Moving day…

As of today, Sunday, May 30, Linda's Lens is moving to a new location on the same server as my website, www.digitalquinn.com/photoblog. If you arrived here looking for my latest photo blog post, please visit my new location…and if you have the blog bookmarked, please change it accordingly. See you there!

Back online after our family wedding…

I am back to posting to my blog after a long, dry stretch. It seems a lot longer than three weeks ago that we drove home from Florida. My stepson Brian, his wife Vanessa and their beautiful daughter (and my granddaughter and goddaughter), Brianna arrived from Japan on April 22, and on May 1 they took their wedding vows for a second time at a church wedding and reception for family and friends. Today's post features a few photos I took during the wedding. If you would like to see more, please visit www.digitalquinn.com/wedding.

Doggie Parade…

Americans are having a love affair with their dogs, and the dog owning residents of Travelers Rest Resort are no exception. The local kennel club wrapped up their season with a pet parade. Since our block was on the parade route I was front and center with my camera.

Side-note — I have been fortunate to be a beta tester for the soon to be released Photoshop CS5. The new version will be on sale next week, and there are a couple of new features that are really spectacular. I cannot talk about specifics until the official release, but for any of you who use Photoshop, you are really going to like some of the new features.


This first photo is part of a family of eleven dogs that live in with one man in his park model trailer (if you count the leases, he only had ten dogs in the parade). You would think there would be an ordinance against that many dogs in one living space, but the owner used to be the president of the board of directors, so I guess he made the rules!

The next dog was wearing a first place ribbon, but I don't know what for — maybe as a tracker!


These two dogs were all dolled up. I wonder if they have a say in picking their outfits?

Some dogs did not look happy about being in the parade!
















Finally, two closeups. Say cheese!

Lake Margaret…

The pond known as Lake Margaret is home to a large colony of turtles. They love to bask in the sun on a log that sticks out of the pond. I saw this Red-Bellied turtle enjoying a bit of solitude…

Later, from across the pond, I noticed that something appeared to be swimming near the log. What I observed were the heads of other turtles, and one of them decided that the first turtle had to make some room.

…and more feathered neighbors…

In Florida I happen upon a lot of birds, or they happen upon me. The other day there was a lot of activity in a tree outside our RV. A pair of birds had been building a nest…

This bird was in the tree, and I was pretty sure it was the nest builder.

…and then I saw this bird. It was in the shadow of the tree, and since it had a similar look I thought it was the mate.

But when I looked at the photos, the birds did not look alike at all. The top bird is a Tufted Titmouse (not sure about the sex) and the bottom is a female Northern Cardinal. So now I don't know which bird built the nest!

Stunned…

Only one photos to post today — and this week. This is a photo of a female Downy Woodpecker (the males have red on their heads) who sort of paid us a visit when were were staying at the Disney Fort Wilderness Campground 10 days ago.

I out riding my bicycle, and had just pulled up outside our RV, when I heard a thud and this little bird fell to the ground—on its back. She had flown right into one of the windows in our RV (you cannot see in the windows, and this has happened before). The people from the RV next to us came over, and all of us stood around, looking at this poor bird that appeared to be dead. After what seemed like a very long time the bird rolled over and just sat there. She must have been stunned, but she was alive and alert. After I took a series of photos I went back out on my bike. When I returned about a half hour lat, she had flown away, hopefully a wiser bird!

A bit on the workflow I use to digitally develop a photo. 

First, I import my photos into Adobe Lightroom;  sorting the photos, deleting the the unacceptable photos and selecting the ones I want to work with.

Next, I "develop" the photo in Lightroom, cropping if necessary and making adjustments to exposure, contrast, color casts, etc.

I then open the adjusted photo in Adobe Photoshop and "tweak" it with minor contrast adjustments to makes it "pop." I will also apply small amounts of sharpening, as needed.

