All posts by Ed Rosack

Our Alaskan vacation – Ch. 2: Glaciers

Alaska, Cameras and Photography, Cruise Ships, Must do list, , , , , ,

This is the second installment of our Alaskan adventure, where I’ll show you the glaciers we visited. Chapter One is here and describes the wildlife we saw on our trip.

Our ship, the MS Westerdam left Seattle on Sunday, September 6th and headed north to Glacier Bay National Park where we arrived on Tuesday.  Glacier Bay was one of the main reasons that we picked this itinerary and we were looking forward to seeing it.  The morning started out beautifully, with a very nice sunrise.

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While cruising in Glacier Bay, we visited Lamplugh, Johns Hopkins, and Marjorie glaciers.  Several cruise ships had been unable to reach the Johns Hopkins glacier this season due to ice, so apparently we were lucky.  Here’s a panorama I made from the 4th deck of the Westerdam at Johns Hopkins glacier.

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One of the first things we noticed is that the color of the water close to the glaciers is a very distinct greenish blue.  According to this article (sorry – no longer available) on wired.com (which also has some stunning photos of glaciers taken from space) the color is due to the very fine silt that is ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the water.  This “glacial flour” can be very reflective and turns the water this color.

At Marjorie glacier, I was in the right place at the right time to photograph the ice calving.  Here’s the middle photo of a three photo sequence (you can see the others when you visit the gallery for this post).

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When we exited Glacier Bay, we headed for Juneau where we also visited Mendenhal Glacier, among other things.

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When we were back on board in Juneau, the captain made an announcement about gale force winds and 40 foot seas that were expected off of Sitka, which was supposed to be our next stop.  To avoid this weather he decided instead to cruise through Tracy Arm fjord, where we spent all of the next day (Thursday, September 10th).  Tracy Arm is a truly spectacular place that isn’t often visited by cruise ships as large as the MS Westerdam.  We were able to get in there since our Alaskan waters pilot was very familiar with the place.  It was amazing to watch the ship maneuver in such tight waters — at times we were within 30 yards or so of cliff walls and we must have seen hundreds of waterfalls.  There was quite a bit of fog and haze, which made photography difficult, but I did manage to get some good shots.  Here’s one example of the scenery:

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I also put my Canon G9 on a Gorillapod, mounted it to the balcony rail and made some movies. Here’s a time lapse video (one frame per second) that I made in Tracy Arm. It has a sequence of clouds forming and moving along with the ship.  We saw this same phenomenon several times that day.  Was it perhaps the great spirit of the northwest accompanying us on our tour?

That night after exiting Tracy Arm fjord, our course carried us back into the Pacific Ocean in order to get to Ketchikan.  It was still pretty rough with about 25 foot seas.  We had a great view of the ocean from the second deck during dinner.  It was like eating on a roller coaster!  The next morning, when we arrived in Ketchikan, we had seaweed on our 6th deck balcony!

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You can view the rest of my glacier photos in two places.  I added a set of glacier photos here in my photo galleries.   You can also look at all of our Alaska photos together in a single time ordered set here on Flickr.  Clicking on one of the photos above will also take you to Flickr, where if you click on the “all sizes” button, you can see the photo in a higher res version.

Coming next:  “North to Alaska, Ch. 3: Miscellaneous photos.  I’ll also probably wrap up with a Chapter 4: Photo hints.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

North to Alaska, Ch. 1: Intro and Wildlife

Alaska, Cameras and Photography, Cruise Ships, Must do list, , , , ,

Lynn and I have talked for a long time about taking a cruise to Alaska.  Since we’re celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary this year, we finally decided to book on Holland America’s MS Westerdam.  We did this early in the year and it seemed like forever before we departed Seattle on September 6th for Glacier Bay, Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, and Victoria.  We spent some time before boarding with our good friends, the Sullivans who cruised with us in the next stateroom with a shared balcony.

It was our first visit to the US northwest and Alaska, and we saw spectacular things that we’ve never seen before except on TV.  Coming up with words to do justice to what we experienced will be hard.  We came home already talking about plans for our next trip. I hope I’ll be able to share some of the feelings of being there through the photographs I made.  Although far away and expensive, this vacation most definitely qualifies for the “Must do list” .

