07.31.2011 – Our Florida Vacation Highlights

Well, it’s taken me nearly a month, but I’ve finally found the time to sit down and start going through the photos from our trip to Florida. We had such a great time (seems like a million years ago already), and of course, most of the time I had my camera in tote! 🙂 I snapped over 400 images (most of which are just snap shots), but below are some of my favorites from the nature/fine art category!

I think my favorite part of the whole trip was feeding the giraffes at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay:

I think my daughter’s favorite part was the dolphins at Sea World in Orlando:

There were so many awesome birds all over the area, these were a few of my favorites:

This one was shot through glass, so I had to deal with some reflections in post-processing. I think it turned out pretty decent considering:

And here are some random images from the rest of the trip:

A Special Tree – 07.03.2011

I definitely have an affinity for shooting cool looking trees. Especially ones that seem to stand alone in the middle of open land. Something about them appeals to my senses.

This tree, however, has a somewhat more interesting story. We were at North Park in Pittsburgh for a horse show a few weeks ago and early in the day I saw this tree and decided that when we had time later, I would take some photos of it. When the time came, and I took a closer look at this tree something somewhat odd showed itself. The tree was, at one time, some variety of apple tree. However, when I got up close to it (thankfully not TOO close), I found that it had been nearly completely overtaken by poison ivy. Every leaf that you see in this image is poison ivy. The main vine running up the tree was HUGE. It was no wonder then that the park maintenance crews have left the grass growing long underneath it! 🙂

Regardless of its obvious danger, it still made for a beautiful scene, and I’m always glad when an image also has a story behind it!