Category Archives: VARIOUS

Kayaking at Haulover Canal

December 7, 2013Cameras and Photography, Haulover Canal, INSIDE FLORIDA, Kayaking, Merritt Island NWR, Must do listbirds, Dolphin, kayak, landscape, manatee, Pelican, people, wildlifeEd Rosack

If you search the web for “Haulover Canal” you’ll get many hits on fishing and kayaking there. I haven’t tried the fishing, so I can’t really comment on that, but I see people (and dolphins!) fishing there all the time so it’s probably pretty good. I have kayaked there many times and it’s a wonderful place to paddle and to photograph too.

Haulover Canal is in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and it’s part of the Intracoastal Waterway. It connects Mosquito Lagoon with the Indian River. You can launch your Kayak at the Bairs Cove boat ramp on the south side of the canal, but we use a better spot on the north-west end of the canal. Heading north along the Courtenay Parkway, take the first left after the bridge and follow the dirt road to the end where there’s a sandy bottom put in. There’s a fee to launch from Bairs Cove, but not from the north side.

From the put in, you can paddle west and circle around Mullet Head Island where there are usually quite a few birds. We’ve seen Redish Egrets, Great Egrets, Tri-colored and Great Blue Herons, Pelicans, Cormorants, etc. there. It is a protected nesting area, though – so you’re not allowed to get too close.

Handsome Pelican: From my kayak, near Mullet Head Island (Olympus EM5)

We usually paddle east along the canal and stop back in Bairs Cove, where we’ve seen manatees every time we’ve been. They’re very docile and sometimes friendly. You’re not allowed to harass / approach them, but if you sit quietly in your kayak, sometimes they’ll harass you!

Manatee checks out Mary’s kayak (Olympus EM5)

You can paddle further east and go under the bridge to a manatee observation deck along the north shore. However, I’ve never once seen manatees there. Do you think the manatees enjoy the joke?

We frequently see Bottlenose Dolphins too and they’re often feeding. This one was near the launch point and made a fuss chasing fish before swimming off.

Mike & Sara watch a dolphin from their kayak (Olympus TG-2)

There are even a few landscape opportunities, although I haven’t made it over for sunrise or sunset yet. This group of struggling trees caught my eye.

Survivors : On the west side of Haulover Canal. (Olympus TG-2)

You’ll need to watch for boat traffic, but since it’s a no wake zone, it’s fairly safe for kayaks. If you haven’t kayaked before and want to have a little support when you make this trip, A Day Away Kayak Tours is close by and very helpful. They’ll take you on a guided tour or rent you a kayak so you can go on your own, too.

All the photos in this post were made on kayak trips using a variety of cameras. I now have enough experience with our boats that I’m confident in the water and not afraid of tipping, but splashes from paddles and waves are still a worry where camera gear is concerned. A dose of saltwater is not too healthy for most normal cameras. So I’ve been using an Olympus TG-2 and a GoPro Hero3 (both waterproof) on these trips.

Photographing birds near Mullet Head Island (GoPro and EM5)

It’s great not having to worry about water damage, but I do miss some of the higher end photo capabilities (e.g. RAW format, interchangeable and long lenses, etc.). So I’ve taken the higher end gear out once or twice. In the photo above I really photo-geeked and used the GoPro to make a photo of myself making a photo with the Olympus EM5.

Here’s some additional info on Kayaking at Haulover Canal from a couple other sites:

And you can find out more about Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in these posts.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos! And go for a paddle too!

Thanksgiving 2013

November 28, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, VARIOUS, WekivaThanksgiving, Wild TurkeyEd Rosack

Once again in the USA, we pause on the fourth Thursday of November to celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday. Families and friends gather, parades and football games preempt normal daytime television, large amounts of food are prepared and consumed, drowsiness ensues – and Turkeys throughout the land are relieved they’re not part of the feast.

