The storms have been pretty constant for the last week here in Ohio and have dumped a lot of rain. Now that it's the weekend I really wanted to get out of the house and do some shooting. I choose the Chippewa Trail, having been on it one time before, thinking it might prove interesting. This trail links up with Buckeye Woods which I frequent quite a bit so I was on somewhat familiar ground. Little did I know what was in store. The entire trail was more or less flooded. I had parked at the South entrance just off Chippewa Rd and began walking North. Before walking even 30 yards I was in water on the trail and there was a lot of splashing all around - carp everywhere.
We had some storms blow through Ohio this week and I was able capture a small portion of their fierceness. I stayed in the house for safety reasons but this limited what I was able to photograph with the camera mounted on a tripod and shooting through an open window. This was my first attempt at photographing a storm, much less lightening. I look forward to the next time when I'll do things a bit different and will post the results here.
I take a lot of walks at the various nature areas around home and always do so with a camera to capture wildlife, vegetation and landscapes. Not having the luxury to pick and choose what I might happen upon I figure to at least be ready to capture it before running the other way so I have a picture to back up my story. : ) Seriously though, this snake did not pose a problem, fortunately. I've read there are only three kinds of venomous snakes in Ohio and this isn't one of them. What surprised me when I checked it out at home is that this is a Blue Racer and are said to be extremely nervous and become very aggressive when an attempt is made to capture them. They will strike viciously and do so numerous times inflicting pain with their many teeth. They will even rapidly vibrate their tail amongst the leaves to simulate a rattle. Had this one done that I'd have run for sure because even though I was sure it wasn't venomous the rattle would have had me all confused. But, there was no problem here as I had no desire to capture it except with the lens. I was fishing at a pond in an area that looked like it hasn't seen a human in quite some time and spotted this creature about 4 feet away from where I stood. We were both right at the edge of the water keeping an eye on each other but minding our own business. I had the feeling this snake was just relaxing and soaking up the sun as it very loosely coiled itself around the reeds and moved just a little from time to time over the hour and half I fished that spot catching and releasing six bass and not quite landing three others before they got off the hook.