Instead of a day by day description, I’ll break this up into subjects.  This will help me organize my editing efforts.  I’ll talk first about the wildlife.  We spent a bit of time on the balcony and were rewarded on occasion with whale sightings, like this killer whale.

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North Pacific Killer whale from the MS Westerdam; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/320 sec at f / 5.6

We also saw humpback whales and I was grateful that Chuck loaned me his 80 – 400mm lens, since these were quite a distance away – every millimeter helped.

In Juneau, Sully and I went on a “Photo Safari by Land and Sea”, which was a guided whale encounter and glacier trek run by Gastineau Guiding. Our guide  Rick, and boat captain Gary, were both extremely knowledgeable and helpful in finding whales, seals, and sea lions.  Also eagles were quite abundant, feasting on the remains of the salmon run, which was still ongoing although according to locals slower than it had been.  Here’s a few photos:

Breaching humpback whale near Juneau
Breaching humpback; In the full res version, the two white dots in tree to the upper left, behind the whale are bald eagles.; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/1600 sec at f / 5.6

The whale in the first photo is an adult female. Her calf was also with her.  He/she seemed to jump upside down or do barrel rolls most of the time. It’s hard for me to imagine they were not having fun doing this.

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Humpback whale calf breeching; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/1250 sec at f / 5.6

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Humbolt Sea lion and gull watch two male Sea Lions arguing; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/1250 sec at f / 5.6

Rick also took us to Mendenhal Glacier in Juneau, where there were reports of black bear sightings.  Sure enough, as we descended to the lake by the glacier, a bear was seen napping under a bush.  I didn’t get a good photo, but here’s one that Sully made.  The bear had more sense than us.  It was sheltered from the rain taking a nap.  We were out in the rain trying to make pictures of it.  When we got back to the ship, another couple we ate lunch with told us about encountering bears on a different path than the one we took at Mendenhal.  I wonder how common they are?

MS_2009_09_09_0174

Bear in the bushes (photo by Martin Sullivan); Canon EOS 40D,135 mm,1/30 sec at f / 5.6

Clicking on one of the photos above will take you to Flickr, where you can see it in a higher res version. I made many more photos than will fit on a blog page and I’ll post them two different ways.  You can look at them all together as a time ordered single set here on Flickr.  I’ll also post them as galleries on my website, organized by subject:

  • Alaska wildlife photos are here.
  • Alaska glacier photos are here.
  • Alaska other photos are here.

Coming next:  “North to Alaska, Ch. 2: Glaciers.”  I’ll also collect my hints for fellow Alaskan vacation photographers into a single post to follow.

©2009, Ed Rosack and Martin Sullivan. All rights reserved.

Back home from Alaska

Alaska, Cruise Ships, , ,

Lynn and I are so fortunate.  We’re home again after a wonderful vacation! Round trip, we traveled 5,092 statute miles by air to / from Seattle and 1930 nautical miles by ship, as far as Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Along the way we visited our good friends, the Sullivans. We saw beautiful sunsets and sunrises, glaciers, mountain vistas, humpback and killer whales, sea lions, harbor seals, otters, many birds including bald eagles, a bear blob, and several types of fish including spawning salmon. We saw the sites and shopped in Seattle, Juneau, Ketchikan, and Victoria, panned for gold and went to salmon bake dinners. The Holland America MS Westerdam is a superb ship, with a fine crew, although we were also thrilled by roller coaster like rides through gale force winds and 25+ foot seas.

Photography wise, it was a target rich environment, but the weather was mostly overcast with fog, low clouds and frequent rain. I took too much photo gear, but since I had it with me, I used most of it. I made thousands of photographs and my friend Sully made thousands more. Many of these are bracketed or panorama sets. I plan to go through them, choose the selects, and post process them as time permits. Hopefully there will be a few that are worth sharing here on this blog and in some galleries. I think that the next three or four of my posts will all be Alaska related. I also want to go through and create a photo book about our trip.

But we just got home, we’re tired, and we have to go to work tomorrow. For now, here’s one photo I really like.  We saw this rainbow on our first day at sea, about an hour after leaving Seattle.