Finally, I bring the image back into Lightroom for any final adjustments (in this case I cropped it a bit more). I do most of my printing in Lightroom, and from there I also export photos for uploading to the photo blog or my website.

Why my photos are behind schedule…

Last week I prepared a group of photos to post on the blog, but when I opened my MacBook Pro laptop did not want to cooperate — on the morning of February 26 it refused to wake-up. After a bit of troubleshooting I had to make a trip to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store where they confirmed that a repair was needed. And so I was without my trusty computer for a week, which put me behind schedule on my quest to post 365 photos over course of the year.

Besides this post, I uploaded two other posts tonight, and by the end of this week I expect I will be back on track. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Meet my neighbors…

We stay in a rural part of Florida, and some of our neighbors are of the four legged variety. These photos are of a calf, its mother, and a very friendly donkey.

More local wildlife…

These photos were taken at my local lakes, Lake Margaret and Vanishing Lake. Vanishing is so named because when the water table is low, as it was last year, the lake disappears. The Great Egret was wading in Vanishing Lake before it took flight.

The photos were shot using the Nikon 70mm – 300mm zoom lens. I shot at 640 ISO so that I could use a fast shutter speed and capture the bird in flight.

While I was following the Egret in the sky, I was also able to capture a photo of this hawk — although I am not sure what type of hawk.

Over at Lake Margaret, a flock, or gaggle, of White Ibises were wading in the shallows.

This little guy was also hanging around the shore, but he never went near the other birds. He looked like an Ibis, but he wasn't white. I did a bit of research, and it seems this is what an immature White Ibis looks like.

The best of plans...

Last night I was working on a series of photos to upload to my blog. My "darkroom" work was complete and I justed need to format the images for uploading to the blog, which I planned to do this morning. Only this morning, my computer would not turn on! I am taking it to Apple in a little while, and if it needs to be sent in for repair, then next week I will have a lot of photos to upload to make up for lost time. Such is life!

In the wild or in a wildlife park?

There are photographers think that wild animal photographs, like this tiger, are not worthy of being shown because it was not taken in the wild. I can understand that point of view, but, and it is a big but, I really enjoy photographing animals, and since visiting Africa is not in my future, I will have to make due with what I can. When I was young, many moons ago, a big cat like this would be behind bars pacing back and forth in a small cage. I took the photo of this tiger three weeks ago at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which is actually a wildlife park. The tiger compound is meant to recreate ancient Indian ruins.

I think there are a total of five tigers in the compound. While we were observing them we were treated to  seeing one tiger sharply reprimand one of the others by running up to him (or her) and growling fiercely. One of the attendants said that the tiger were raised together, and they generally get along well. Obviously, one of them is the "big cat" who keeps everyone else in line.

The Animal Kingdom also features a 100-acre savanna with free roaming native animals. We have been through the savanna many times, and we have seen elephants, but never such a large group.

At the building block of all photography is light — and light can make or break a picture. Most everyone has heard that the "magic hours," the hours around sunrise and sunset, when the light is best for nature photography. There are many reasons why it is not always possible to shoot when the light is best, one being that the Animal Kingdom is only open from 9 to 5.  To make up for the less then optimum lighting of mid-day, I cropped the photos of the elephants to cut out the washout sky, and I used Adobe Lightroom to make the photos more monochromatic, making for a more dreamatic image than the full color photo.

A creature that must be presented in full color is the Scarlet Macaw.

Spring tease…

With snow covering the northeast, and cold weather in Florida (Yes, we are cold again down here, and snow is predicted for the northern Florida panhandle.), I thought that it would be nice to post spring photos. I took these photos in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia last April 28 — in the mountain elevations spring comes late. All of the photos were taken with an aperture priority setting of f/8 at 200 ISO, using a 70-300 zoom lens.

The above photo was taken with the lens set at a 300mm focal length, but because of the 1.5 crop factor created by the digital sensor in my camera, the result is equivalent to a 450mm focal length.