An image from the June Gallery of the Snail Kites nesting at Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge has recently been published in a book for young readers called “Take A Wetlands Walk” by Jane Kirkland. The book is a great introduction to wetland habitats, animals, and plants. It is part of a series of Take a Walk Books, and can be purchased on Amazon.com. The Snail Kite picture appears on the bottom of page 23.

Back in July of 2007, I wrote about a boating trip with Sisbro Studios for an educational book and DVD that they were working on. Well it’s about to be released soon and you can see the trailer for “The Riddle in a Bottle” at the Sisbro Studios web site.

Finally, on October 18th and 25th, I and other members of the Everglades Photographic Society will be participating in the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation’s Student Photography Project. If you are a photographer who would like to volunteer for this project, please contact Susanna Laurenti.

Labels: Arthur Marshall Foundation, Education, EPS, FAU, Loxahatchee, Sisbro, Take A Walk

Hello everyone. I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates to this site recently. It’s been an incredibly busy couple of months. The searing heat, high humidity, and summer thunderstorms have kept me from photographing for most of August.

I’ve also been very busy with work relating to several initiatives that the Everglades Photographic Society (EPS) have undertaken. EPS will have a booth at this year’s birding festival in Titusville, Florida and I hope to have some additional great news in the very near future. If you haven’t been to the EPS site lately, please stop by. There are some terrific articles on the site and many more are on the way.

I have also been incredibly busy at work, preparing for the fall semester at FAU. August 23rd was the official day that classes started, but Monday, August 25th is when all of that hard work on the computer systems over the summer actually starts to pay off, or not.

I’ve also recently done a few more photo shoots of people; a couple of aspiring models and also an aspiring musician. Those images take much longer to process as they often involve hours of work in Photoshop. Not that the images are overly manipulated, but it’s about striking that balance between making the subject look their best, yet keeping the retouching as subtle as possible. It takes a lot of work to achieve that balance. Whereas in nature photography I’m usually trying to simply keep the images exactly as I saw it, with people you’re trying to make the image as close to how the client envisioned it. A lot of work, and so far I’ve been doing it for free, but probably not for too much longer.

Amy and I are also expecting our next child in February. Our daughter Arwen just recently turned 3 years old and she’s been a bundle of energy. From morning to midnight we get no rest from her and so coupled with the pregnancy we’re busier than ever at home too.

As you can see things are going well, so thank you to those that have written me with concerns about my well being. I’m still here, just busier than ever. In the computer industry there’s a saying that the personal web page of the best web designers are always in need of updating, because they’re too busy working on other people’s web sites. That’s not unlike many situations I always find myself in.

There is a disturbing trend that I am seeing regarding the feeding of juvenile Purple Gallinules at Wakodahatchee and Green Cay. Visitors are removing the flowering stalks of the Fire Flag and using them to try to lure the juvenile gallinules to feed from their hands. When you do this, you are destroying the Fire Flag blooms causing them to decay more rapidly and thus reducing the amount of available food for the gallinules that feed on them. Not only that, but you are endangering the health and well being of the gallinules by making them look towards humans as a food source. This type of behavior by visitors would not be tolerated at a National Park or Wildlife Refuge, and I’m pretty sure it’s not legal. So please do not feed the juvenile gallinules and if you see anyone doing so, please ask them to stop. Remember that these places are there to help protect wildlife populations in the area.

Since I’m such a glutton for creating more work for myself, please remember that you can always e-mail me your nature photography related questions, or better yet post those questions on the EPS flickr group. Thanks, and I’ll see you out there, whenever I get around to going out again…

Labels: Articles, EPS, FAU, flickr, Green Cay, Wakodahatchee

Last week I had the opportunity to tag along on a filming expedition. Sisbro Studios rented one of FAU’s boats, the Elasmobranch Research Laboratory Dusky, to film fishes that congregate underneath the mats of sargassum macroalgea that float along the Eastern coast of Florida. Robert Sams was the cameraman and I just acted as extra lookout and safety diver. We snorkeled in open water, which is something I haven’t done often. We looked for patches of sargassum just east and south of the Boca Raton inlet. The first patch we came across was quite a distance from shore and the water was crystal clear. Robert spotted a school of Mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) when he first dove in. When I entered the water, there were schools of various baitfish and young Sargassum Triggerfish (Xanthichthys ringens). I also spotted a small Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis) among the sargassum. Just before finishing up, a small Great Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) passed by just in front of Robert’s camera, so hopefully he got a nice shot of it. Unfortunately, sargassum was difficult to find in the open ocean in large quantities, so we had to come closer to shore to find more. There the water not as clear and there were a lot of particles suspended in the water that probably made filming more difficult. Nevertheless we persisted and I was able to spot a young Scrawled Filefish (Aluterus schoepfi). We wrapped up the day with lunch and Robert spent the afternoon filming fiddler crabs, while I went back to the office.

The film project is for an upcoming educational DVD for grade school students about water, and how inland lakes are ultimately connected to the oceans. I admire such projects and the people who create them. Education is the key to conservation.

The experience had me thinking again about why we fellow nature photographers trudge around lots of equipment in the blistering hot sun each week. I am not a professional photographer, I only do this as a hobby, because I like nature and I like photography. I don’t make any money from my photographs. In fact, I spend far more money on camera equipment then I ever get back from winning photography contests. So why do I do it? Well first and foremost is that it’s fun. I learn so much about photography and wildlife from my weekend photo adventures. It’s neat to see animal behavior that has not been seen by many, and even better to document it in photographs. Second, it’s a hobby that lets me contribute something to the community; by letting you see that there are beautiful and interesting creatures right in our own backyards. Hopefully the work will inspire some to take a closer look at the wild things around them and to want to preserve the few remaining habitats that they have. To help get this message across, I provide my images for free to educators, students, and others that will use them for educational purposes. If you’re interested in using any of my images is such a matter, please contact me.

Since I mentioned FAU’s Elasmobranch Research Laboratory, I should also mention that Shark Week on the Discovery channel starts this week. One of the graduate students from the FAU shark lab will be featured in the documentary Perfect Predators on August 1, 2007.

Labels: Education, FAU