Last week, I went to Ft. Myers, FL. It's a city with a tiny urban core along the Caloosahatchee River and a large sprawl of suburbs dotted with subdivisions, condo towers, and myriad camping sites. In the winter, the population spikes as people flock to the area to vacation and escape the frigid North. Many begin leaving mid-spring and only the dedicated residents stay for the summer. Notable figures such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were known to have winter homes side by side in Ft. Myers, a practice many wealthy people maintain today.
And within this part of Florida are a staggering amount of exotic birds. By exotic, I mean we-don't-have-these-in-Ohio-and-they're-exotic-to-me. Birds are among my favorite animals, so it was thrilling to be able to get out of architecture photography mode and into the a new world of amateur wildlife photography.
I didn't fly to Florida exclusively to shoot photos of birds (maybe one day, though). As such, I was armed with only a Nikkor 24-120mm zoom lens on a Nikon D750 and a 30-110mm Nikon 1 J5.
During the week, I photographed a lot of birds. Some photos turned out well, and others less so. Below is a gallery of my favorites.
NOTE: each photo has been resized to a maximum of 1500 pixels and 2 MB to accommodate quicker load times. These are not full-res.
