It’s hot and muggy here in the land of sunshine and the later in the day you go somewhere, the hotter it gets.  This is real motivation to get out early – so Frank and I were on the road at 5:30 am yesterday to drive over to the Circle B Bar Reserve near Lakeland, Florida in time to catch the sunrise.  I’m not sure what these flowers are, but I really like how they almost match the color of the horizon:

Misty Sunrise Flower; 9 bracket capture processed with Nik HDR Efex Pro

We saw a lot of the usual wildlife:  Limpkins (one with a very large, fist sized snail!), Great Blue Herons, Egrets, Little Blue Herons, Moorhens, Grebes, many Woodstorks (especially in trees) – including some juveniles, a Bald Eagle, quite a few Ospreys, several Hawks,  and of course a few Alligators (mostly in Lake Hancock).  This Great Blue was posing in front of some Spanish Moss.  I wanted to do something a little different, so I converted it to Black and White.  It makes it much more of an abstract composition:

Great Blue Heron on one leg with Spanish Moss; B&W conversion with Nik Silver Efex Pro

All in all another good visit, but by the time we left it was very warm.  I’d like to share some tips with you for this kind of weather.  When you travel somewhere in your air-conditioned car and take your cool camera gear out into an environment like this, your lens and eyepiece are very likely to fog up.  Try these things to minimize the issue:

• Keep your gear packed up while inside the car to insulate it from the cold.  It will be much worse if your camera is sitting on the seat by you right in the A/C blast zone as you drive
• Consider running the A/C at a higher temp on your way over so the gear doesn’t get so cold
• Try to arrive a few minutes early to give your gear time to warm up
• Take a lens cloth with you
• If you have a filter on the front of your lens, you can remove it when it fogs and get the next shot before the front element fogs up
• The smaller your gear, the quicker it will warm up and stop fogging.  If your big DSLR glass fogs, pull your point and shoot out of your pocket and keep going.

You can read what else I’ve written about the Circle B Bar here.  And you can view photos I’ve posted from this great place in this set on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved