Journey with John Stokes

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Weak Right

Was it the deformed right claw that caused the Gator to meet his demise? A thinning of the weak? Or was it from happy go lucky wanna be Swampers? We can only guess.

And so Monday begins a new venture in the Journey of John Stokes. For then he becomes a FPL meter reader. In looking at my own meter, I am stumped when the dials are on the number. Is the first number on the left read as 0 or 9. Suppose I shall learn come Monday.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Smoke on the Gator

Spend some time at the dock on Alligator Lake watching the cool high winds bring in the smoke from the Osceola Forest Fire. By the later afternoon, the winds had shifted to the east, taking the cover of smoke from the area.

The Immature Bald Eagle

The Delivery

As I was watching the young eagle perched high on his nest, one of the adults came in from the left all of a sudden with what looked to be a catfish. I have yet to get a good shot of what they bring to the nest. One day it was a snake, another, a mole? Today a catfish? With my old manual focus lens, it is quite difficult to consistently get off sharp shots of motion. The range of focus is confined to a few inches with no room for error. When I get a sharp photo, I am quite pleased! I for sure envy the professionals who have access to the 500mm auto focus lenses with the high frames per second bursts.

First Flight of the Young Eagle

Upon coming up to the eagle nest, there was a grand commotion of chirping as both adult eagles were on hand with the two young eagles. One of the adults had just delivered what looked to be a catfish, and suddenly, off the nest flew one of the young eagles, soaring up and circling back to the nest. I am not certain if this was his first flight, but it was the first I had seen after many days of observing them. It has been quite entertaining watching the progress of this eagle family.

Supplication from the Shining Congregation

This is the photograph I entered in the Adorama/Ken Rockwell photography contest. It was taken at Hopewell Baptist Church near the upper Suwannee River off Highway 6. A few asked, why this particular photo? I was attempting to read Rockwell's mind in that he likes bold images that stand out even as a thumbnail. Problem was, it wasn't bold enough. The other problem, the main problem, was the contest was viewer driven. If you did not have a good base of voters, you were sunk. Then, you had to make it to the top 25 photographs as I understood the contest for Rockwell to even judge the final winner.