camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Tropical Park,my favorite park in the city of Miami, Florida. It was in 1979 that the park developed as a horse track and still today it hosts 36 shows a year at the Ronald Reagan Equestrian Center. Professional baseball players living in Miami and surrounding cities meet here at times and offer a free game that we all enjoy.

Interesting for me was to find out the park has a collection of stray cats who are fed by visitors. There is a place here that was set apart for Covid-19 vaccinations, I do not know if it is still as active as it was. Raccoons are common in that area. Egyptian geese visit the park during the winter months and they are easily seen near the lakes till April of each year. Plenty of birds to photograph but I never came to the park with birds in mind, I enjoy landscape photography more.

According to park authorities it is visited by nearly 1,500,000 visitors each year. It tends to be busy daily but during the weekends there are so many visitors that many times it is simply impossible to get parking. I believe it is a beautiful park and it could be one of the largests in the Miami area.
I made these images yesterday evening. It was partially cloudy at times, with a refreshing cool breeze from the northeast and when we had sunlight it was soft and beautiful like it usually is this time of year.

All images made with camera on a tripod. I used my Nikon D7000 with the 18-200 f3.5-5.6 AF-S, VR lens, first generation. While I almost always use center weighted metering for the sunset shot I selected spot metering. Some of the images required color balance.
I forgot to disable VR while the camera was on a tripod and instead all images I made look fine.

PoppieJ Loc: North Georgia

i like #3 can you tell us a little about the technique?

Irvingite Charles Loc: Irving, Tx

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

My pleasure. This is very easily done and a Neutral Density filter is very helpful although I did not use any. I used a small lens opening to allow a slow shutter speed, set the camera at a low ISO, camera on a tripod. The slow shutter speed combined with zooming in during the exposure produces the effect.
Take several shots, check the histogram for the exposure.

photophile Loc: Lakewood, Ohio, USA

PoppieJ Loc: North Georgia

do you start with an area in focus or end with an area in focus?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

angler Loc: StHelens England

Excellent set William.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

Nice-looking park--not too sure about the stray cats.

Toment Loc: FL, IL

Very nice. Thanks for sharing

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Very nice set William - I can see why you like that park!

mvetrano2 Loc: Commack, NY

nice

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

"do you start with an area in focus or end with an area in focus?"

ALWAYS focus first. When you zoom in is when you get the out of focus image superimposed. As a reminder, a steady camera on a tripod is a MUST.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Jaymatt wrote "Nice-looking park--not too sure about the stray cats."

Not too sure about what? They are there, they look healthy to me and many persons feed them with cat food only. What I am not so sure about it is if they have veterinarian services. There is another colony of stray cats in Key Biscayne behind a marina and those have veterinary services supplied by the city of Key Biscayne, perhaps the city of Miami, I am not sure.
My wife feeds stray cats of around our neighborhood that already know she feeds them. They are healthy and we have taken several of them to the veterinarian when needed especially to be neutered.