"Talk, talk......Talk, talk talk talk....,all you do to me is talk talk"

I have become addicted into going to the bait shops around town in the morning. I usually get up at about 7am and throw on some shorts, grab the camera and my tripod and head out the door. I arrive at Hart's Landing bait shop first and I set up there.
I try to time my arrival with the arrival of the shrimp fishermen delivering their catch from the night before. The fishermen bring their load of shrimp in and the bait shop attendant then starts sorting the shrimp according to size. All this commotion attracts a number of birds. Great blue Herons, Snowy Egrets, Great egrets, Little Blue Herons and sea gulls are all attracted by the possibility of a free meal.
I am hoping that the bait shop attendant will toss the birds a couple shrimp and I can capture the moment of the birds swallowing the shrimp. Many times I have to beg the guy to give the birds a shrimp. Some of the employees are better about it than others. One guy has to be begged to give the shrimp away and another guy throws the birds the shrimp so quickly that I have a hard time getting the exposure right.
I use the spot meter for my bird shots so I have to be quick. I just place the center spot on the brightest part of the bird and zero out the meter from there. I have learned to have the exposure compensation set at +.03 if the bird is filling the frame. I use the matrix meter if the bird does not fill the frame and I have the exposure compensation set to zero. I use the manual exposure mode so I am constantly changing the shutter speed. I also let the camera focus the lens, I have enough to think about.
Hart's Landing is a cool place and I can get some good closeups there with the sky or the bay as a blurred background. I then move on and take my gear across the bay to New Pass Grill & Bait. Their shop is set up a little differently and gives me some different photo opportunities They have docks and a shoreline and some rocky outcrops over by the jetties. The sea gulls like to sit on the docks and squalk at each other. I like it here because I can compose the shots without distracting backgrounds.
I like the bait shops for bird photography because I can get close to the birds without spooking them and fill the frame with my subjects. The birds are interested in eating so they don't pay much attention to me and my camera. I hope you will like my images

I am bored!

I have been a waiter for over twenty years and for the first time in my life I got fired. Well I cannot blame anyone for this other than myself but it was all a big misunderstanding. I have never worked for a more difficult group of clientele in my life. Toojays Gourmet Deli! The place started in West Palm beach by a couple jewish men named Jay, hence Toojays. The people that come into that place were impossible. Picky as hell and just plain rude. I am surprised that I lasted as long as I did. I got into trouble because I am the type of guy who wears his emotions right there on my shirt sleeve. This has gotten me into hot water before and I am sure it will again. Do you think that I will change? HELL NO! I would get pissed off at people and I couldn't hide that in my facial expressions, so then the customers would bitch to the management about me. I was warned a couple times, they took tables away from me, anything they thought would work. I was so burned out there. The day I was to be fired started out okay, It was on a Sunday afternoon. The restaurant was dead. We were sitting around waiting for business to begin. A waitress decided that she was ill at that point and went to the managers and cried like something was wrong. The only thing that was wrong was that she had to be there. They wound up sending her home and that left us with six servers on the floor and put me into a seven or eight table station. I don't know about you but I can't handle seven or eight tables. The restaurant then filled up and all of a sudden I had six tables, a couple or three four tops, a deuce and a couple three tops. Everyone came in at once. Everyone wanted their food at once. The whole restaurant was deep in the weeds.
I was seated with a young couple and their three young children at a table in the back near the bathrooms. The lady couldn't get the child to her breast quick enough and they sat down. They asked me what I had for the children to drink. I went through the list and mentioned "apple juice." The smallest kid in a high chair started grabbing at my apron and screaming "I want apple juice, I want Apple juice" nonstop. I guess that I must have given them a nasty look because they called for their stuff to go. Anyway, I won't bore you with much more, after that I went home and on my next shift I was gone. Easy come easy go!

Little Blue Heron

I found this Little Blue Heron beside a retention pond in downtown Sarasota Florida. I took this on the first day of July in 2008. I love the color of this beautiful bird. It is displaying its breeding colors. I was surprised that the birds let me get this close. There were quite a few birds there that day. Several Little Blue Herons, a pair of Green Herons, a Great Blue Heron a couple cormorants and a Great Egret were all sharing the same pond and I was able to capture all of them. This is one of my favorite and best images.
I usually ride out to the gulf coast and take photos of the sunset but on this day I was at the traffic light waiting to turn and I looked over to my right and saw these birds. They don't congregate there much so I was happy to see them there. I am fortunate to live in a place where the wildlife is so abundant.