Photos
St. Augustine, Florida
The Alligator Farm in St. Augustine was the scene for a shooter’s insight with Artie Morris, well-known nature photographer and writer who specializes in birds.
When we first arrived at the alligator farm, we were approached at the main entrance by this guy dressed up in full camouflage, with a net over his face. We thought we got off on the wrong road! Actually, it was Artie, just coming back from a shoot. So for the next couple of days, we got up at the crack of dawn and made our way to the alligator farm to shoot Artie. Sounds easy right? Well, when you have to be ushered to and from your vehicle, because “gators may have decided to climb up on the boardwalk to sleep at night” you start wondering “why am I here?” However, it was a lot of fun. Seeing the lights of hundreds of pairs of eyes as you shine your flashlight across the surface of the water…reminded me of my college days in Florida when we would go out to lovers’ lane and see the gators eyes in the water staring back at us. But that’s another story…
Every time we tried to get sound bytes, the parrot decided to squawk and eliminate much of what Artie was saying. It was a challenging place to record clean audio tracks!! We all still laugh as we remember the Parrot who wanted to be the star.
We had the opportunity to learn some of Arties’ techniques in shooting birds and the Alligator Farm certainly had plenty to practice on. It’s actually not just an alligator farm but a bird sanctuary as thousands flock into the small area to feed. Not being a bird photographer, I was quite pleased to capture a few really good shots of birds!