Florida wildlife in all its splendor

As all you all probably know I love photography. In high school I used to wind my film in a light tight bag onto a reel to develop the negatives myself. I enlarged, cropped, dogged, and burned photos. I still am quite the shutter bug especially on vacation and if you throw me outside. I will wonder around for hours looking for the best angles and subjects for my pictures. I can’t wait to be able to afford an SLR digital camera so I can go back to manual photography. I definitely would need to brush up on shutter speeds, aperture openings, and reading a light meter.
My favorite things to take pictures of include animals, plants, flowers, trees, and landscapes.

I decided to take my 4 mile usual walk yesterday, only this time taking my camera along for the ride. What do you know right in front of me a deer comes out of no where and runs full speed across the street. This all happened so fast that there was no time to turn on the camera and begin shooting. But wow, what a great picture that would have been. Even with living in Florida for a year now, the vast number of bird species fascinate me. In NJ, I was so used to the over population of hissing, excessive pooping, ugly Canadian geese (I hate these things, can you tell?!), robins, bluejays, cardinals, and sea gulls. But that is it. After doing some research after my nature walk yesterday, I found out that there are several types of herons and egrets. Who knew? There is this one bird, I see all the time and I can’t for the life of me find its picture but let me describe it… gray large bird with a fan of red around it’s eye. I see them on the highways sometimes on the sides. If you by some slim chance know what I'm talking about and know the name, let me know. But here are some pictures I shot yesterday as I walked for your viewing pleasures. The birds didn’t seem to want to come out to be photographed. I’ll also include some I took on my walk last November in the same area around my apt. Enjoy!!!

i think B&W looks artsy:)

i took this in November by the swampy areas
this spider really caught my eye- not sure where his eight 8 legs are. It looks like I superimposed the spider onto the background

yes there are other trees beside palms in FL!

this guy hid himself fairly well

pretty flowers