I took some time to head down to the beach and watch the final sunset of 2009. There wasn’t a green flash, but cloud structure more than made up for it.

Goodbye 2009! It was a fun time!

I love the osprey. We have quite a few around here in South West Florida.

Not to be confused with Sea-Eagles, the North American Osprey is a large bird of prey. It’s wing span stretches 6 feet and its body averages 24 inches in length. It’s diet consists entirely of fish, which it catches by dive bombing from high altitudes and grabbing hold of with its extremely long hooked talons.

I was out on Keewadin, kayaking one morning, when this osprey caught a whiting right in front of me.

It let me get close enough to get this shot. But then flew over to another tree when it had enough of me.

Thankfully the next tree, where it started to eat the fish, was still in my line of sight. I was able to snap a few more shots before it took its meal into the estuary.

Last month I took a kayak trip out to one of the barrier islands here in Naples, Florida called Keewaydin. I was able to get out there shortly after sunrise and find some decent shots. The warm light and high contrast made for some lovely black and white imagery.

The last of my beach related photo backlogs. This was also taken with the 70-200 L. There were an amazing amount of birds on the beach this day. Take a look and let me know what you think!

If you’re near any body of water in South-West Florida, chances are your’re going to see a Double-Crested Cormorant. Not to be confused with the Anhinga, These seabirds spend their time diving underwater and swimming for their food. Since these birds are unable to waterproof their feathers, they are usually seen full-spread, drying their feathers.

Some more back catalog of photos from when I first tried out the 70-200 my friend loaned to me for the weekend. These were taken right before sunset, and a little under exposed.

One of our first stops along the Pacific Coastline was at Dunes National Park. Im used to seeing rocky cliff lines, so making my way to the coast and seeing nothing but massive dunes was quite the surprise for me.

Sadly, the weather was less than perfect, in fact there was a slight rain falling at times.  None the less, I was amazed by the sheer amount of sand, and soon made my way out on to the dunes.

I climbed to the top of one of the nearby dunes and snapped off a few shots to compile a panoramic.

This panoramic is available in a much larger size, for those who are interested…click here!

We didn’t have time to make our way down to the beach, something I was dieing to do. But there was more to see, so we got back in the car and headed north, looking for something closer to the waters edge.

A little further up the coast we found another park access point.

You couldn’t see over the dunes from the road, but this one looked to be a lot closer to the ocean.

On top of the dune, the grass is waist high. But there is a trail that cuts through.

Sitting down in the trail.

While still rather cloudy, the sun had come out just enough to see small patches of blue sky.

The sky is a little blown here. But looking south, you can see the mountains…I’m guessing near Reedsport. I want to say that’s Mount Grayback.

Sand spider!

We walked to the waters edge and picked one souvenir each. A testiment to our accomplishment of reaching the “other side”.

I’ve started to collect a little back log of sunset photos where I only really got one or two decent photos from the trip. Instead of bloging about them individually, I figured I would post them up in sets. Here is the first set of misc shots.

Click the link for more from this set.

The wave’s erosion have almost taken over this last piling.

A group of Royal Terns rest on the beach.

I love the focal point of this shot. Almost makes the boat in the background look like a toy.

And one of my all time favorite sunset shots.

I made way down to the Aqualane Shores beach access and walked down to the large set of pilings that usually have some sort of action.

There was nothing really happening in the sky or the shores, so I figured I would play with exposures and shutter speeds to see if I couldn’t get anything interesting.

Check the full post for the dramatic results!!!

A little too dark.

Trying that again from a low position.

Now lets slow the shutter down and wait for a larger wave to come in and capture it on the recession!

Another attempt, but at a funkier angle.

Looking back at the beach, there were some beautiful colors coming in.

With the experiments complete, it was time to just watch the end of another beautiful week.

Oh, by this time I was sitting up on top of the pilings. The trick to this is to pick one that isn’t full of seagull and pelican poop.

There was a rain storm that had just passed through. And the sun was set to go down in 20 minutes. I grabbed my gear and raced down to the Naples Pier to see if I could get anything out of it…

Probably one of the most dramatic shots of the Naples Pier I have taken.

The tide was about as low as it gets.

I didn’t get to see the sun drop, but I was given this beautiful after glow.

And a final parting shot before the lights went out.