On one of my trips to the La Chua trail, I was fortunate to find this American Alligator resting patiently on the trail while I stood a safe distance away and photographed him. There are three elements to this image that I liked. First, I was able to photograph this alligator at ground level which makes for a far more intimate portrait compared to photographing at an upward or downward angle. Second, the background was far enough away to be almost completely out of focus. This provides a nice separation from the subject and background and makes the alligator stand out well. Third, at the time I took this picture there were some high cirrus clouds diffusing the sun which provided a more pleasing, softer light for this portrait.

This fall I discovered a new flower called a Blue Curl. This little gem is smaller than my thumb, but up close it’s a marvel to look at. I found this flower while walking around Morningside Nature Center in Gainesville, Florida during the fall wildflower bloom. I photographed this flower up close in order to isolate it from the background. This resulted in a nice pure color green background which helps the flower stand out.

I recently took a walk on the Bolen Bluff Trail at Paynes Praire to look for wildflowers, when I found an unexpected treat: a cooperative Tawny Emperor butterfly. The butterfly was sitting on a white sandy area, so I approached slowly and set my tripod up directly above him. I was able to get only a few images before he flew off. I used a relatively wide aperture of f5.6 because the subject falls naturally in one plane.

Every morning about 1/2 hour after sunrise, hundreds of Sandhill Cranes would fly to this field in southwest Gainesville to feed. During my visit, there was a considerable amount of fog which made for some unique photographic conditions. When photographing in fog it is usually necessary to overexpose, so the fog is not rendered dark (much like snow scenes). I overexposed the photograph below by +1.3EV to render the fog as close as possible to the actual colors and brightness. I used a 300mm lens so that I could include all three cranes in the image, and this was the only image where all three cranes had their heads in similar positions.