I had a busy few days this weekend; starting on Friday where I got up a 5:00 am to meet up with Laurie Excell and Moose Peterson at Laurie’s “Nature Safari” at Ft. Desoto Park in St. Petersburg, Florida (about 45 minutes from my office).
Then on Saturday Matt Kloskowski and I flew up to Washington DC to be a part of Jeff Revell’s DC Photo Walk (hosted by PhotoWalkPro.com—-go there to see some of the images). I’ll have a post showing my shots from there tomorrow, but today here are some pics from Laurie’s workshop. (click on them for larger views).
Adove: When Laurie shoots; she brings the really big glass. In fact, all the students in the class were sporting some pretty serious lenses, with the shortest being a 400mm. Here’s Laurie a few feet off shore shooting a white Ibis with her Nikon D3.
Above: At one point while I was out there shooting, I paused a moment and took my eye away from the viewfinder, and noticed that Laurie was shooting me. So…I shot her back.
Above: Legendary wildlife and landscape photographer Moose Peterson was there as part of Laurie’s team, and I caught this rare shot of Moose outside his native habitat. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). I had a great time catching up with Moose, who was also kind enough to let me borrow his 600mm lens (see the next shot).
Above: The birds were really comfortable with us shooting, and we could get really close without them flying away. Of course, having a 600mm lens doesn’t hurt either. I took this shot of a white Ibis, using Moose’s 600mm lens. It was taken from 3.4 miles away (totally kidding).
Above: I got this shot of a tricolored Heron with my 200mm f/2 lens with a 1.4 Tele-extender attached. I had the shortest lens out there, so the Heron wasn’t the least bit concerned about me. In fact, I’m pretty sure he snickered a few times while I was shooting him.
All in all, it was a great time, and just a beautiful Florida spring morning (with perfect weather), and I really had a great time seeing Moose and Laurie, and meeting some of the nice folks in the workshop. Laurie’s next Nature Safari is coming up May 5th – 9th, where she’ll be shooting Texas Birds. For more info visit Laurie’s site, and don’t forget to catch Laurie’s excellent blog, where you’ll find some particularly unflattering photos of me shooting that morning. I look like a bee stung me. Repeatedly.
Don’t forget; check back tomorrow to see shots from Jeff’s PhotoWalk Pro up in the Adams/Morgan area of Washington, DC.
