I was out this morning with a couple of people from the Photography Interest Group. We planned to explore a part of Orlando Wetlands Park that we’d never been to. If you look on a Google map of the park, you can see a finger of land that sticks out into the lake on the east side.
On the map, you can also see two paths that lead there. Our plan was to work our way over and along the finger into the lake to make some photographs from the new location. Here’s a photo I made from the fork in the path at the beginning of our explorations.
You can’t tell where a path ends from the beginning – Nikon D700, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 @ 24mm, f/8.0, five exposures: 1/15 sec – 1/250 sec, Photomatix. Edited with the Topaz Adjust filter to bring out more detail in the clouds and to make the foreground slightly brighter.
We walked down this open and inviting path for a while until we were suddenly blocked by a solid mass of bushes and underbrush. I really wonder why this is here if it leads nowhere. Maybe it has been open in the past.
We trudged back out the way we came, and went up our normal route a little farther to the next path leading east. This time, we managed to follow it for quite a ways – before it suddenly went under water. So, we then backtracked again and circled around the lake clockwise for while, but we just couldn’t find anything interesting to photograph. At this point, we were hot, tired and getting frustrated at our inability to get to where we wanted to go and the lack of photographic targets. We started heading back to the car. And that’s when we began to notice interesting things. Here’s a photo of a butterfly hiding in the damp grass:
Butterfly, flowers, dew – Nikon D90 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70 – 300 @ 300mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec. Processed in Photoshop and Lightroom.
And here’s a photo I made of a hunting Little Blue Heron.
A Little Blue Heron catches a worm. (Is that an alligator to the left?) – Nikon D90, ISO 200, Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 @ 300mm, f/8.0, 1/250.
So, even though our explorations this morning didn’t succeed, we did end up getting some nice photos. And we didn’t get them until we forgot about exploring and headed back toward the car. The moral of this story is the title of the post.
Have you had a similar experience? Post a comment about it.
These and a few more photos from this outing are on my Flickr page here. As a special treat to my loyal readers (especially you, Mary!), I’ve uploaded this photo set as full resolution jpeg files and changed the license to an “Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license“. Click on any of the photos, then click on the “all sizes” icon and choose a size to download.
Oh, and Happy Halloween.
©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.