Four Days for Florida, and A Proposal on the Beach

Halloween day this year saw my wife and I heading south just as the snow stuck to the Alaskan roads, with a four day window to do a photo shoot for my cousin Melody. She didn't know a thing about this shoot, which made things double the fun, but unfortunately for us my job situation is such that I don't get time off, thus I must emphasize that we had only a four day window between my shifts. :cry

Day one we spent traveling. 20-some hours later we dropped our bags in a very cozy room a couple hundred feet from the Gulf of Mexico, on Fort Meyers Beach, Florida. We spent a bit of our time plotting and conniving with Melody's boyfriend, Mason, and then without the nap we so dearly wanted, we forced ourselves to make the best of the daylight, and headed into the woods at Lovers Key State Park.

I had a much easier time than normal catching this guy with a lens from Borrow Lenses, although I still wasn't quite good enough to catch him diving for fish, and I had ample opportunity.




The Key was teeming with lizards, so we walked slow and made plenty of stops to catch photos of them.




At one point while shooting lizards we were a bit startled by some hissing snorts coming from the water nearby. The foliage was blocking our view of the source of the noise, but climbing out on a mangrove got me a view of this guy, whom I hadn't noticed even though we were about ten feet apart.




The snorting seemed to be coming from a large, fat, just barely floating animal that I could only presume was a Manatee, having never seen one before (they're pretty rare here in Alaska :thumb). I didn't get a good shot through the leaves, but just wait... For now, enjoy this butterfly...




A short while later we walked through a part of the mosquito kingdom, and as they were averse to trespassers and showed superior numbers and willpower, we hurried through and wrapped up our tour of the key. On our way back by the manatees, though, we found that they had moved right in next to shore, so it wasn't too hard to catch the shot I had missed earlier. Not that it's very special... but now at least I know what a manatee looks like! :rofl




The following day (Day 3) we again packed all that we could into our few hours, and threw down our money for a jetski tour that was very kind in allowing us to drop in spur-of-the-moment where others turned us down. We headed out on the ocean and around the island, where we shaded eyes and stared around until we found the main attraction, then we hung out and snapped some photos:




Chalk up another animal I've never seen in the wild before! Unfortunately I'm a little wimp and left my 40D safely in the waterproof lowepro, so all my shots from here are taken one-handed with a wide angle gopro. Still, I'm happy to have them!




At length, these graceful creatures porpoised off into the distance, and we wrapped up our tour and headed back to our room to don our disguises.




So earlier I mentioned that my cousin Melody, who is like a sister to me, doesn't know we're here to take pictures of her. In light of this, we prepared separate identities which looked nothing like ourselves. We forced ourselves NOT to take photos of our disguises, knowing that there's a good chance we'll do this again with our other friends, but suffice to say when we left our room again, we were different people.


And now for the real adventure!


We found Mason and Melody thoroughly enjoying a romantic walk down the beach.




Here I have to congratulate Mason for really pouring on the charm and keeping Melody's attention entirely on him. He did such a good job, on a crowded beach there's not even anybody else in the pictures!




And then, exactly according to Plan A, at the perfect time and place, and with sunset colors exploding in the fading sky, he whirled her around, and set the mood...




... And stopped her in her tracks!




(She said yes :thumb)




And then, to wrap up the evening and to make the story even better for the grandchildren, Mason promptly chucked his phone into the ocean. There it goes, right out of his pocket! (I botched the focus on this one... probably a side effect of the intense excitement...)




And as day three wrapped up and the excitement wound down we introduced ourselves in our disguises to Melody, who by that time had started looking around trying to spot us. Somehow she KNEW we'd be there shooting pictures when this moment came, which is in fact a large part of why she was completely blown away when it happened here! We stowed the cameras and spent the evening enjoying our last few hours in Florida with the affianced lovers, and then after a short nap we were off again, and flying back toward the frozen north, to arrive a bit less than a day later, just in time to hit the sack and get ready for work in the morning.

It's a good life. :thumb