“About 12 pounds, why do you ask?” A female wild turkey watches me warily at Central Winds Park in Winter Springs

But seriously, this year especially I’m grateful for so many wonderful things in my life. I hope all of you are as blessed as I am or even more so. Spend a few moments contemplating the good things in your own life. Pause and savor them. Be thankful. Cherish your family and friends.

And then – strive even harder to be one of the things that your family and friends are so grateful for.

Tom Turkey – Seen at Wekiva Springs State Park, near the trail to the kayak launch. Another good place to see these large birds

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go spend time with your family and friends!

Panoramic alternatives – iPhones and more

November 17, 2013California, Chicago, INSIDE FLORIDA, Italy, St. Johns River, Techniqueblack and white, bridge, Colosseum, landscape, panorama, reviewsEd Rosack

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I like panoramic photos. We’ve all been to many places where the view is so grand it doesn’t fit into a single frame. Sometimes you can’t capture what your eyes see with one camera exposure. So I started stitching panoramas together. My first few were way back in the film era (1999 or 2000). When I started using digital cameras, panoramas became easier and I’ve made many more since then. They help me avoid “tunnel vision” and show more of a scene. They’re also an excellent way to capture an image with a huge number of pixels – which allows for very large prints.

I often include panos in this blog. When I checked today, there are 33 different posts (over 10%) that are tagged “panorama”, including my very first one from May of 2007. For some panorama examples, look at this set of over 100 images on Flickr.

May 2007: View of San Francisco from Twin Peaks (6389 x 3110 pixels)

I’ve learned quite a bit about how to make panos, and in August of this year, I shared info on how I usually process them. That was a description of the detailed workflow I use to make the best quality image I can. It can be time consuming and requires care in capture as well as post processing. But if you put in the effort, the results are very good – and the files are much bigger than from a single frame. Here’s a recent example:

September 2013: Chicago skyline at twilight (11,175 x 4706 pixels)

But it turns out that my way isn’t the only way to make panos. There’s a much easier way to make them – here’s an example:

October 2013: Underneath the bridge over the St. John’s River by the old bridge and railroad trestle (7908 x 2692 pixels)

I made this pano with my phone. It’s not as large (2692 pixels on the short side compared to 4706), but you probably couldn’t tell much of a difference in quality unless you pixel peep. Using my phone is easier and if something is easier, people will do more of it – and more panos means better memories.

iPhones have had a built-in panorama mode for a while, and the latest versions bring a lot of processing power into it. The iPhone 5S does automagic adjustment of exposure across the frame, and stitches the results together in real-time as you sweep your phone. The results are fairly large files, and the quality is surprisingly good.

Here’s one more recent iPhone panorama example and proof of the saying that the best camera is the one you have with you:

November 2013: Interior panorama of the Roman Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre) – Photo by MK Rosack (used with permission)

Lets compare making panoramas on a phone with a multi-photo approach. I’ll use the iPhone 5S for this – your phone may be different.

	iPhone 5S	Multi-Photo
Capture convenience	Very high – you always have it with you	Low – You need to plan for it and carry your gear
Quickness	High – End result available very quickly. And can post right from the phone.	Low – Need to get home and run your software
Processing flexibility	Low – Done by the camera; Can adjust jpg result	High – Adjustments can be made throughout each processing step
Processing difficulty	Low – Done by the camera; Some amount of touch up may be needed	May be High, depending on software and source images
Raw capture	No – jpg only	Yes
Output size	Medium – Short dimension a max of 2448 pixels	High – DSLRs typically higher resolution than iPhone and you can make multiple rows if desired

So, should you use your phone for panoramas? Yes!

Should you always use your phone for panoramas? Not quite yet.

Phones are getting better all the time. And they’re getting better faster than cameras are getting better. Sooner or later, most people won’t want or need a dedicated camera. Right now I think phones are “good enough” in many cases, especially if you think about the trade-off between output quality and ease of use. For panoramas, the ease of use and convenience allows many people to make photos they otherwise wouldn’t. In my case, if I don’t have any other camera with me, I’m sure going to use my phone. But if I want the best quality image possible, I’ll still use my stand alone cameras when possible. Check again in a few years – the answers may be different.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some panoramas! And don’t forget your phone!