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Photographic "level of detail" -continued

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, Technique, VARIOUS,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about level of detail in photos and how to best present it on the web.

In an interesting temporal coincidence, I ran across a post (no longer on line) on Jay Kinghorn’s blog, where he talks about Seadragon , which is Microsoft’s tool for creating deep-zoom images on-line.  This looks like it would be one way to present high res images that you can zoom into and experience the sensation I described.  Another link in his article leads to the Zoomify website .

Since I don’t think I can do everything I need to with Seadragon on my Mac, I took a look at Zoomify.

Zoomify Express seems to offer the capability I think we need to show photographic level of detail.  It is a free zoom and pan authoring, publishing and viewing application and has downloads for both Mac and Windows available.  It also makes it difficult to download the high res version of the photo.  I didn’t have time tonight to figure out how to embed the Zoomify window directly into my posts, but that is something I want to do.

Here’s the result (sorry – no longer available), using the same photograph of a gator that I posted before.

What do you think?

Canaveral National Seashore

Canaveral Nat. Seashore, INSIDE FLORIDA, , , , , , ,

Intro / Description

Three of us from the Photographic Interest Group went over to the Canaveral National Seashore yesterday to explore. We entered at the north end near Turtle mound. We could only go about 2 or 3 miles into the park, the road was closed after that.
CNS_-1

CNS is a national park located on the east coast of Florida, south of New Smyrna Beach.  It’s a very scenic place and there are many activities available.  The surf was very high yesterday (due to Hurricane Bill?) and there were quite a few people out taking advantage of it.
CNS_-4

In the short time we were there, we also saw people fishing:
CNS_-2

and canoeing:
CNS_-3

There’s a lot of wildlife in the area, but the number of people here at certain times of the year (like yesterday), probably makes it difficult to see much of the animal population, unless you’re here when the people aren’t. We did see some wildlife – here’s a CNS Anole:
CNS_-9

And a sandpiper:
CNS_-10

We also stopped by the Eldora Statehouse, which is a historic example of earlier life along the Mosquito Lagoon.
CNS_-8

Speaking of mosquitoes, make sure you bring some bug spray – they were pretty vicious at times.

Photo Hints

Bring what you have. I don’t like to take my expensive DSLRs into the hot sun near the ocean for long periods of time, but you might if you’re careful. Shorebirds can be small (and fast) – so to get prize winning bird photos here, you’ll need to be lucky or a very dedicated and good photographer willing to forgo other activities. It might be a good place to practice "birds in flight" photos in your spare time – Pelicans often cruise down the shoreline. If the surfs up, that can be fun to watch / photograph too.

One non-photo hint:  Be careful where you park.  The rangers are rather zealous about enforcing the parking regulations.  Parking on the grass is not allowed – even when it isn’t specifically posted.

Summary

The beach is a nice place to take some photographs and CNS is a very nice beach. We originally went there to explore a new place as a bird photography location.  We didn’t find many birds, but we only stayed for a short time. I wonder if other times of the year would be more productive?  The surfing would have been an excellent photo opportunity if I had been prepared for it (beach clothes, longer lens, etc).

If you’re here to visit the beach, bring a camera – over the course of of your visit, interesting photo opportunities will present themselves.

I have a few additional photos of this visit posted on Flickr .

Website: http://www.nps.gov/CANA/index.htm
Address: Visitor’s Center
7611 S Atlantic Ave, New Smyrna Beach, Florida
(386) 428-3384
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating: Come for the beach – take some pictures too.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Photographic "Level of Detail"

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, Technique, VARIOUS,

I haven’t seen this discussed in the photographic blogosphere so I thought I’d comment on it.  One reason may be that it is difficult to illustrate given the photo posting resolution that we often limit ourselves to on the web.

You can experience a very good example of what I’m trying to write about here when you visit an Ansel Adams print exhibition in person.  For instance, viewing his "Winter Sunrise " from across the room, the print looks well composed and shows the overall scene of some mountains with areas of light and dark.  Depending on how far away you are, most details are obscured by distance.  As you slowly come closer, the details start to emerge.  The closer you come, the greater the detail, until when you are standing right next to the print, you can see all sorts of things you didn’t see from across the room – subtle clouds, interesting light on the horse and trees, etc.  The emergence of detail draws you into his photographs.

