an electronic one built in. I thought it might work like a digital zoom you find on many point-and-shoot cameras. Instead, it simply crops the image in the camera and you end up with a smaller image.

I took the shots of the eagle with the in-camera teleconverter.

New Camera - Sony A550

My new Sony A550 arrived today. Pulling it out of the box, I was disappointed that at how flimsy it felt and I wonder how sturdy it will be. It also lacked a cover for the flash hotshoe like the one my A100 has.

The controls are in completely different places on the A550 and A100 and the control wheel for the aperture is right next to the on off switch and I've already accidentally turned the camera off when I meant to adjust the aperture.

The switch to turn the steady shot function on or off has disappeared. With the A550, I have to go into the menu to turn it off. This is a significant inconvenience.

I like that the A550's shutter is much quieter than that of my A100. The A100's shutter could actually shake the tripod sometimes. This camera has a CMOS sensor rather than a CCD and it is supposed to be much more sensitive.

I didn't take it out to take a test shot until after 7:30 p.m. It was already dusk but a large grasshopper perched on a leaf near my front door served as the new camera's first subject. The aperture is f/5 with the ISO 200 and an exposure of 1.6 seconds. The steady shot function is on, which on a tripod actually reduces sharpness, but I hadn't had a chance to learn how to turn it off yet.

Youth Football Photography

The photo club I shoot with took a stab at shooting sports with a trip to a youth football field. Games start at 9 a.m. and last until almost 3:30 in the afternoon. We couldn't get right up to the field and my 200mm lens lacked the reach to get close-ups so most of these shots required a lot of cropping to look presentable.

My camera struggled to focus quickly enough to catch the action and maybe as many as half the shots I took came back blurry. I spare you those.

I do have a new camera (Sony A550) on order that should improve my action sports shooting, as well as to give me a larger image to work from when I have to crop. (14.2 megapixel vs. my current A100's 10.2 MP)

If I shoot something like this again, I will devote more attention to things off the field. Players on the sideline, coaches yelling, more of the cheerleaders and maybe even fans. But today I wanted to practice following action.

Eureka Springs Park Photos

This is a park near Vandenburg Airport in Tampa that has reopened after renovations. It's not a large place and there is no play area so it's not a great place to bring kids, unlike Lettuce Lake Park not far from there, which has an abundance of both space and playground equipment for children.

It's tucked away an a road less traveled so it's not a place people will stumble across. For now, that means it's mostly empty and a good place to shoot photos in relative peace, either for a hobbyist shooting plants or someone shooting outdoor portraits.

Parrots and Flamingos Photos

It helps when you can get out of your own way. I remembered to turn OFF the super steady shot function on my camera, which you are supposed to do when shooting from atop a tripod because in looking for vibrations to counteract, the steadying function actually creates vibration.

You can really see the difference in sharpness when you look at the photos at original size. They look like the images you'd expect to come from a $2,000 lens.

The venue is a tourist attraction called Sarasota Jungle Gardens. There are, as the name suggests, gardens, though in August not many are flowering. The upside is that this is also the off-season so there aren't many people to contend with and I could park my tripod in front of the exotic bird exhibit and snap away.

I didn't shoot many full body shots of the birds because it makes the artificial background too obvious. Parrots spend a lot of their time grooming themselves, and each other! As you'll notice, they also sleep standing up.



Flamingos populate the park, roaming free among the patrons, who can buy food to feed them. That makes them willing to let you get close to them. These tall birds better lend themselves to portrait oriented shots.

Lowry Park Zoo Photos - Monkey Porn

I shot at Tampa's zoo Friday, lugging my tripod around so that I could get sharper photos taken with my long lens, including its extender that makes it reach the equivalent of 400mm. The problem is that the extender renders auto focus useless so I have to hope the animals will pose for me long enough to focus on them.

Sometimes they did.



Yes, you saw that right. The two gray monkeys had just completed "the deed" and the male had his, ah, extender still deployed. I noticed them going at it thinking, "are they doing what I think they're doing?" By the time I thought to take a shot, they had finished.

Here are some portrait shots. Don't worry. No monkey porn.

Various Tampa Shots

These are from a walk around downtown Tampa and Oaklawn Cemetery. The grasshopper is missing two of its legs on its left side. I guess it really is a hopper! And, no, I did not pull the legs off. Shots of the rope were aboard the USS Eagle, a Coast Guard ship originally built by Germany in 1936 and appropriated by the U.S. after World War II.

Where Were The Spiders?

The photography group I shoot with had an outing this morning at Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa. We shot there last August and suffering the humidity was worth it because of all the visible wildlife including large spiders and giant grasshoppers.

I got there late and missed the group. I also missed everything except the heat and humidity. At least this time I brought my tripod, which was the regret I had the last time I shot there.



I had better luck at the nearby USF Botanical Gardens. You're supposed to put $5 into a box as you pull in but I gave $151 in care of the university police last year for a traffic infraction while on campus to volunteer for the Radio Reading Service so it's going to be a while before I feel guilty about not paying for admission.

Bird's Eye View

Sandhill cranes are used to people on golf courses. They also know that golf carts often mean available food. They have no compunction about stealing anything they can reach, though many people feed them voluntarily. This all means that you can get very close and the bird will just stand there looking at you.

If you happen to have your camera handy, especially if said camera has lens that will zoom to 300mm, you can get a close-up shot like this:



And, yes, that was the closest thing to a birdie I got all day. I shot a 96.

Ybor City Photos

The photo group I shoot with had an outing in Ybor City. I didn't shoot a ton of photos. I don't know if it's because I've shot there so many times before and only snap shots when I spy something new or because I'm lazy, I don't know.



I did shoot a couple shots similar to ones I've taken before, only this time I was not too lazy to haul my tripod around with me and got better versions with the camera atop the sticks.

I didn't set out to use lines as a theme but I did notice that I was shooting a lot of shots with lines in them. There were also a few self-portraits.

The bird showed up while I was shooting a fountain. Of course, this was after I had ditched my 70-200mm long zoom for a 16-80mm so I was set up right next to the fountain. I was standing fairly still when the bird alighted, managed not to scare the bird off and squeezed a few shots of it as it bathed. My camera was in auto focus and it didn't seem as interested in the bird as I was but it managed to get the first shot I snapped and one later as it rinsed its head.

Hillsborough River State Park Photos

It's warm in Florida but not warm enough for many of the usual creatures to come out. Except mosquitoes. The best shot I got was of a dog that didn't like the big lenses pointed at him. (His owner gave the OK before we shot.)

There is no shooting in comfort, it seems. You see the most wildlife outside when you'd rather be inside instead of sweating in the heat. Oh, well. If I want the shots, I must be willing to suffer for my art.

I did bring my tripod so I could try longer shutter speeds (0.8 seconds) on some of the rapids on the river.

Track Two

This would be the BMX track redux as opposed to the horse racing track, where I return next week with the Brandon-Riverview Photography Meetup Group. Today we met to shoot bicycle races. I had shot some at this track last week, staying longer didn't seem to give me more success.



Now some in vertical orientation:

Seen While Golfing

I went golfing today and, as has become custom, I toted my DSLR camera along with its 70-300mm zoom lens. As has also become the norm, I had more good shots with my camera than with my golf clubs. In fact, I got a couple of close-ups (300mm zoom, remember?) of an alligator before we played the first hole.

Spring also means the first sightings of sandhill crane hatchlings. If you get too close, mama or papa will attack.