Orlando by iPhone
Orlando is not a place I ever saw myself visiting. Despite its obvious popularity as a vacation destination and as a town with a huge and happy population, I just never saw me as a good fit for the area. I'm much more of a mountains and rivers kinda guy. Not gonna lie, though. The idea of mucking around through swamps HAS always sounded cool ... for short periods of time.
Well, no swamp mucking for me. No hunting for feral anaconda and boas in the Everglades. Maybe another time I'll get to go with my friend Tammilee on one of her cool, Florida adventures. This trip was purely personal, a family visit. But me being me, I made it a point to look around and see the things that aren't normally seem.
In the above gallery, the image of the egrets and alligators has become my absolute favorite. It's "Just a stupid iPhone pic" (you know who you are - shakes fist!) but it's a capture and creation that I'm quite proud of. Taken at Gatorland in Orlando, it was a matter of timing and then, a lot of editing to get the colors and composition the way I wanted. All of the images are meaningful to me; looking up from the swamps, a visit to probably the coolest lighthouse I've visited, and, of course, the stork (pretty much a F'n dinosaur) captured with a selfie-stick while he was on (literally) a hot tin roof!
Perhaps it's a character flaw of mine. When I visit places, I do my very best to enjoy the moment and enjoy the company I'm with but I can't help but to see scenes and how they might play out in 1/200th of a second or after some artistic editing. I enjoy walking through a place and having a vision of both how it IS and how it could be.
Allow me to finish this post with an image of an egret riding an alligator. I guarantee you that, although you may be cool, you'll never be "egret riding an alligator" cool!
