Anhinga at Silver Springs State Park

On a recent visit to Silver Springs State Park we walked along the pathways, just enjoying the day. The temperatures on January 8 rose to seasonable norms in after a week of cold weather. The sun and warm air encouraged us to wander, no goal in mind except enjoying the feeling, and with only one camera tucked away in my bag.

I looked down into the crystal clear water expecting to see fish, and saw another movement. It took me a moment to clear my head and realize that an anhinga swam just underwater. I nudged Karl to look, and took out the camera just in time for one below water shot, and the surfacing.

Would it have been better had I been prepared with the polarizing filter? It would have been a different shot. I like these, especially the gray and black as the anhinga bursts out of the water.

Our Cold December Hike

I started my pre-hike in three layers, the top layer a hooded sweatshirt. The fog lingered, and became thicker. I headed back to the Education Center early, greeted our early hikers, then went to the car to ditch the sweatshirt and put on a Florida version of a winter coat.

As we set out with our ten hikers, it didn’t feel much warmer. We did hear a lot of bird activity, and noticed both Black-crowned Night Herons around the creek at the bridge. A Red shouldered hawk circled and called before landing in a nearby treetop. The gray sky made a so-so background, but we all tried.

Black Vultures covered the usual two power towers at the end of the bird trail, and later all took off and circled overhead as we continued on our hike. As I scanned the area I saw a white feather drifting down from a tree. Following the path upward, we saw Great egrets and White Ibis perched in trees, all hunkered down against the cold.

It did start to warm, and for such a cold, foggy morning turned into a cool, typical end of December day. Near the end of the hike, just off the boardwalk, one of our young hikers spotted these flowers. He practiced with macro, and we all took a few shots.

We love leading these hikes, and will continue. In January, we always do a classroom session covering basics of composition and basics of the camera. We then open it up to questions on photography and end up venturing wherever the audience wants. We hope to see you on January 27.

Ten Years On...

Ten years ago Karl and I started Nichter Photography. It would take me almost six more months to wrap up the last project of my soon to be left behind business career, but I took my camera on every trip I could and shot photographs in my spare time. Karl focused on learning Photoshop CS whatever version was newest then, learning to print professional images matching archival inks to various papers, cutting custom mats, framing, and generally sharpening all of the technical skills necessary to convert the digital images we captured to our own one-of-a-kind artwork.

What a time! Early morning alarm clocks several mornings a week to get us on the road to various destinations so we could begin shooting before the sun officially rose. The thrill of capturing THE shot, the disappointment of spending all day and realizing it was good, but not quite the best and getting up the next morning to do it again. Our first exhibition, our first locally published photographs, our first nationally published photos. The first time I wrote an article to go with some of the photography, trying to work that skill into readable prose after decades of business correspondence, and having a newsletter publish both! Shooting free-lance, shooting on assignment and finding out that sometimes our vision needed to be tweaked to meet the vision of the client. Nurturing along our first blog, the excitement of having a following, the excitement of being recognized the first time: “I know you, you are the photographers”, the excitement of finding out people really read our stuff: “Are you the one who writes that blog? I read it all the time”. The first time an article appeared about us in a major newspaper, the first time we were invited to get a few minutes of fame on television.

Wow, what a decade!

This past year we took some down time to really think about the future, and our future. The market has changed, and we have changed. We decided to bow out, gracefully we hope, from most of our commercial and marketing pursuits. We are not giving up photography, or our naturalist and interpretive work. We will be pursuing both more slowly, and experimenting with different approaches and areas. The blog will continue, and may even grow. We will still offer some of our work for sale, just in a very limited way. Rather than looking for ways to grow the business, we will be looking for ways to grow ourselves.

We will still be there, just maybe not as often. And as time goes on, who knows, we may jump back into the fray again!

Happy New Year 2018

Happy New Year!