Glaring turtle?

I was up early, what better thing to do than to go down by the water and see if the Osprey or eagles were out and about. When I got by the water the Osprey was just leaving after a catch of fresh fish for their morning breakfast, the ducks weren't out, the herons were starting to come out, the cormarants were on the log where the eagles like to roost. But no eagles.

Upon returning to the car, movement caught my eye on the ground it was a turtle, box or snapper I couldn't tell for sure, it retracted its head into its shell. Me being the person I am zoomed my camera set my flash (he was in the shade), and snapped.

When I got home I blew them up on my screen and I can swear that mr. turtle is glaring at me. I disturbed him, and if I had come closer to him I probably would have gotten bit. His shell was about 6 inches or more across, and I wasn't in the mood to find out if he was a snapper or not.

I promptly left. I wasn't having much luck anyway. I was just thankful mr. snake stayed away this morning or I would have left a lot faster than I did.

I did find out one thing, my polarizer filter does not work good in morning light and shade. I had a hard time shooting (even though it was daylight) with the angle of the sun the way it was. I took my filter off and my shots improved. If I was shooting directly into the sky it was fine to have on, but anywhere else the images turned out dark.

These are the things I'm learning, a lot by trial and error, but I have some shots that turned out much better yesterday, thanx to having hte filter on. Problem is that there are times when shooting I go from daylight to shade trying to get a shot, I don't have time to take it off....this is where a second body would come in handy.

I'm still trying to play with my new filter, as a second filter, polarizer, on my camera is something I am going to have to get used to....

But for this one, popping a flash up did the trick and gave me a nice shot of a turtle who is glaring at me, because I disturbed him.

Until next time
God Bless