I’ve been finishing up some of the photos from our first trip this year, the one to Captiva and Sanibel Islands, Florida. These are a few more from the mangrove swamp at Ding Darling NWR. Not all of these are of mangroves per se, but you get the idea.
I felt like these needed to be in black & white. Partly because of the weird color of the water due to the brackishness (is that a word?) of the marshland water but also because of the patterns themselves.
Kathy & I spent the day yesterday exploring the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island. I was channeling my buddy Don Brown just a little bit, as he is one of the best bird shooters I know. I was handicapped a bit by a 200mm lens on my Fuji, not really long enough for serious wildlife work. But I came away with a few shots that are reasonably well exposed, acceptably sharp and representative of what we saw.
The most amazing thing we saw I wasn’t even able to record! we walked back a trail into a wood, and soon found a group of egrets lounging in an area well off the beaten path. There were easily a hundred or more there, but the brush was so thick that there was no way to make a photograph. But the sound! I said it sounded like the morning after a frat party – lots of guttural sounds and weird noises. It was quite an experience, but you’ll just need to take my word for it!
