Ridge Carnival

We visited the Ridge Carnival a few times.  I picked out some of my favorite shots, showing a variety of things you would see at a Fair.  I will share why I liked a particular photo beneath it.  Which ones do you like?

I liked the repeating patterns in this one.

A romantic moment while watching the kids on the teacup ride.

Good things come in threes.  The pink monkey breaks the pattern.

A child brings a smile to a game worker.

Interesting textures with the fence.

Lots of emotion here!

I liked the frame in a frame and big smiles.

Her hair shows the movement, even though this is a still image.  Lots of emotion!

Fun colors.  Since the smurf is bigger, it became the subject in an otherwise busy shot.

The St. Mary's County Fair is this week, September 18-21.  Maybe these photos will give you some ideas for photographing it or interest you enough to attend or enter a contest.  One of the photography categories in the photo contest run by the St. Mary's County Camera Club is last years County Fair.

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.