Oviedo and Port Orange Camera Clubs

October 26, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, VARIOUS, Winter ParkCamera Club, fountainEd Rosack

Just a quick post this week (a schedule update and one recent photo).

I’ve been invited to speak at both the Oviedo and Port Orange Camera Clubs next month. I’ll talk about “Winter Photo Ops in Central Florida” and recommend things / places to photograph in our area this winter along with sample images. Depending on interest and time, we may go a bit further and talk about other times of year too, or we may also discuss tools and techniques for any of the photos I show. Questions on anything else presented are also welcome.

The Oviedo Photo Club meeting is on November 4th at 7PM in the Memorial Building in Oviedo (38 South Central Avenue, Oviedo FL 32765).

The Port Orange Camera Club meeting is on November 13th at 7PM in the Port Orange Adult Center (4790 South Ridgewood Ave. Port Orange FL 32127)

If any of you are at one of these meetings, please say hello – I love to meet readers!

And since we can’t have a blog post without a photo, here’s one I made at the beginning of October in Winter Park, Florida.

Stationary water

I liked this fountain, but wanted to make the photo look a bit different. My normal approach might have been to use a very slow shutter speed to make the water silky smooth. This time, I decided to use as fast a shutter speed as possible to “freeze” the water. So I opened my aperture and ended up with a 1/8000 sec shutter speed. The wide aperture also helped to blur the background and isolate the subject. I don’t think you can make a photo like this with your cell phone!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos – and go to a camera club meeting!

Is photography a group or solo activity?

October 18, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Viera Wetlandsbirds, boat, bridge, cloud, landscape, reflection, Sandpiper, sunriseEd Rosack

Four of us from the Photography Interest Group went to Viera Wetlands last Saturday. On the way, we stopped by Riverfront Park on the Indian River at SR 520 in Cocoa for sunrise.

Old boat by a bridge

There weren’t many clouds, but with a longer lens than I normally use (120mm equivalent instead of an ultra wide-angle), I managed to place this boat in the frame against a background of clouds and the causeway bridge. The colors on the water are nice and I was happy with the result.

As we left, I saw what looked like a sunken boat out of the corner of my eye to the south of where we’d been photographing. Since the good light was fading, and everyone else was ready to leave for Viera, I didn’t get a chance to check it out at the time.

For some reason, sunken / abandoned boats really appeal to me as photographic subjects. Maybe it’s because I spent time in the Navy. They seem sad and make me wonder what happened and why. This one nagged at me, and I really wanted to explore it so I decided to drive back over on Wednesday to see what I’d missed. Many times the boat gets salvaged – so if you don’t photograph it when you find it, you may not get a second chance.

A dream, gone – in the harbor at dawn.

Luckily the boat was still right where I’d seen it. I found a spot where I could use the sailboat mast reflections to outline the sunken hull and place it between the blue and orange colors mirrored on the water. I like the first photo, but I think this second one is stronger.

If we’d taken the time to explore this on our first visit, would I have gotten as strong a photo? Did I get a better photo on my second trip because I was by myself? Is photography essentially a solo activity?

Cue the standard photography answer: “It depends.” I believe you need to be “in the zone” to make great photos. Distractions and / or fellow photographers can hinder concentration – or they can point you in the right direction. When you’re with a group you also have to compromise and go along – you can’t do everything you want and force everyone else to do it too. If you’re mainly a landscape photographer, going photographing with someone really into bird photography may not help your landscape images. Or it might – birds hang out in some beautiful places.

If you go with people more experienced / knowledgable than you are, you may learn a bit and make better images as a result. Or you may find out about new places that they know but you don’t. Or you might even open your eyes to a different way of seeing something. If you’ve ever been out photographing with a group, you know there will be many similar images. But there will also be some that look completely different even though two photographers stand right next to each other.

