October 25th, 2024

What with hurricanes, sick cats and all the other stuff going on it's been 3 long weeks since I've done a proper Photo Safari Report! Oh My Gracious!  I wonder if I remember how to do this!

Joy and I were determined to find a place to hike yesterday.  All of the local preserves were closed but Oscar Scherer, which is a state Park was opened with limited trail access.  Limited access is better than no access so that was our destination.    We headed out knowing that the odds were very good that we wouldn't get far.  Surprisingly, even thought we did at least a half dozen U-Turns due to water in places it usually isn't, we still managed to hike more than 3 miles and quite a few hours.  Awesome!   This is, therefore the U-Turn Hike.  Makes perfect  sense.

The part of the trail that was clear was great!  And so there we would be walking and talking and shooting whatever appeals to us, as we do, and then we would come around a curve or over a rise and find this before us:

Oh well,  Nothing to be done for it but to turn around and try another offshoot of the trail.  And most of those led to other, better, surprises.

It was a surprisingly good birdie day so get ready for bird photos.  One of these Joy took, (I will identify it) the rest are mine though :

Some botannicals, a few a little different than my usual which is always nice for me at least:

One and only one dragonfly, (no butterflies )

And then there is the bicycle series.  There was a long section of trail that goes along a fence and on the other side of that fence is a bike trail.  At one point, the lighting was just perfect shining through spanish moss and vines hanging from a tree and as the bicycle flashed by I realized what a perfect shot it would have been. So I became determined to capture it.  

Joy showed such amazing patience.  It's about timing.  There is a split second pause between when I depress the shutter and when it actually takes the shot.  It's such a short amount of time, a nano second, that normally it doens't make a bit of different.  But when I'm trying to hit a moving target so to speak, it matters.

It was missed shot after missed shot after missed shot. Dang!  Finally I gave up and said, let's move on. So we did until the nest great tree and foliage/light/bicycle opportunity and then I, once again, snapsnapsnapped and missedmissedmissed.  ARGH!

Eventually it occurred to me t o change my setting to "sport" which, when you depress the shutter, takes 5 rapid fire photos.  Surely then I would almost by accident, get my photo.  Well you would think so wouldn't you.  You would be so very wrong.

But I became ever more determined to get this mythic shot that I had envisioned in my stupid head.  It was a goal. The Grail!  My mission.

Operating on the, eventually if you put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters you will get the work of shakspeare theory, I continued trying.  When I looked at the results, well let me just say that I have never in  my life deleted so many photos from one session EVER!  Hilarious!  I am so ridiculous!

But here are a few of the shots I did NOT delete.  And not one of them is the photos that was in my mind and imagination.  So sad.

At any rate, that's it for the U-Turn Hike.  Thanks for joining Joy and I on our recent Photo Safari!  One day, maybe you'll come and hike it with us. Cameras optional.