This experience – the discovery and exploration of a photograph is quite interesting and pleasant and is hardly ever possible on the web.  On the web, we get one look at a photo – the low res "across the room look".  The high res, up close version, where the subtle details emerge, is saved away on our hard drives, mostly due to worries about theft of our copyrighted, intellectual property (photographs).

The "level of detail" effect is something we all should strive for in our captures, prints and displays.  When we do this well, there are a myriad of things for the viewer to discover as they view our prints.  And while it is easiest to observe in a well made print, we should also try to make it an interesting thing on the web.  When we achieve a good "level of detail" capture, how do we show it off?  Here’s a couple of recommendations:

1.  Study examples by the masters and and use them as we strive for this effect.  Use it to draw in our viewers and keep them coming in for more.  Print our work and hang it up where people can see it.

2.  When we have a nice photo with some good detail and want to present it on the web, present the normal low res web version, along with a high res detail insert or two, like this:
Gator - whole print
Gator photo: "Across the room view"

Gator - partial crop
Gator photo: "Middle of the room view"

Gator - close in detail
Gator photo: Close in detail view.

3.  I haven’t tried this, but another solution might be a video of the photo using a "Ken Burns" type of special effect.  A "zoom in" motion video seems like an ideal way to showcase this type of photo and protect the intellectual property that everyone seems so worried about losing.  Does anyone know of a ready made solution already out there?

P.S. There is also a very interesting inverse effect to what I’m talking about here.  You will really enjoy visiting an exhibition of Ansel Adams prints at the same gallery with paintings by Monet .  Monet understood the human mind’s ability to "fill in the details".  If you approach many of his paintings from across the room they will look very real at first and they gradually dissolve into impressions in the middle distance and paint strokes when you are very close!  This is a wonderful contrast to Ansel Adams prints, don’t you think?

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Return to Black Point

INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, , , , , , , , ,

The last time we were at Black Point Wildlife drive was back in May (https://edrosack.com/2009/05/16/birds-scarce-at-black-point-wildlife-drive-water-levels-down/) when water levels were down and there were very few birds anywhere around.

Yesterday, we made a return trip to see what the place is like after three months of almost daily rain in the Central Florida area.

We arrived right at sunrise, which was very pretty.
Sunrise reflections

Water levels are much improved: areas that were dry in May are once again filled.  However, we were disappointed by how few birds there were in the area.  My theory on this (which I didn’t come up with until the drive home) is that the severe drought in the area happened during nesting season and forced birds to build nests in other locations.  The nesting season lasts for several months and is just now ending, so it was premature for us to expect to see many birds back at Black Point until chicks have fledged.

I did manage to get nice photos of a green heron:
Green Heron in tree

And a Black-crowned night-heron:
Black-crowned Night-Heron

There were also some unusual flowers (1/14/2010 update – I think this is a “Spotted Bee Balm”):
Flower

And some very large (about 2 – 3 inches), horror show type spiders.  How would you like to walk through this web in the dark?
Wolf spider?

So, even without a large bird population it was still a nice trip with plenty to interest the Photography Interest Group.  And… there’s always Cracker Barrel on the way home!

Animal Kingdom Update – The Lodge

INSIDE FLORIDA, Theme Parks, , , , , , , ,

Intro / Description

You may remember my post from May about Disney’s Animal Kingdom .  Disney also has the Animal Kingdom Lodge co-located with the park.  It is an African style lodge / hotel with over 700 rooms and several restaurants.  Lynn and I enjoyed our visit to Animal Kingdom so much that when we heard about the Lodge, we decided to go to the Boma Restaurant there for brunch on our anniversary in mid June.

