For landscape photography, the images that stand out are the ones that have dramatic skies. Unless you are wanting to photograph the milky way at night, images that have a clear sky are usually boring.

I went to the Everglades yesterday morning in hopes of better weather.  I left Monday night and arrived at Pine Glades Lake at 2:30 in the morning.  The skies were clear and the stars were bright.  I remember a few years ago I came to this lake in the middle of the night and had admired the reflections of the stars on the water.  At the time all I had were my film cameras, and they were not able to capture the scene that I was seeing.  But on this night, I had my Canon 5D and decided to use it to capture these night reflections.  The first image that I took was with Rokinon 14mm wide angle lens, shot wide open at f/2.8 ISO 1600 for 20 seconds.  The resulting image was a bit dark but was lightened up a little in post processing.

“Starry Lake” – taken with Rokinon 14mm lens

Since it was dark, I was not able focus the image through the view finder.  In order to take an image that was in-focus, I set the manual focus position just past the “eternity” mark, then adjusted it slightly with each shot until I covered a range which would achieve one that was in-focus.

“Night Lake Reflections” – taken with Rokinon 24mm lens

The second image was taken with the Rokinon 24mm lens, set at f/2.0 ISO 1600 for 20 seconds.  After I finished shooting the lake that night, I took a nap until the sun started to rise. I didn’t see any opportunities for a shot due to the clear skies, so I decided to go head to Big Cypress, which is located near Naples.

I went to a place on Loop Road called Sweetwater Strand.  There I found this Wood Stork perched upon a branch, eyeing me as I was taking this shot.

Wood Stork

Big Cypress National Preserve is an area that I know little about.  There are many trails in the preserve and on this trip I walked a short distance down two of them, Skillet Strand and Gator Hook.  Both trails are very beautiful walks and have lots of interesting cypress trees in open fields and an abundance of wildlife.  The first trail I walked down was Skillet Strand.  It looked like a trail that used to be used by hunters, I say “used to” because it looks like it hadn’t been used in a very long time.  The area is overgrown and the trail billboard was faded so bad that it wasn’t legible. Although the gates were locked, one could easily walk in and hike down the off-road motor trail.  I hadn’t taken any pictures during hike, just was walking the trail to see if I could find something for later.

The second trail was more interesting.  Gator Hook Strand Trail is a 5 mile round trip hike that would take the average person about 3 hours to walk.  Part of the trail is actually a raised “tramway” used by loggers in the mid 1900s.  The trail begins at the tramway and goes through a prairie with dwarf cypress trees on both sides.  It was getting late so I stayed close to the start of the trail and ventured out into the prairie in search of a cypress tree or two to shoot.

Dwarf Cypress at Gator Hook Trail

There are a lot of opportunities for photography in the Big Cypress area, especially for those of us who doesn’t have access to boats.  The Gator Hook Trail is on my list to explore more intensively, as this trail requires wading through the swamp in ankle to knee deep water.  This one will require a little bit of planning!

Thank you all for reading….