We’re Back! It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to work on a little project in the studio, and now there’s two going! I plan on developing some ideas here further and refining the techniques we used to make things better, but lets look at the first draft of images we created. The concept here was to make a bit of an eerie image with a gloved hand grasping a sphere and appearing to…
One Hot Event Forgive the pun, but Night Blow at the Morean Glass Studio was quite the event this weekend. Beginning with a simple bowl as you might see at a normal glass blowing demonstration, artists like Tim Soluna, Anjali Singh, Harry Boux and others created some amazing works and demonstrated some great feats of artistry like juggling hot glass all while the music pumped and drinks flowed. Of…
A Grand Repeat One event that sticks out in my memory was seeing the work of Scara Abe live in 2023 at the Leepa-Rattner Museum in my hometown of Tarpon Springs. When we saw that she was returning to Tampa Bay and had another performance at The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg we jumped at the chance, if only so that my wife would be able to see the performance too. We greatly enjoyed watching her…
As The Days Warm… My mind wanders back to slightly more temperate times. This March we made a special outing to Central Florida to see some old friends we hadn’t hung out with for a while, and along the way made some time for birding as usual. First Stop: Circle B Bar One thing we may a point to do at least once a year is to visit Circle B Bar Reserve. This area near Lakeland has a wide variety of…
Just Popping in Quick… After a little delay, I am happy to share that Lauri and I took home three prizes from this year’s Photo Safari, shown in the gallery below. 1st Place: Agriculture and Horticulture (Ron) 2nd Place: Agriculture and Horticulture (Lauri) 2nd Place: Exhibits and Entertainment (Ron)
Life these days seems to be crazy for most everybody. We had a little bit of a cool down and that prompted us to take a day off and instead go crazy to see all we could in the span of a day instead of working Stop 1: An Audubon Preserve For those in the area, this place is fairly well-known but it’ll remain unnamed here for what will soon be obvious reasons. We made a quick stop at this preserve…
And The Winner Is… It’s been a while, but what better to start off by sharing a new win? As with the last couple of years, we entered a few images into the Florida State Fair’s photography competition. I’m very proud to say that this year I took home two awards — a second place in portraiture and a first in cityscape and architecture. Off to the Races Okay, but we’re here to get some photos too,…
This one is a big one for me; this publication was not the result of a submission on my part, but rather them reaching out and asking to license my images. And so, I’m very proud to say that you can find my work in the journal North American Birds, Vol 75 No 1!
And So It Begins… Each year Black Skimmers come to nest along the all-too-touristy spans of our Pinellas County beaches. Since Skimmers are some of our favorite birds, we love this as it gives us an opportunity to watch the little ones grow up and learn how to be Skimmers (or, as we put it, how to bird)! With the colony winding down for the year now, it seems appropriate to share some of our…
We’re on a bit of a role with publications this year, as my work has been printed in the August 2024 issue of Black and White Magazine! This makes the second time this year. Unlike the last time, this is a two-page spread of three images. View fullsize View fullsize
A Day of Architecture Fun It’s not too often that we get to do some architecture work like we used to, but on the last weekend of April we got to put a little practice in. Along with housing some fantastic pieces of both modern and ancient art, the Tampa Museum of Art is a work of art itself with a metal edifice punctuated with innumerable round holes that provide for some interesting patterns.…
It’s exciting to see your work in print even in smaller publications. I don’t think that’ll ever change. But one of my works, “Cruel Nature”, which won the Pasco Audubon competition this year has been published on the front page of the Tarpon Springs Beacon from Suncoast News. Click here to read the article on their site , or view the archived copy below. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize
We’ve not had a ton of time lately with everything going on in our professional lives — and on top of it, migration was really short this year and left us with little activity over the last week or two — but we managed to escape to Fort DeSoto at the southern tip of Pinellas County. We ended up with only a little more than 20 species for our efforts, but got to see some interesting interactions…
I’m very excited to say that both myself and Lauri have won prizes in the Florida State Fair’s Photo Safari. The Photo Safari is an event where selected photographers are given tickets in exchange for traveling around the fair and taking images that can be later used by the Fair for promotion. Lauri's 1st Place: Exhibits and Events Lauri's 2nd Place: Agriculture and Horticulture Ron's 1st Place:…
Saturday, February 17 We had big plans this weekend, and one big potential enemy — the rain. We started out early to try and beat it with a trip out to Honeymoon Island. While we stayed mostly dry with only small drizzles, the rain and clouds that were there blocked most of our light and made birding difficult. Fortunately, to brighten our spirits (if not our lenses) some of our favorite birds…
Day 1: Sunday, February 11th We’ve recently been participating in the Florida State Fair’s Creative Living sections, with both contest entries and Photo Safari passes to show the different sides of the fair. So, at our first opportunity we had to go off and see how we had done in the contests. And Lauri won in her first year for submissions! First Year, First Win! Second Place in Animals (Other…
What a Day! Talk about a whirlwind experience, yesterday was packed with events and photo opportunities. We started off with Boyd Hill’s Raptor Fest, an annual event that attracts multiple wildlife rehabilitation and rescue facilities all to this nature preserve near downtown St. Petersburg to show the good work they do. Photographically, that means one big thing — bird portraits! A very special…
Great news everyone! I’ve been published for the first time in a magazine — Black & White Issue 165, April 2024. Should be on news stands soon! Some of you may recognize this image as the winner in Architecture and Cityscape for the 2023 Florida State Fair, and you’d be right. Hopefully we’ll get a repeat this year there as well with a new image.
From a Wider Point of View So much of my day-to-day photography is done at the super telephoto ranges (i.e. 400mm and up), that sometimes I feel like I neglect my wide and normal lenses. With Epiphany weekend coming up and some free time, I made a pledge to go out and use them to recapture some of my other favorite subjects: architecture. We started off on Epiphany day with a trek to St. Nicholas…
First Impressions: October 2023 I've only had a chance to go out and shoot the lens once so far, so I would not call this a full review yet, but I wanted to share some images and my experience thus far with the Plena. I prefer a longer focal length lens for portraits, and so was very excited when the Plena was announced. It may not have had VR like the Canon or a cheap price like the Samyang and…