Nichter Photography PLUS

Starting next week, the regular post will be Wednesdays only. Some weeks posting may be more frequent as events occur and we get really interesting photographs we want to share.

I discovered, and should have realized, that as part of our “Slow Photography” the usual subjects for my twice-weekly blog posts (down from thrice weekly) became scarce. We travel just as much, but week long trips rather than a day or two trips, and spend more time in each place rather than moving from one place to the next to keep a schedule.

In addition, many essays in our prior blogs included photography and camera tips and ideas from our experience. Now, general information on use of cameras, settings, composition, etc. appear in millions of blogs and websites, unfortunately many so much alike I wonder if they use the same author. I phased the general photography information out of individual posts over a year ago as so much else is available.

As part of our new pace, I’d like to be able to spend more time on my writing too. I hope to get back to the longer essay form of the first blog. Those take a lot more writing time, photography time, in person research, and reading/analysis research.

We do still have in person classes and lead four hikes a year at Brooker Creek Preserve in Tarpon Springs. That remains free; it is part of our volunteer work, for Brooker Creek and for our profession. The class is January 26, 2018. Click here for information.

We started 2019 with a walk at Green Key park with the intention of doing some First Day birding. The temperatures at 8:15 or so neared 70, and the sky stayed clear though we could see some fog in the distance.

We identified 18 birds in our 30 minute walk, and several we missed. We saw at least two other birders and a lot of people just out and enjoying the day. Naturally in such a small park everyone says hello and maybe even strikes up a conversation, so running away to chase down a bird seemed a little rude!

 

In 2010 I started each new year of the blog with a review of last year and plans for the current year. This started with our first blog begun in 2009, the one we started when our photography business really took off and people asked for stories and photographs of the places we visited for our nature photography, birding, and citizen science projects.

Last January marked our 10^th anniversary as Nichter Photography. I reported in our blog at that time that as we prepared to enter our eleventh year, we decided on a significant direction change: we semi-retired from our professional photography work. The beginning of 2018 we finished all prior commitments and notified people of this change. We remained firm, though more than once opportunities presented themselves that made us question our resolve.

As the year progressed, we still sold some photography, continued our volunteer work though with fewer events, and maintained our usual monetary support of non-profits as Nichter Photography. We plan a similar level of professional work this year.

I find our current status difficult to describe. If I may borrow from a decades old movement, I would call it “Slow Photography”. We do all the things we always did, perhaps more due to fewer business commitments. What is missing is the need to find a certain shot because we promised specific photographs for sale or publication, or an event coming up, or we need more to exhibit for sale. We can be more creative both in the camera and in the post-processing because we don’t have restraints on the subject of the photographs, or the specific requirements of retail or an exhibition.

Goals for this year include experimenting with that old medium of film, maintaining our non-profit work, continuing our slow photography and this blog to document our journey and hopefully provide you with photography tips, ideas, and travel logs. We are considering something we hadn’t done before: entering contests. We are also considering something we did in the beginning but stopped due to time constraints: submitting our photography and essays for publication.

We are looking forward to 2019.

“And in the end, it is not the years in your life that count, it is the life in your years”

                                                                                              (quote is attributed to various people)

Wishing you the best of everything in 2019!

We hope you got what you wanted for Christmas. Sassy and Midnight did!

This is the photo on our traditional paper cards this year. It is an ornament on a tree in the Stephen Foster museum at Stephen Foster State Park.

Karl and I wish you and yours the very best of holiday seasons. We celebrate several holidays during this time, including Christmas, so we always wish people happy holidays knowing so many others do the same.

A Christmas Tree in Fernandina Beach, FL. The red and silver globes are ornaments, the yellow ones at the top are grapefruit!

Looking in the window at the store at Stephen Foster State Park during their Festival of Lights.

With sunrise 10 minutes in the future, I focused my camera on one of two buoys in the channel. Every minute or so, I took a shot. I watched as birds flew through my small area, dolphins showed up and surfaced for air occasionally, a pelican landed and floated by. I had no idea what I would get from this series. For the most part, the two buoys simply kept up their faithful red and green flashing, showing boaters the safe way to steer.

Part of the tradition of our beach trips include a walk on the boardwalk to the beach to ensure the sun rises each morning. We knew a storm moved slowly toward us from the east the first morning, bringing rain and possible thunder and lightning. Tornadoes warnings popped up and then expired along the path of the storm. As we walked through the camping loop, we saw very few indications that anyone else woke up that early.

On the beach we watched the faint light, then the addition of the sunrise colors, and finally the leading edge of the sun. We saw the footprints of two others who preceded us, and by sunrise they were just two small dark sticks to the right of the sun in my viewfinder. I noticed a single fellow camper standing on the boardwalk also watching and waiting.

Once the sun rose, we all meandered back to continue our day.