From Central Florida / 2014 March 10

Hello, Everybody,

It's been several months since I last posted a slideshow -- this time it is two at once. I've wandered from Oregon, through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally into the Florida panhandle near Pensacola (the home of Naval Aviation -- great museum there)

In SW Florida I birded Corkscrew Audubon Sanctuary a couple of times with Jane Mills and her husband Charlie, whom I had met at Magee Marsh in Ohio last May. Then down to Everglades National Park, where I had a great time last winter. Tried some kayaking in the mangroves, pretty unique and a lot of fun although often very narrow and twisty for a long thin sea kayak. Amy and Lewis flew down from Boston, leaving in the midst of a blizzard which was canceling thousands of flights on the east coast, and returned on the one good day between two big snowstorms. I'd planned some activities I thought would appeal to a five-year-old, and they worked out well: birding the Anhinga Trail where one is 'up close and personal' with lots of very large birds and nearby alligators, hiking through the mangroves on the Snake Bight trail, paddling with his own 36" paddle through the mangroves in a rented canoe (we paddled partway into the marked loop trail and then reversed to come back the same way, which made for some tricky route finding since the markers are placed to be seen on the way in -- getting completely lost in there would be a real nightmare), a 'show' at the nearby Alligator Farm and a short airboat ride with lots of (rather silly) zoomie spinouts. 

After their departure for Boston, I moved up to Central Florida for the birding sites and lakes and streams for kayaking -- and discovered that this is 'where it's at.' A huge number of great birding sites and kayaking water scattered around, more than I'd dreamed of. This is also the home of Jim Neiger, who full-time teaches workshops and provides guidance for photographing birds in flight -- he is the recognized international expert. I'd purchased his eBook PDF on the techniques to use, greatly improving my chances of catching good flight photos not just against a sky background (which is much easier), and a couple of days ago I spent a whole day with him, half on land and half in his pontoon boat; learned a huge amount more and got many good photos. But that will be the start of the next slideshow. I am not nearly strong enough to carry and hand-hold the big 500 and 600 mm lenses like I used to use on a tripod: these are ideal but not for me anymore. With Jim's prodding I discovered that I could get a 400 mm lens which has a unique design using a diffraction element to save a lot of size and weight, and with a 1.4x tele-convertor it gives me 560 mm of 'reach' and full lightening fast autofocus response. For the past year I have been using my 300 mm lens with a 2x tele-convertor to get 600 mm of 'reach' which was nice, but until now I had not realized how seriously it was degrading autofocus performance. So now I have the best of both worlds and still manageable weight. 

It's been very nice down here with all the fierce winter up north -- here mostly in the 70s, sometimes the 60s or 80s. I spend a lot of time sitting in my camper with all the windows open and nothing on but shorts. We've had a few thunderstorm rainfalls unbelievably heavy, seems like being under Niagara Falls for a few minutes.

Remember, these large files may take several minutes to download; Joey has doubled his uplink speed, which will speed things up for those of you who have a very fast download connection. There has been a myriad of opportunities for typographic errors in putting up all the older slideshows; please let me know if you run into any problems.

The server address is:     http://john.qued.com

The new slideshows (at the top of the list) are: 
14_01_Jan_CA_to_FL.exe 
14_02_Feb_FL.exe

If you can easily change your screen brightness, you might optimise it for the best viewing.

NEW: For Mac users there is a .zip file to download, and here is how to
use it (please let me know if you have any problems):

go to    http://john.qued.com/   and click on the blue line for a list
of slideshows

click on a zip file for a slideshow

after downloading, open the zip file

open the extracted folder which will be in the same folder and have the
same name as the zip file (likely in Downloads)

select all of the jpg files, using Cmd+A (select with this method only, to keep them in order)

use the space-bar for a Quick View slideshow

use the spread arrows in the upper right corner for full screen

don't click the menu bar, it will disappear

use the right and left arrow keys to navigate

use Escape to exit full screen

optional: delete the zip and/or extracted folder

Boilerplate follows: Each browser is a little different, but generally
you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK
and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future
re-viewing.

Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture.
Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will
end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck.

If you would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just
let me know. If you don't want to get any more emails like this one in
the future, please let me know. If you have friends who might be
interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can
download the slideshows if they have a broadband internet connection.
None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the
pictures, the better.

Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com