Naples Botanical Garden - A Personal Project

Every year, my fiancé, Jeff, and I take a road trip to Florida in February to visit his parents.  It's right on time too, because February is right about the time when I can't stand another minute of the freezing cold temperatures in DC.  This year was particularly frustrating though, as we had some record lows, and lots of hyped up snow events.

Florida was a welcome escape, and I had to opportunity to spend a day photographing at the Naples Botanical Garden with Jeff and his mom and dad!  Jeff's mom and I share a love of photography, so that makes visiting them even more of a treat!

I started out the day with my 60mm macro lens, because the light was really harsh, so I wanted to get in close on some shady spots where I could use the sunlight to my advantage like here, where I positioned myself to backlight the petals of these flowers.

 Here I took advantage of mother nature's best light modifier, a puffy passing cloud!

Jeff often assists me on engagement and portrait shoots by holding reflectors, scrims and lights.  He also carries bags like a champ!  He's even been picking up my backup camera every now and then!  Who knows, maybe he will work his way up to associate photographer!

One of my favorite parts of the day was the butterfly house!  I had to be pretty patient waiting for these guys to settle, but it was worth the wait!

I even got to see the food chain in action, as this lizard made a meal out of one of the butterflies!

I was fascinated by the defense system on this tree trunk!  This is one of the reasons that it's so much fun to shoot macro!  I see so many things that I wouldn't normally notice!

There are a ton of exotic looking birds in South Florida, and though this isn't one of them, I thought he was pretty cool, and he was close enough for me to shoot with my relatively short 70-200mm zoom lens, which is my workhorse for weddings and portraits, but doesn't really do that well for birds and wildlife!  I discovered that while getting closer than I wanted to to an alligator, but that's a story for another post!

I managed to grab this shot just before the wind grabbed the little purple flower!

And these were just too cute, and in perfect open shade!  As you might have guessed, my favorite color is purple!

I think my favorite shot of the day was this one though.  The pattern and the light caught my eye, and I may just have to hang a print of it. . . if I can find some wall space!

Thanks for visiting!  Check back soon for some of my favorite studio portraits from the past few months!

All text and images ©Jennifer Tallman, Magnuson Photographic, All Rights Reserved.

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