Today I visited a place I haven’t been visiting for a while: Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park

The time of the day and the conditions were not that great to begin with. I arrived there at around 11AM and it was very bright and sunny, as Florida can be in January. The light was, as I was expected, very harsh, which pretty much ruled out any shots at Lake Wauberg.

To add insult to injury, last week, my regular wide angle lens, a 18-55 Nikon VR decided to stop working. While taking some shots at Newnans Lake and changing lenses around, it suddenly stopped letting the light through; I suspect the aperture got stuck on f22 somehow. So here I am, armed with my new prime portrait lens I just got a few weeks ago (a AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D ) going for some landscapes.

I decided to head on the Jackson’s Gap trail, all the way to Chacala pond (which by the way, is pretty dry).  Just as I entered the head trail, I noticed a bunch of fresh cut Autralian Pine logs, which look pretty cool and inviting. I was able to take a few shots and decided that two of them were worth keeping.

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As I continued on Jackson’s Gap trail, I reached an old abandoned shed/house. I am not sure what it is, but, it looks pretty cool. The problem is that is quite difficult to position yourself in a way that will allow you to get a shot of the whole thing. So, I decided to take a set of vertical shots and stitch them later. Here is the result, after stitching about six shots, resulting in a 7000px x 4000px image.

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As I continued my trip, after about 1.2 miles I reach my “destination”. An Australian pine tree forest. It usually looks great in the morning; sometimes it is still foggy as the morning light peeks through. This was not one of those times. Once again, I took a few vertical shots to be stitched later; walking around without a wide angle is very uncomfortable. And this is when I realized that my Circular Polarizer filter is comfortably attached to my now broken wide angle lens, at home. But anyway, here is one of the shots.

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And now it’s time to get back. You know how they say that the way back always seems shorter? Wrong! Not for this guy. I thought quite a few times I may have lost the trail, this is how long they way back seemed to me. On my way back, without stopping, I took some randoms as I was power walking. Here is the one shot I liked.
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And, while driving back, I did stop to check Lake Wauberg. And yes, the light was impossibly harsh and the water level was surprisingly low.

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