Photos on a Whim #1
Random pictures from my most recent outings.
I fancy myself a reasonable photographer and have won an award or two here and there, mainly for my nature photos. So why not share them here on Substack*?
*This is, in fact, a rhetorical question.
At the end of July I was back in my old stomping ground of Chester, Virginia, where I had lived for the four years prior to moving to Virginia Beach. I had the evening to myself so I headed to one of my favorite places to view wildlife, Dutch Gap Conservation Area. It was nearing sunset so I didn’t have a lot of time and consequently didn’t get many shots. Here are two:
At one overlook there were about a dozen small turtles swimming through the duckweed in a clearing in the marsh. The one on the right was kind enough to swim directly to the one on the left, making for a matey kind of photo.
This has been a fantastic year for dragonflies and damselflies in Virginia. We’ve had them in abundance…many times the number in an average year. This Blue Dasher Dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) landed on a reed stalk and posed long enough for me to get a couple of pictures of it.
For those of you who read my post titled, The Beemers’ Sunset, this was a similar situation (if you haven’t read it, go ahead and click the link; it’s a short story). Yesterday evening the sun was getting low in the western sky and the clouds over the Atlantic were being lit up in a pretty special light. The Missus and I headed to Sandbridge Beach, hoping the lighting would last for us to make the 13-minute trip. It almost did. I managed to get a few shots as the light faded, including this one:
While we were there, I managed to get a few pictures of this sandpiper (possibly a semipalmated sandpiper) looking for some evening chow:
(I’m a bit disappointed with myself for not having set properly my camera’s settings to fully freeze the fast moving birdie, but I will get out more often to shake off some of my rust.)
We then left Sandbridge Beach and went to Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, 2.5 miles down the road, where the Beemers should have gone to start with.
As we entered the Refuge I briefly parked in a ‘no parking’ area to grab this picture. There is a narrow cloud running across the middle of the sun. Just above the sun, running the width of the picture is the bane of my photographic experience: a power line. It’s still a decent shot for one with no advance planning or preparation:
After the sun went completely below the horizon I managed to get this one:
That’s it for now. See you next time!
Tim
Absolutely maghnificent, Tim!