67MM POLARIZER FILTER

I thought this flower was interesting. It was acting like a cup, holding water. Most of the water lilies were dead, or dying, and those that remained were breathtaking!

I ventured out late in the day, not really knowing where I wanted to do a shoot. I decided at the last minute. The light was already fading, so the shots were noisier than I'd like. I'll work on that later. I knew the color on this one would be spectacular, and did what I could to remove some of noise by softening with the Orton-like effect and the focal softening filter on Picnik. I wanted some real depth of color, but less graininess. That's not always a good combination with point and shoot cameras. If there's enough light, I get shots that rival a DSLR.

I also noticed that this particular Fujifilm camera isn't quite as clear as my last one was. I will have to resurrect that one one of these days. I replaced it because it began to get finicky, but have been unhappy with the performance of the new one by comparison. Oddly enough, my old Kodak with the Schneider lens that died gave me the sharpest pics of all. I miss it! It fit in my pocket, and was crystal clear, but after something like 3000 photos, it bit the dust. I'm pretty hard on cameras, and point and shoots don't seem to hold up as long. One of these lifetimes, I hope to get the good stuff, but life has prevented that from happening so far. Houses, cars, and food come before cameras, I'm afraid, and I keep myself amused with the post processing, anyway. When all else fails, I airbrush!

Sometimes I really don't know where the inspirations for my photo-titles come from.

Another shot from a visit to Fota Wildlife Park back in May.

From the Fota website:
Chilean Flamingo - The pink flamingo is a social animal which lives in large flocks of up to several thousand individuals. It occurs in temperate South America from Peru to southern Argentina and Chile, including parts of Bolivia, Paraguay, and southern Brazil .
Standing over 80cm tall with an average wingspan of 95-100cm, Chilean flamingoes are a formidable sight!
It’s pink colouration comes from a pigment that the animal consumes. In captivity, this pigment must be manufactured into the flamingo's food, or else the animal would be a dull buff colour.
Flamingos require shallow water and lots of mud; nests are built by surrounding the egg with a large pile of mud, which is then incubated for around thirty days. It nests in dense colonies in remote wetlands.
The bill is a highly sophisticated filter pump, specialised for catching tiny shrimps, which are the source of the pink colour in their feathers. The male and female will stay together and the single egg is cared for by both parents.
The flamingo has the longest neck of all birds in comparison to its body. It has 17 vertebrae.
Conservation Status: Near Threatened

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