"Audubon Cattails" by Wes Aldridge
I went to Audubon State Park today to do some shooting at the John James Audubon Museum. The museum was interesting, but the nature aspect of the park was beautiful and I felt like I just had to search around to find a shot or two.
It was getting late, around six o'clock or so, and the sun was the wonderfully warm creation that all photographers love to shoot under. I drove around and found the lake on the property. It was stunning. The water was completely still like glass, only rippled by the occasional fish jumping from the water. The reflections were perfect and this one small yellowy-green leafed tree caught my eye. I shot it a couple of times, but it really wasn't the shot I wanted in my heart. So I decided to trek around the lake a little and then I found it.
A patch of tall grass with some cattails in their prime framed the perfect shot for the scene. I popped the 70-200mm telephoto lens on the Canon and sat it on the tripod to shoot a shot with a medium aperture at f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/160th of a second. It gave that perfectly in focus view of the cattails and my favorite tree had a mild blur, but it was still decipherable in the background. Then I decided to shift my position a little and got some of the sky reflected in the water as well. I took a deep breath and fired the winning shot... and I was happy.
Then some weird guy walked up to me and started asking me all kinds of bizarre questions about the park, but that is a totally different conversation altogether. My mojo was good at the time and I wasn't about to let some strange man kill it.
