Porpoise Point

The other day I hiked with all of my equipment to Porpoise Point to shoot the protected nesting grounds of the least tern, a bird I did not have in my portfolio. It was a real eye opening experience! These tiny birds had the attitude of hawks. They did not like me intruding into their territory so they made every effort to drive me off. This included divebombing me, trying to poop on me, and charging my tripod across the sand.

You have to admire the spunk of these little guys. It was a challenge to capture these fast fliers as they swooped down at me and ran across the sand.

My work is on my commercial website at Kenneth Albin Wildlife/Nature Photography. You can order framed prints, canvas, posters, and greeting cards of the beautiful Florida wildlife and nature scenes I have captured. There are more than 120 images to choose from and they are divided into galleries to make it easy to find a particular type of image. I am very happy to be able to share a little of native Florida with the world. Wildlife in Florida is wonderful and it is sad to see that it is vanishing with the oil spill and the encroachment of civilization.

Washington Oaks and Big Talbot Island Parks

I've been a busy photographer this week! First I went to Washington Oaks Park. Here are some shots from there. My photos can be purchased at http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/kenneth-albin.html


This motorized parachute was cruising above the beach.


The beach has a strange set of eroded coquina rocks there that make for a very artistic view of the ocean.


The algae covered rocks there were fascinating


and this little sandpiper was happily looking for morsels along the beach.

Next I went to Big Talbot Island and fed the mosquito population there. Wow, 95 degrees never felt so hot!


Here is a pretty little zebra longwing butterfly I found.


There is a funny story behind this ghost crab shot. I was trying to get down an embankment to the beach. The sand gave way under my feet and I slid on my tush the last 6 feet, winding up directly in front of this startled guy. I grabbed the camera and got a few good closeups of him before he recovered his senses enough to scurry away.


Speaking of crabs here is an Atlantic horseshoe crab I found at the edge of the water.


This poor osprey never did find a fish for lunch while I was there.


We will say goodbye to the beach there with this closeup of one of the dead oaks laying along the beach. There are hundreds of them there due to erosion, giving this section of beach its nickname "the Boneyard".

Till next time have a good week!

Best 2009 Photography

I was recently honored by the Boulevard of Photographers in their photo challenge. They have selected my "Sandpiper on a Golden Beach" for inclusion in their Best of 2009 Photo Anthology book. This is a competition judged by a staff of professional photographers and my photograph was selected out of thousands of submissions. I am very proud of this achievement as a semi-professional photographer. If you are interested in purchasing greeting cards or a framed/unframed print of this photograph you can do so at Fine Art America

Road trip!....Well, beach trip anyway

I dedicated a morning to Vilano Beach photos this week. Getting up early and down there by 5:30 AM hurt but I wanted to get some predawn shots, dawn shots, and general daylight shots of what I could find interesting. I used the new Nikon D5000 for the photo shoot and the 55-200mm lens for most of the photos since they were almost all distance shots. I plan on going back for some macro shots of beach debris at a later date. I took 192 photos and have been going through them. I came up with 9 good photos from the bunch. Here is a sampling. Remember that these are lower quality jpegs and the originals are large files that have better sharpness.

Early dawn Vilano Beach jetty

Sand Piper running from the waves

Dawn at Vilano Beach

Hunting breakfast at dawn

Indian blanket wildflower

I never get everything I am looking for on a photo shoot but I think these shots capture the spirit of the beach pretty well while I was there. As always, high quality versions of these and many of the other photographs on this blog are available for digital upload for use on websites, greeting cards, etc... for $6.00 each in 4-6 mp jpeg format or $20.00 for 35-70 mp uncompressed high quality TIFF files. If interested contact me at albink@bellsouth.net for details and to arrange the upload.

I will have some exciting news in about 8-10 days to post about a way to purchase my photos on canvas, professionally matted and framed, as well as on greeting cards. Think 'unique gift' for special occasions! Till next time I hope all of your dreams come true.