Night blooming water lilies

Here are some more lovely tropical water lilies.  We waited till dusk to see these night blooming lilies.  Just beautiful!

           Tropical Nymphaea Antares

             Tropical Nymphaea Antares

Victoria or Queen victoria lily from the Amazon?

Water Lilies

Here's a few of the photos I took of a water lily display over the weekend.  The weather on Saturday was lovely and there was an overcast sky, perfect for flower photos.  

On sunny days, the shadows can be much more harsh, although I still like the photos because of the colors.

If you want to compare, you can look at some of my water lily photos on Flickr at 

www.flickr.com/photos/75311362@N08 in the flower album.  Here's an example.

The Sequence Photo Challenge

We had an interesting theme for the St. Mary's County Camera Club August Competition-make a sequence of photos all included in one picture.  The basic idea was to show a moving subject multiple times, while the background remained the same.  This only works with multiple exposures or several layers in a photo creating a composite of pictures.

I chose a photo that was meaningful to me.  Every year, I wait with baited breath to photograph the osprey juveniles as they learn how to fly.  I never know how lucky I will be.  Will they learn to fly at noon, when the light is poor?  Will the juveniles learn to fly on a rainy or foggy day?  Will they learn to fly while I am away from the nest?

This year there was one juvenile.  She learned to fly on a Saturday around 9:30 am.  Lucky me.  They usually flap their wings vigorously and hop up and down a lot!!!  I had watched her practice for a few days.  Finally she took off at a shallower angle than usual toward the south.  (Generally, the experienced birds fly more west and at a steeper angle.)  I managed to get the flight on film with four still shots.

I spent quite a lot of time trying to come up with another sequence photo to add to the competition, but I didn't succeed.  I tried using amusement park photos, but there was lots of equipment that seemed like it would ruin the photo, since the rides were always attached and couldn't be separated to create individual images instead of blurs.  In the end, a blurred looking train photo was the winner.  I took second place with "First Flight".  I think if I did the photo again, I would only show 3 images of the osprey, so she wasn't flying out of the photo so much.  Which photo do you prefer?  The face is fairly hidden in the highest image.  Altogether, it was an interesting challenge.

Second Place photo- 4 images layered

Photo of 3 composite images

Deer Dear

Recently, a fawn posed for me in the yard.  Very sweet.  Here are the best ones.  I think they would look nice in a group frame.

Tall ships

I forgot to share some photos of the Tall ships that visited Solomon's Island on June 20th for the 1812 celebration.  The weather was rather gray, but the ships were interesting.

              The Pride of Baltimore

   The Pride of Baltimore and the Kalmar Nyckel (from Delaware)

Survival of the Fittest

Recently, I noticed a dead osprey face down, wings outstretched on a neighbor's lawn.  I suspected it had fallen from the sky because it wasn't huddled into a ball, but spread wide.  I don't think anyone saw what happened.  After a few days, I wondered if it was one of "our" ospreys, since lately I only saw the juvenile and one adult.  Given the fact that earlier there was a private war going on involving "our" osprey, I suspect the bird could have been attacked.  We will never know.

Osprey family in July.  The juvenile is the little speckled bird in the middle.

Since then, I photographed the juvenile defending their food from an adult bird by holding it down with a claw (not very successfully).

The juveniles can be identified easily by their orange-yellow eyes, while the adults have yellow eyes.  

Two osprey in the family with the juvenile in the background.

A Memorable Storytelling Performance ended this Summers River Concert Series on July 25th

The popular concert series finished its 6th Friday concert on the green at St. Mary’s College of Maryland last Friday at 7pm with a stellar performance.  The first half of the concert featured a repeat performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade", one of the most romantic pieces ever composed. The music tells the story of Scheherazade, a wife of a Persian King who saves her life by spinning interesting tales to her husband of 1001 Arabian Nights.  As music director, Jeffrey Silberschlag summarized "in the morning he (the king) had regrets.  He chopped their heads off (his wives).  And ah...It's an old system."

Jose Cueto, concertmaster violinist masterfully played the challenging voice of Scheherazade.  The four movement piece was wonderful and we enjoyed it as much as the previous performance several years ago, featuring violinist Regino Madrid.  Jeffrey described the "beautiful melodies in the cellos and horns, tongueing by the brass and fast notes in the clarinets and bassoons."  And lots of soaring strings.

 José Cueto and Regino Madrid

José Cueto and Jeffrey Silberschlag 

 The Chesapeake Orchestra Bows

 Two Cellists

The Second half of the concert starred Maureen McGovern, 1970's superstar singer of "The Morning After", from the hit movie "The Poseidon Adventure".   Her birthday was coming up, so she sang a silly amusing acapella happy birthday song to herself to the tune of “The William Tell Overture".  The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" was well sung with enthusiastic accompaniment by Victor Dvoskin on Bass. 

Ms. McGovern shared some amusing childhood stories about constantly singing. She talked about, “my parents in the living room desperately trying to watch Walter Cronkite while I was wondering ‘Where the Boys Are’, someone waits for me…”
I also enjoyed singing along with lots of 1960’s and 1970’s hits like Carole King’s  “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, “If I Had a Hammer”, “Turn!  Turn!  Turn!”, “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Let It Be”.   Maureen McGovern may no longer be young, but she sure can give a great show and a fairly long show at that.  The concert was at least 45 minutes to an hour longer than usual and didn’t fail to include the Chesapeake Orchestra’s signature goodbye song “Sleigh Ride”.  The audience had enough repeat watchers to be giggling and clapping even before the music started as Jeffrey Silberschlag once again said “The Chesapeake Orchestra would like to be the First, to wish you a Merry Merry Christmas.”

Three photos of Maureen McGovern