P.S. This is a view of the Florida Bay from Flamingo at the Everglades National Park. Just got back from a trip to Orlando and southern Florida, details to follow soon.
@Sigma: Thanks. And I took your advice on the Orchids pictures
@Prashanth: Thanks. Just waiting for the weekend to post the details
@Vibha: It indeed felt the same way - calm n soothing with not many people around. Another interesting tidbit - See those small land pieces in the distance, they are mangrove islands.
And bendtherulz, I wanted to show the "Ten thousand islands" in the picture, and hence there was no "horizonless" effect. Small mangrove tree bunches split from the mainland to form these numerous islands in the Florida bay. Must write about it more in a future post.
Its been a while since I last posted. A couple of out-of-town travels, Diwali and then some things back home kept me occupied. But I am back and hope to catch up from where I left off. First weekend of October I travelled to Ann Arbor again to spend some time with Sunit. I also hoped to catch some fall colors which are supposed to be wonderful in Ann Arbor. But as luck would have it, it was still pretty warm in Ann Arbor and Sunit was too busy so we could not travel to the upper peninsula to catch some colors. Hence we compromised for some local gardens itself. We decided to visit the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. We researched on the internet and from what we saw it seemed interesting. It also seemed to have a waterfall and I was very eager to see it. The gardens were beautiful and well kept in their natural splendor. There was a waterfall all right - the problem was it fell just 1-2 feet. Photography can do wonders indeed and the picture we had seen on the internet seemed to be of a go...
Sunit and I are big fans of the Wild Animal Park at San Diego - we've been there numerous times and everytime we come back filled with wonder at something new. Spread over 1800 acres, the park provides a lot of space for animals to move and they are not enclosed in small cages as in a Zoo. It also allows the animals to mingle and follow the same natural habits as they would in the wild. The train safari provides a quick tour of the place, but if you have the energy to walk around and view some of the interaction areas, the Park can be a lot of fun. On my second trip to the Park, with Vijay ( a friend who is crazy about wild cats), we caught the Cheetahs during their feeding time. A huge moat separates the viewers from the feeding area, some meat is left on the logs and then far-from-sight the Cheetahs are let loose. One can actually see their long strides as they run to the meat and then feed on it. Vijay gets the credit for this picture. We also went upto the tiger observatory dur...
The most interesting thing happened last night. I was at Vons doing groceries, when a friend (who had just walked out of Vons too) called up and asked me to step outside and look towards the sky. I rushed out and an amazing twilight show met my eyes. At first it seemed to be a falling missile but on closer look it seemed the trail had been created by a plane or rocket of some kind. I stood there baffled. Things became clearer today morning when my office mate told me ( he is interested in astronomy ) that a satellite was launched from some base in California. What caused this beautiful phenomenon probably was unburnt fuel particles and water drops in the rocket's contrail that sometimes feeze in the less dense upper atmosphere and get reflected by sunlight at high altitudes, easy to observe because the launch took place shortly after sunset. Here is a picture of what I saw as captured by a colleague at work in his camera.
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and thanks for the visit on my photoblog :)
@Prashanth: Thanks. Just waiting for the weekend to post the details
@Vibha: It indeed felt the same way - calm n soothing with not many people around. Another interesting tidbit - See those small land pieces in the distance, they are mangrove islands.
Amazing shot...gets the "Horizonless" almost...!
Will come again !
And bendtherulz, I wanted to show the "Ten thousand islands" in the picture, and hence there was no "horizonless" effect. Small mangrove tree bunches split from the mainland to form these numerous islands in the Florida bay. Must write about it more in a future post.