Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The sun offers a reprieve from humidity

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My main objective in this shot was to capture the sun's magnificence. To achieve that, I shut down the aperture to f/18 and set the shutter around 1/1000th of a second. Ideally, I would have gotten closer to the water to catch the reflection, too, but like I say below, there was a fence between the two of us.


As far as storms go, the last two days have been quiet in Central Florida. Once a thick deck of clouds moved out to sea Monday, we've had blue skies and less muggy weather, making it feel cooler. Today's photo was appropriately taken in Suntree, an unincorporated community north of Melbourne, as the sun started to dominate the cloud cover toward the end of the day yesterday.

For this image, I held the camera above a fence, which was taller than me, and used my Nikon D90's Live View feature, allowing the photographer - in this case, yours truly - to compose the shot through the LCD screen. Consumer-grade point-and-shoot cameras have this feature, but until a few years ago, it was nonexistent on more professional digital SLRs. This is my first camera with such a shooting mode, and it comes in handy for situations like these. This is the first time I've used it in earnest.

The sunshine looks to be short-lived, however. The tropics are beginning to stir, bringing the threat of move severe weather in the form of hurricanes and tropical storms. A wave of moisture near the Bahamas appears to be the first large-scale threat of the season to Florida, though it is unlikely to develop into a cyclone. For last year's big disaster here in Brevard County, Tropical Storm Fay, I was surrounded by the serene comfort of northern Maine.

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