3 posts from January 2008

I had a little time this evening so I went back to look at more of the "Tampa" pictures I took last weekend.  Here are a few from the Florida Aquarium.  While the aquarium isn't extraordinary, you could get extremely close to some of the animals in their wildlife area.  These were all taken with my 17-55mm lens, certainly not what I'd call a wildlife lens...

This wood duck was easily within arms reach.  He/She was in this position for hours!  By the way, I'm terrible with bird names.  If you know what any of these bird really are, let me know! :)

This is a bird... Really, I have no idea what kind of bird.

Here's a shot of a slider turtle.  Again, you were able to get amazingly close to the animals...

In Apollo Beach, the Tampa Electric Company TECO has a massive coal-driven power plant.  They use water from Tampa Bay for cooling and eject the water back into a protected inlet.  Since the water is warm, manatees come here in numbers during the cold month.  There is an amazing array of sea life in this inlet as well - eagle rays, jacks, sharks and tarpon.  It's fascinating to see.  I haven't had a good manatee shot (yet).  Basically they look like bake potatoes in the water.  Here's the plant...

As a boy growing up in the 70s and 80s, NASA and the country's space program was extremely exciting to me.  When learning about the Apollo Saturn V rockets that took astronauts to the moon, I was enthralled.  The shuttle program was beyond cool for me.  It took off like a rocket and came back to Earth like a plane!  Amazing.  So I was excited today to learn that Shuttle Atlantis was on the launch pad awaiting a late January launch.  You see, I visited the center today while on another getaway to Florida. 

As I climbed aboard the tour bus and drove out to the viewing station for pad 39A, the excitement grew.  With new D300 in hand, I traveled to the top of the observation deck.  Looking off to 39A, this is what I saw...

YAWN!!!  The shuttle's cargo bay is being prepped for the launch.  That's a HUGE structure blocking my "perfect" view!  Oh, well!  It was a fun trip regardless.  They even have a Saturn V on its side in one of the buildings.  This made up for it.

Now that's an engine!

Okay, so my promise of posting images before the New Year fell through.  Flower macros are hard!  I even went back yesterday to see if I could get a few more...