Love In A Puff
So named because the “puffs” have little black seeds with a white heart shaped spot inside.
Cafe Du Monde
On our way back from Florida we took a little detour through New Orleans. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there because we arrived in the afternoon and continued on the next morning. We had to stop at the famous Café du Monde for beignets and café au lait.
The Sweetest Thing
One of my favorite Florida pictures…..my girls, walking along the beach, and it almost looks like they’re holding hands. Which they are most certainly NOT! 😉
(Taken with my iPhone)
Boyfriend
I saw him at one of the wineries in Florida and it was love at first sight ♥ I just had to take him home with me!
Visiting Winter
I think if you ask my 10-year-old daughter Sara, she’d tell you that one of the highlights of our Florida vacation this past June was visiting Winter at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Clearwater, Florida….. and if you’ve seen the movie Dolphin Tale, you know who Winter is. (If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it, it’s such a good movie!)
After we got back from Florida, Sara asked to have the movie added to our Netflix queue so we could watch it again and see all the familiar places. A big part of it was filmed at Clearwater Marine Aquarium, although it had a facelift since then.
Winter, with her prosthetic tail
Two of the stars of the movie 😉
A still from the movie….
….and where it was filmed
Free shuttle busses take visitors from the Marine Aquarium to the movie exhibit (and back again of course!)
One of Winter’s prosthetics that she has outgrown
Yashica A
The third in my collection of vintage cameras is this Yashica A from about 1958.
It is a medium format 120 film TLR (twin lens reflex) camera and features twin Yashimar 80mm f/3.5 lenses. It has a Copal rim-set shutter, with shutter speeds of 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, and 1/300, and apertures of f3.5-f22. The picture size is 6x6cm.
With 120 film still available, and labs able to develop it, I decided to order a roll of film and try it out. As of this writing I have not yet finished the roll though, so stay tuned for the results. I hope!! This camera is manual everything and doesn’t even have a light meter (and I don’t have a hand-held one either) so it’s all pretty much guess work.
Please excuse the picture overload, I just couldn’t narrow it down any more 😉
This photo was taken by my daughter Sara when I let her play with my Nikon.
Dragonfly
Found this beauty when we drove through Everglades National Park one evening. It was worth getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while getting a few shots.
Airboat Tour Through The Everglades
That.Was.Awesome!!! Highly recommend it…and if you can afford it, take a private tour on a small airboat, not a big one like we did, because that would be even more awesome!
I left my Nikon safely in the car and all these pictures were taken with my iPhone
Our tour guide. He was funny….and knew all the alligators by name
Key West
Key West Lighthouse
View from the top of the Lighthouse
Southernmost Point in the continental US. There was a loooong line of people waiting to pose for pictures and I decided to just take a quick snap between tourists 😉
Florida Keys
We spent two days in the Florida Keys this past June. The first day we drove all the way to Key West, and on the second day we spent some time at Bahia Honda State Park at the beach.
The view from the top of Key West Lighthouse. The house with the red roof is the southernmost house in the US.
Cape Florida Lighthouse
What a lucky day it was when we visited Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne. They were just about to lock up the lighthouse for the day, but said that if we made it quick, we could climb to the top. I don’t think we ever climbed a lighthouse faster than this one and practically ran the 119 steps to the top. Melissa doesn’t like the tight spiraling lighthouse steps and chose to wait for us at the bottom.
First glimpse of the lighthouse above the trees
Ocean view from the top
Beach view
Walking away from the lighthouse, in search of the beach
Lighthouse view from the beach access
Kodak 1A Autographic Camera
The second in my collection of vintage cameras (although I don’t quite consider my Minolta XG-1 a vintage camera, as it’s from the early 80’s) is this foldable Kodak 1A Autographic camera.
From what I could find out, it was manufactured between 1917 and 1924 and the original list price was $21.
It takes autographic 116 film, which unfortunately isn’t available anymore.
f-32 at f-5.6
Ponce Inlet Lighthouse
Another beautiful Florida lighthouse (also called Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse)
Loved the stairs!
Beautiful view
Frangipani
BFFs….. Beautiful Florida Flowers. One of the very few flower photos I took during our Florida vacation last summer. Didn’t even use my macro lens.
Memorial Presbyterian Church, St. Augustine
Spotted this beautiful church when we were driving through St. Augustine and talked hubby into finding a place to park so we could walk to it and take some pictures. We only saw the outside of it though.
St. Augustine Lighthouse
Absolutely loved St. Augustine Lighthouse. Beautiful lighthouse, and beautiful grounds.
Couldn’t get the rest of the family to get into the shot with me, so it’s just a selfie (of some sort) in the “tourist mirror”. What a clever idea to put it there, don’t you think?
Did catch Mel unaware that she was going to be in my shot. (Evil mom!!)
View of the lighthouse keeper’s house from one of the lighthouse windows
View from the top
Another view from the top
And the awesome stairs, on our way back down
The Daily Click 