Wish comes true, as rainbow appears for new wide-angle lens

A rainbow arcs over the green Atlantic Ocean off Indialantic. I accidentally took this at 14mm, toward the middle of my new 11-16mm lens. I'm kind of annoyed that my shadow is in this photo.

The rainbow as seen from the shoreline of the Indian River, on the west end of the Melbourne Causeway.

I've been saving for a while to get some new photography equipment, and with the most recent purchase of a Tokina 11-16mm super wide-angle lens, my arsenal is nearly complete.

The new "glass" was delivered Thursday morning, so I ventured out in the afternoon to put it to the test. Oddly enough, I was thinking about how I haven't seen a rainbow recently. I made a wish to see one Thursday for the sake of something to shoot with the new gear.

Someone must have heard. As I was shooting birds in Melbourne, I noticed that a rainbow had appeared to the east, near the beach. I jumped into my car and headed for the pot of gold.

The new Tokina will help with nighttime rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, as well as with the various weather phenomena we have here in Florida.

Nothing else was as spectacular on Day 1 with the lens, but here are a few other shots, just because.


Left: An osprey prepares to perch on one of the water towers in Melbourne. It is a gigantic structure, of course, but with my lens at 11mm, it doesn't quite fill the frame. The dark clouds in the lower part of the image was part of the weather system that brought light sprinkles and the rainbow.

Updated: A hibiscus bush at Wells Park in Melbourne.

Tadpoles swarm in the pool for a small fountain in front of Melbourne's Liberty Bell Memorial Museum.

A sunset from the Melbourne Causeway, in HDR.

I went to a photo shoot, and a fight (or two) broke out

Two muscovy ducks battle it out, starting on land.

The fight continued in the water. Is this one the bully? Or the bullied?

It was the victim muscovy getting chased by the bully muscovy.

My furlough-extended weekend has been full of gorging on fast food (more on that later), with a little photography sprinkled in here and there.

None of the photographs, however, were notable. Until Thursday.

I set out to test a new wide-angle lens (more on that later), but my telephoto somehow found its way onto my camera when I stumbled across Wells Park, near Melbourne's downtown area.

The urban retreat - frequented by young parents with small children, and single people with dogs - is called home by an array of birds and fish.

And a lot of the birds seemed to be in a fighting mood.













Left: These ducks were picking on themselves, doing their daily plucking early in the evening.

The ducks move into the water.

I focused on the far one, which is probably different from what I would usually do, but I think it works.

An ibis is backlit by sunshine bouncing off a gazebo.

Another ibis prepares for a bath.

An ibis fights with the water.

Like I said, a lot of parents bring their children to the park to feed the fowl. By the time I got around to asking this girl's dad for permission to take photos, it was too late. She ran out of bread, and this is the only shot I got.

This heron does not look happy. It must be time for a beat-down.

In a nest high in a pine tree, two young herons fight over a fish caught and delivered by a parent.

The phenomenon of anticrepuscular rays at Walmart, and a cheap photo of it

Looking east, opposite the sunset in the west, anticrepuscular rays appear to come out of nowhere. For a better photo and more about the phenomenon, see this NASA page.

For some reason, I never pay attention to the sunset when it's actually good. On Tuesday night, I was inside Walmart buying Listerine and bananas when all the action outside was taking place.

After I was done my shopping, the sky was absolutely glowing on the other side of the superstore. The sun was setting behind a massive electrically charged cloud, its rays shooting outward and through a wide swath of the atmosphere. (I didn't actually notice there was lightning until about 10 minutes later.)

Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to get a photo of the setting sun. The buildings were blocking most of it.

What I did think was interesting, however, were the anticrepuscular rays, or beams of light that appeared to be emanating from the east, opposite the sunset. I just don't often see this optical illusion, which is caused by our spherical planet, probably because I don't see often sunsets. So, I honestly can't say how often this occurs during Florida sunsets or sunrises.

The job could have used a tripod, but I feared persecution from the locals in the Walmart parking lot. Still, I thought I needed to document this.

It's June in Florida, and I'm looking for ice (outside)

I snapped this through the windshield of my car while driving southward on U.S. 1, toward an intense storm that forecasters said could have sparked a tornado. This was storm No. 2 of the day.

I have never seen natural ice in Florida. During the winter of 2007, when the temperature dipped to around 30 degrees, I thought I might get a chance.

Because it was the dry season, there were no puddles on the roadways or driveways. I figured that pouring a cup of water onto the pavement might create at least a half-natural sheet of ice. But it wasn't to be. The air was not cold enough.

So here we are in the heat of June, and the past few days ironically have provided the greatest chance for me to see ice since that winter. Small hail was reported Saturday during an intense thunderstorm in Suntree, an unincorporated portion of Brevard County near my workplace. Still, I was stuck inside, unable to venture out to take photos.

On Sunday, a few more thunderstorms moved through Central Florida. First, one hit the central part of the Space Coast where I live, then another prompted a tornado warning in the very southern reaches of the county. I made the trip down to try to catch some hail or maybe even a twister. But alas, that also was not to be.

Come to think about it, the last time I saw naturally occurring ice was in the middle of August. While Tropical Storm Fay raged in South Florida, I was driving in Maine when my car was pelted by dime-size hail. See a video here. I have yet to see a more intense storm in Florida than I have in Maine.


Above: Storm No. 1 of the day approaches my No. 1 weather-watching spot, Palm Shores Park.

A boat speeds in off the Indian River, near the Pineda Causeway in Palm Shores, as a storm threatens to get people wet.

Storm No. 1 of the day moves over U.S. 1 north of Melbourne.

The sun shined through the clouds, creating a spotlight effect on portions of the river near the Pineda Causeway and on the bridge itself.

One more photo of shuttle Atlantis' piggyback flyover

A Boeing 747 carrying the space shuttle banks toward the coast, giving beachgoers a spectacular view that people here have not stopped talking about.

I realized that I didn't post a photo with a better view of the shuttle itself when a Boeing 747 carried Atlantis over the Space Coast. In all the images that I did publish, the carrier aircraft was more visible than the spaceship.

After looking through my collection, I realized that I didn't get much - only this fuzzy photo as the airplane turned toward the shoreline. The aircraft made this leftward bank farther out over the Atlantic, still a bit too much to ask of my budget zoom lens.