The Native Floridian – Wayne Roth Photography

As an avid horse photographer, mainly because my wife competes in Reining and Ranch Horse Versatility events, horse photography comes naturally.  Horses make some of the best subjects to photograph.  Hanging around the barn I have captured quite a few long faces so I decided to put a little clip together to show off some of the horses that are seen and ridden on a daily basis at Najorka Performance Horses.  Florida Photography does have it’s perks because I can photograph horses all year long without freezing my fingers off.  The only challenge that I have from time to time is having to photograph a dark horse with a rider wearing light clothing!  It kind of brings me back to the days when I did more wedding photography, you know the bride in all white and the groom in all black!   Speaking of formal events, I am booking Horse Photography events.  Please give Wayne Roth a call if you are in the Florida area and we will see if we can work you into our schedule.

As a Florida photographer I could not resist posting some vintage footage of some lobster diving trips. I shot these clips with the old Sony DCR TRV20 with a Dolphin Pro housing as my Photography Equipment. We always managed to get our limit of lobster on these dives. Maybe it was because I always paid my dues lugging all of the camera gear in and out of the water on every dive. While I typically do not shoot any video footage for my clients now I will shoot some short clips with my Canon 5D Mark II. I do animate the still photography pictures and put them to music for my clients and they seem to really enjoy the share the picture videos. More and more of my time is going towards promoting Dog Photography and horse photography events.   But for now enjoy some diving trip on the “Afternoon Delight” with “The Native Floridian” and don’t forget to bring along your camera so you too can “Preserve Your Adventure”.  Or you can bring me along, the ultimate Florida Photographer.

As a Florida Photographer sometimes I actually get to leave Florida.  This time I took a trip to Cancun, Mexico and got married!  So while I was there getting married to the love of my life I managed to take some pictures. There was a beautiful old lighthouse complete with a shipwrecked little boat on this jagged rock filled peninsula.  This made for some beautiful pictures.  It took several trips to the lighthouse to get the shot I was looking for. I wanted to show a sense of remote and ruggedness of this rocky terrain.  I imagined what it was like before all of the commercialization and tourism came to Cancun.

The old boat had been there for years and really started to settle into the sand.  It made for a great foreground object adding some depth to the picture.  The sunrise, well it speaks for itself.  It’s not really spectacular but I never get tired of a beautiful sunrise picture.  I thing the most enjoyable part of the picture was taking it. I packed all of my gear, slung it over my back and headed out.  It was a quiet cool walk along the beach from the hotel to the lighthouse point.  I had to duck under docks, climb over rocks, walk through water and sometimes sneaked through the vacant tiki hut bars.  When I arrived at the rocky point the wind was in my face and the sun was just poking its head up from the horizon.  As I unpacked my camera gear I realized I had made an almost fatal mistake.  My camera equipment and most importantly my lens fogged up instantly.   With the extreme humidity and the sub zero temperature of the hotel room, I think our thermostat was broken, my dry lens cloth did not stand a chance.  So after the longest few minutes of hugging my camera very closely in an attempt to warm it up enough so the condensation would stop, I was finally able to start capturing some images.  The sunrise was one of those pictures that reminded me of Florida Photography.

Once again, if you put the pictures to music and animate them and something magical happens.

It was a beautiful fall morning with the temperature a cool 59 degrees and the wind blowing in from the southeast at about ten miles per hour.  There was some blue sky peaking through and the clouds were a fluffy white on top with a gray underside.  The perfect cold front weather for shooting ducks or shooting Florida Photography style for that matter.

I had hunted ducks in this location for the last two years.  You have to enter a lottery to have a limited chance to be drawn for a special permit.  If lucky enough to be drawn,  you and up to three guest are allowed to hunt one Saturday and Sunday morning only.    I believe there are more species of duck found on the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge than in any other location in Florida.  In the past I have seen Hooded Merganser, Lesser Scaup, Coot, American Wigeon, Northern Shoveler, Blue-Wing Teal, Green-Wing Teal, Northern Pintail, Gadwall, and Florida Mottled Duck here.  Other ducks, that I have heard sitings of, but have not seen them at this location myself, are the Canvas Back, Wood Duck, Mallard, American Black Duck, and Ring-necked duck. 

Over the last couple of years with extremes in the weather, including record amounts of rainfall or even the opposite, some of the man made dikes and levy’s have been unable to unnaturally adjust the water conditions to the ducks liking.  Therefore the ducks have opted to find some other place to stay for the winter.  This year was no exception.

We were not hit with a hurricane or a heavy tropical storm this year.  So too much water flooding the impoundment and upsetting the vegetation growth should not have been an issue.  Year to Date Rainfall:  Florida Department of Aggriculture and Consumer Services – Division of Forestry There are many theories, including the construction work on the new bridge, as to what is affecting the population of the ducks on the refuge.  There may not have been enough cold weather yet to drive the ducks further south.  We may never know what really affects these environmentally sensitive creatures.

I scouted this area for ducks for the first time this year about a week ago.  I was truly disappointed.  With my trusty binoculars and camera, I circled the area by driving on the levy searching for ducks.  I only saw a few Coots, a couple of Hooded Merganser, and four Blue-wing Teal.  This was not what I was hoping for.  Last year I saw hundreds of Coots feeding in this area with many other species of ducks mixed in.  What happened to all of the ducks that were constantly in the air and on the water including the flocks of Pintails that were whistling as they circled the open water?

A cold front was going to be moving through later on in the week but I had not seen enough ducks to inspire me to get up at 3 A.M.  Even though it is only a short drive of 35 minutes to Titusville, you have to wait in the line until 4 am when all of the hunters are released into the refuge.  I would have loved to have bagged a duck or two for my bird dog, but I decided to sleep in getting up about 7am.

I grabbed my camera, the bird dog, my jacket and headed out the door to see how the hunters did this morning and speak with the biologist.  As I circled the area of the refuge that usually is home to lots of ducks, especially after a cold front, I noticed that there were not any hunters nor ducks in this location.   As I was finishing up my drive along the levy loop, I took a few pictures of some Wood Storks, White Ibis and then what to my wondering eyes should appear….a Roseate Spoonbill!

At first I only saw the single and was really happy to see that bird.  But then, in the corner, I hit the mother load!  It was a flock of Roseate Spoonbills and White Ibis feeding!  I slipped out of the truck and put the Florida Cracker sneak on them.  I was able to get within 10 yards, keeping the mangroves between us so as not to alarm the birds.  I took pictures of the birds feeding for about fifteen minutes, playing peek-a-boo with the morning sunlight, when all of a sudden it happened.  The birds erupted in flight!  

My timing could not have been more perfect.  The morning glow lit up the birds perfectly against the gray clouds in the background.  My shutter speed was fast enough to freeze the action and my depth of field captured everything back to the telephone poles.  I could have photoshopped out the poles in the background but I decided to leave them in because without it the picture almost doesn’t look real.

Out of all of the bird pictures that I have taken over the years, I like this one the best.  I took this picture on December 19th, 2009.  I have blown up sections of the picture below to give the viewer a sense of what the picture will look like at full size.  I know this will make a beautiful picture hanging from my wall.

While I do not always bring my shotgun with me I always bring my camera.  You just never know when you are going to be presented with that picture opportunity of a life time.  This time everything worked out perfectly and I was extremely with the results even if the ducks did not want to cooperate.