Ronald Kotinsky Photography

Ronald Kotinsky Photography I am a self-taught landscape photographer from Tampa Bay, Florida. My passion for photography blosso

Red, white, and blue painted by a Florida thunderstorm. 🇺🇸I didn't plan this palette. The reddish glow across the top of...
07/26/2026

Red, white, and blue painted by a Florida thunderstorm. 🇺🇸

I didn't plan this palette. The reddish glow across the top of the anvil is the last scraps of sunset light scattering through high-altitude clouds in the storm's canopy. The clean patch of blue on the lower left is a genuine break in the deck, already sliding into night. And that stark white column threading down the middle is a full lightning channel, caught mid-strike on a 1.3-second exposure. Three colors, three completely different atmospheric processes, one frame; a few seconds either direction and this composition doesn't exist.

This is one of those images where the sky did all the work; my job was just showing up, dialing in the right shutter speed, and not blinking.

This one's available as a fine art print at rkotinsky.com — details in the comments. 👇

📍 Plant City, Florida


This bolt found its way to the ground right in front of me tonight in Plant City. ⚡Look closely at the shape of it. Ever...
07/26/2026

This bolt found its way to the ground right in front of me tonight in Plant City. ⚡
Look closely at the shape of it. Everything at the top is the visible record of the stepped leader: an invisible, negatively charged channel that descends from the cloud in short, forking jumps, feeling out multiple possible paths to the ground at once. Most of those branches never make it. The one that finally connects with an upward streamer rising from the ground (or a tree, a building, whatever's tallest and best grounded) completes the circuit and that's the single, blinding-white channel you see running straight down into the trees. That final stroke, called the return stroke, travels back up the completed path at roughly a third the speed of light, which is why it's the brightest part of the whole structure by far.
The lavender glow in the clouds is the last of dusk's ambient light scattering through the storm's moisture — that window only lasts a few minutes before the sky goes fully black and you lose the cloud structure behind the bolt entirely.
📍 Plant City, Florida

Canon 5DSR - 3.2 sec, f/8, ISO 500



The sky over Plant City looked like it was lit from within tonight. 🔥These are mammatus clouds — from the Latin mamma, "...
07/26/2026

The sky over Plant City looked like it was lit from within tonight. 🔥

These are mammatus clouds — from the Latin mamma, "breast" or "udder" — and they're one of the more misunderstood formations in storm photography. People assume anything this dramatic must mean severe weather is incoming. It's actually closer to the opposite: mammatus almost always form on the trailing edge of a thunderstorm, as pockets of cold, saturated air sink out of the base of the anvil into warmer, drier air below. By the time you see this pattern, the storm has usually already done its damage and is on its way out.

What made tonight's version special was the timing. The sun was low enough to rake directly across the underside of every pouch, turning them molten gold against a sky that was already going dark blue and purple behind them. That window — mammatus structure holding and the light angle being right — usually lasts just a few minutes before either the clouds dissipate or the color shifts. I had maybe three or four frames in that light before it was gone.

I stopped down to f/7.1 to hold detail across the full depth of the formation, at 1/10 sec to soak in enough of that fading gold without losing the texture in the pouches.

This is exactly the kind of window I chase storms for.

📍 Plant City, Florida

FOX 13's Paul Dellegatto Matt Devitt Weather Meteorologist Nash Rhodes

Agree/Disagree? Not everything needs to be optimized.That’s usually where the best decisions come from anyway, not overt...
07/25/2026

Agree/Disagree? Not everything needs to be optimized.

That’s usually where the best decisions come from anyway, not overthinking, just recognizing what feels right.

Some things can just exist because you like them.

Because they make a moment feel a little better, or a day feel a little lighter.

Choose "https://www.rkotinsky.com" because you connect to it, and that's enough.

https://www.rkotinsky.com

Every July and August, Swallow-tailed Kites (Elanoides forficatus) abandon their solitary nesting territories and begin ...
07/25/2026

Every July and August, Swallow-tailed Kites (Elanoides forficatus) abandon their solitary nesting territories and begin congregating in communal pre-migration roosts — sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds of birds packed into a single stand of trees. Scientists believe these gatherings serve multiple purposes: safety in numbers, social bonding, and possibly information sharing about food sources and migration timing.

What you're seeing here is the morning launch — adults peeling off into the sky while this year's juveniles, still showing that soft gray-brown plumage, hold tight a little longer. Within weeks, every single one of these birds will be gone — 5,000 miles south to South America, not returning until next spring.