Rooms at the Lodge overlook an area modeled after an African savanna, where 30 animal species roam about.  There are also several viewing areas where guests can walk a short distance out into the savannas to  observe what’s going on.  When we were there, we saw Giraffes:
Giraffes

Zebras:
Zebras

Wildebeests:
Wildebeests

Gray Pelicans:
Pelicans

And African Spoonbills:
African Spoonbills

Photo Hints

For this "expedition, I traveled light, took only my Canon G9, and shot hand held. A little more reach would have been welcome. I think you could bring and use a tripod – I didn’t see any signs prohibiting their use. We were there in the heat of the morning – about 11 am. Most of the animals had more sense than us and were out of sight somewhere cool. If you go, take the weather into account, it will certainly affect the animal behavior, as well as your comfort.

Summary

The breakfast at the Boma Restaurant was delicious and enjoyable. We also had fun wandering around the grounds afterward.

The Animal Kingdom Lodge is a unique experience. There is no where else in Central Florida that you can stay in the middle of an African savanna. Is it worth the premium over other hotels in the area? Since we didn’t stay in the Lodge, you will have to decide that on your own.

Website: http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/resorts/animal-kingdom-lodge/
Address: 2901 Osceola Parkway, Bay Lake, FL 32830
Telephone number:407-938-3000
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating: Best food at a zoo.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Black-Bellied Whistling-Ducks at Orlando Wetlands Park

INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, , , , ,

Happy Independence Day !

I was at Orlando Wetlands Park again this morning with a few friends and saw a bird that I hadn’t seen before, there or anywhere else that I remember.  Here’s a photograph:

Black-Bellied Whistling-Duck in flight

These birds were different from other ducks I’ve seen in that when we first saw them they were perched in trees.  Fortunately, I have a copy of iBird Plus loaded on my iPhone.  iBird is an interactive field guide to the birds of North America.  It has a search function and by entering the location (Florida), the shape (Duck-like) and the Color Primary (Brown) iBird presented me with a list of 16 possible birds out of the 914 birds in its North American Database that match these criteria.

Scrolling through the list, I read descriptions, and looked at drawings and three photos of the Black-Bellied Whistling-Duck that pretty much clinched the ID for me.  There’s also other info like range, similar birds, and links to Birdpedia.  If you are interested in birds or bird photography, you should take a look at this app.  I enjoy using it.

Here’s a few more photos from this morning.  First we had the bird, now here’s the bee:

Bee on flower

A spiderweb:

Spiderweb

And of course, what would Orlando Wetlands Park be without a gator photo:

Calm water gator

Copyright 2009, Ed Rosack.

Collectors News Uses my photo for their July 2009 cover!

Cameras and Photography, VARIOUS,

Unless you’ve investigated the links to Lynn’s blog and web page over on the right, you may not know that my lovely and intelligent wife is quite an expert and author on collectible trivets, stands, and sad irons. I was the "photographer in residence" for her A-Z Guide to Collecting Trivets published in 2004, and have helped her with various collectible photos since.  She has a second book in the works and I only have a few more photos that I owe her (although it seems that more trivets arrive in the mail all the time).

She has also written several articles in various other magazines that I’ve done the photos for, so I’ve had my photos published with her words several times before.

Recently, she was interviewed by Melody Amsel-Areili for the monthly magazine, Collectors News and the article appears as the July 2009 cover story.  You can download a PDF of the article from their site.  Lynn provided 8 of my photos for them to use with the article.  They used three, and I was very pleasantly surprised yesterday when she showed me her copy of the magazine with one more of my photos used as the cover image!

This particular photo is one that I took in February of 2003 with a Minolta DiMAGE 7H i camera.  In looking at it again after more than 6 years, I’m impressed by the quality of the output.  It does have quite a bit more noise than my modern cameras, but it’s easily handled in Lightroom.  I remember the 7Hi  very fondly: 5MP, with very SLR like controls, including a manual zoom ring and even raw output.  I tried using the raw files but the work flow tools were still pretty primitive back then, so I shot in jpg format.  I still have the camera, although I haven’t used it in quite a while.  This particular photo was of one of the walls in our home where Lynn had displayed a number of her trivets and stands.  We made it to include in her first book, but ended up using a different version that showed a larger portion of the wall.   I’m really glad this one eventually found such a nice use!

Here’s the photo used for the cover:
The Cover Photo