Photography Field Trip Opportunities

Photography Field Trip Suggestions

We are very lucky that in our area there are a multitude of opportunities and locations for photography field trips.

First on the list are the outings planned by our own club. Last Saturday six of our members participated in the Clark Gardens trip and a good time was had by all. We will be showing a sampling of our shots at the upcoming meeting this Monday, June 23rd.

The next outing on the schedule will be Light Painting on July 20th at 8pm. The location for that trip has not been decided upon as of yet.

Our Field Trip chairman, Tracy Del Favero, has told me that in the future she will be posting our field trips on Facebook, our club web site, http://www.trinityartsphotoclub.com, and will send out a reminder via our competition site prior to the trip. We will also remind you at the meeting prior to the trip.

Other than our club trips, there are meetup groups all over the metroplex. To access them, just go to http://www.info@meetup.com. You will see all the different cities and meetup groups listed there and their planned workshops and field trips.

An example that I noticed as I wrote this was “Super moon over Dallas at Margaret Hunt Bridge”. I definitely wish I had taken notice and signed up for that one. There are new events each week.

If you are shy about joining a meetup group by yourself, call one of your Trinity Arts Photo Club buddies, or mention at a meeting and see who you can get to join you.

And lastly, I would encourage you be proactive and plan your own field trip. Last January, on the spur of the moment I gathered a group of ten together to shoot the Fort Worth Stock Show. We really had a good time.

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Raptors

On the last Saturday in May, I had the opportunity to take photos at the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center Photo Day.  The Blackland Prairie Raptor Center is dedicated to environmental preservation through public education and the conservation of birds of prey and wildlife in their natural habitat.  Blackland Prairie Raptor Center’s birds of prey have many years of experience introducing children and adults to the world of raptors.  These hawks, owls and falcons are well trained, and with the assistance of BPRC education specialists, show people what makes them an important part of our environment. Unfortunately, these birds cannot go back into the wild due to previous injury, human imprinting or both.  You can see more about the center at http://www.bpraptorcenter.org/.

The Photo Day was held at Brockdale Park in Lucas Texas where the center is currently building a new facility.  The park is northeast of Dallas on Lake Lavon.  Other than a few chiggers and other biting insects that were in the park that day, it was an enjoyable experience.   The center had most of its birds available to show at the event and we (the group of photographers at the event) learned many things about each bird as they were brought out for photographs.  I want to thank the center staff and volunteers that gave up their morning and helped out during the event.

The center showed its birds in three areas of the park so that photographers could take images of different birds in different locations with different backgrounds.    The birds were beautiful and majestic, regardless of their size.  We were able to get relatively close to the birds in order to get portrait type photos and also were able to take photos of them in more natural habitat.  It was a challenge to get the eyes sharp and the details in the feathers along with a pleasant background.  Unfortunately, it was a gray sky morning, so the images of the birds when held aloft had an uninteresting background.  But I tried to make the best of it by adding some texture, including feathers of the birds themselves to make the background a little more interesting.