I was there at first light. Worth every minute.

📷 Canon EOS R5 Mark II | EF 600mm f/4L IS III USM | 1/2500s | f/8 | ISO 800

📍 Florida


07/25/2026

How Swallow-Tailed Kites Skim the Water

The Swallow-tailed Kite (Elanoides forficatus) is one of a small number of raptors that drinks, bathes, and even occasionally sn**ches prey entirely on the wing — never landing, never breaking stride.

The Approach

The bird reads the water from altitude, then commits to a long, shallow descent — wings angled back, body nearly horizontal, forked tail slightly closed to reduce drag and tighten the glide path. The approach is deceptively fast; they aren't floating down, they're coming in hot and controlled simultaneously.

The Strike

At the last instant the wings snap upward into a deep V — almost fully vertical above the body — which acts as an airbrake while simultaneously keeping the wingtips clear of the water. The feet drop forward, talons open or loosely cupped, and the breast and lower belly make brief contact with the surface. For a drinking pass the bill dips and scoops in the same motion. For a bathing pass the chest drags the surface, sending up the characteristic spray arc you see trailing behind the bird.

The Exit

Recovery is immediate and effortless. The wings drive downward, the tail fans open for stability, and the bird is climbing again within a body length of contact. There's no struggle, no scramble — the whole sequence looks like it costs them nothing.

Why They Do It This Way

Kites are built for the air, not the ground. Their legs are short and weak relative to other raptors — they have little business walking around. Everything they need — food, water, nesting material — is acquired in flight. The skimming behavior is the logical extension of a body plan optimized entirely for aerial life.

The best kite skimming action I have ever photographed in one outing. The hot dry weather made the kites very thirsty gi...
07/24/2026

The best kite skimming action I have ever photographed in one outing. The hot dry weather made the kites very thirsty giving multiple opportunities to photograph the action. More to come!

ers

⛽⚡ Even the storm needed a fill-up!That Shell station just kept pumping gas like there wasn't a multi-branched lightning...
07/24/2026

⛽⚡ Even the storm needed a fill-up!

That Shell station just kept pumping gas like there wasn't a multi-branched lightning bolt reaching down from the heavens directly behind it. Florida drivers: completely unbothered. Florida gas stations: apparently rated for direct strikes. Meanwhile I'm standing in the parking lot with a tripod, no umbrella, and the distinct feeling that Mother Nature was shopping for the cheapest premium in Hillsborough County.

10/10 would not recommend topping off your tank during this particular storm cell. ⚡🚗💨

📷 Canon EOS R5 | RF15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 19mm | 10 sec | f/8 | ISO 125

📍 TAMPA - FL

This is what a "kettle" of Swallow-tailed Kites (Elanoides forficatus) looks like from below. 🪁The term "kettle" comes f...
07/23/2026

This is what a "kettle" of Swallow-tailed Kites (Elanoides forficatus) looks like from below. 🪁

The term "kettle" comes from raptor watching; it describes a group of birds circling together on a rising column of warm air, called a thermal, rather than flapping constantly under their own power. Riding a thermal costs almost no energy, which matters a lot when you're about to attempt one of the longest migrations of any North American raptor. This kettle formed just minutes after I photographed hundreds of these same kites roosting in dead trees below — they'd lifted off the roost and were circling together before scattering to feed.

Look closely and you'll see the field marks that make this species unmistakable: crisp white head and underparts, jet-black wings and back, and that impossibly long, deeply forked tail — the most distinctive silhouette of any raptor in North America. That tail isn't just for show. It acts like a rudder, letting the kite twist, bank, and roll in midair with a precision that puts most other birds of prey to shame. Swallow-tailed Kites do almost everything on the wing — they sn**ch dragonflies and wasps out of the air, pluck lizards and nestlings from the treetops without ever landing, and even drink by skimming the water's surface in flight.

Freezing a scene like this meant a fast shutter to stop the wingbeats of over a dozen birds moving independently at different distances, while still holding enough depth of field to keep birds at multiple depths reasonably sharp.

📍 Central Florida

Plant City Storming tonight. ⚡This cumulonimbus tower was lit from within by a distant cloud-to-ground strike, while sta...
07/23/2026

Plant City Storming tonight. ⚡

This cumulonimbus tower was lit from within by a distant cloud-to-ground strike, while stars still held on in the clear sky above it — that split-second where a calm night and a full-blown storm share the same frame. A 4-second exposure let the ambient light and the lightning both settle into one shot.

📍 Plant City, FL

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