I looked through my most interesting images (according to Flickr, anyway). Of the first 20, 10 were when I was by myself and 10 when I was with other photographers. Conclusive numerical evidence, eh?

So to answer the question in the title of this post: Is photography a solo or a group activity? Yes. You’ll be a better photographer if you go photographing both by yourself and in groups. Mix it up and take advantage of both ways to enjoy and improve your photography.

By the way, we did make it to Viera Wetlands. We saw many of the usual animals in the main area including Hawks, Ospreys, Great Blue Herons, Little Blue Herons, Green Herons, Snowy and Great Egrets, Grebes, Black Bellied Whistling Ducks, Alligators, Turtles, etc. We saw a few more species in the Click Ponds: White Pelicans, Sandpipers, Roseate Spoonbills, and Woodstorks. A nice visit.

Sandpiper flock and reflections

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos – alone and in a group!

The flowers are coming! The flowers are coming!

September 21, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Must do listFlowers, SunflowersEd Rosack

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Swamp Sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius, also called Narrow Leaf Sunflowers) start blooming at the end of September in our area. One of the largest concentrations is in the Marl Bed Flats in the Lake Jesup Conservation Area where the blooms stretch as far as you can see.

Swamp Sunflowers at the Lake Jesup Wilderness Area

This is a truly unique photo-op and worth checking out. See these links for more info:

You can browse some of my photos of the area in this set on Flickr. And here’s an article about the flowers in this month’s Orlando Magazine – featuring my photo!

When you go, please be careful. Stopping on the side of 417 can be dangerous. And the Lake Jesup Wilderness area is wild. It’s also a bit of a hike from the parking area out to the flowers. Bring water and use sun screen and bug spray. Long pants and waterproof hiking boots are a good idea too.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some flower photos – maybe I’ll see you out there!

Review and Reprocess

September 7, 2013Blue Cypress Lake, Cocoa, INSIDE FLORIDA, St. Augustine, Techniqueblack and white, church, Cypress, false color, infrared, lightroom, reflection, Reprocessing, sunriseEd Rosack

Sometimes after a photo shoot, I’ll skip over images if I’m short on time or something looks too hard to deal with. Other times, I may play with a photo for a while and then set it aside when I just can’t seem to get it right. When I learn a new technique or get a new software package or upgrade I try to go through my image library and pick out existing photos that could benefit from the new capability. And yes, I also notice images that no longer look as good to me as they did at first. Something I did a few years ago may have seemed great then – but tastes change.

I use Lightroom to catalog my photos and I have a keyword called “Process” with three sub-keywords “Color”, “pano”, and “other”. Using these, I mark photos I want to revisit and I’ve built up a collection of them for future processing. I had a little time this week to go through and pick three to work on:

Kelly Park Reflections: Merritt Island, Florida, February 19, 2013. The water was amazingly calm that morning and I like the reflections as well as the detail / lights on the horizon. I bypassed this image at first because of trouble with the white balance. This time through the result is much closer to the look I wanted.

The Main Sanctuary of the Cathedral Basilica, Saint Augustine, Florida, February 28, 2013. Black and white infrared. I don’t remember why I didn’t finish this photo back in February. I like the light, detail, and tonality.

Three more cypress trees: Blue Cypress Lake, near Fellsmere, Florida, June 2, 2012. False color infrared. Since IR doesn’t capture color as your eye sees it, color conversions are very subjective. As I gain experience, my tastes are changing. This version is very different from how I processed other IR photos at the time.

So, some recommendations:

If you’re struggling with an image, don’t delete it. Mark it and move on. Come back and revisit it later.
Organize, document, and keyword your images so you can find hidden gems to re-process.
Review your photo library occasionally. Your photography skills and tools aren’t static. So your portfolio shouldn’t be static either. Revise older images and make them better. You might be surprised what comes out of your archives.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go revise some photos!

Sunset Sports Shot

August 30, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, VARIOUSAkron Zips, Football, Knights, Stadium, sunset, UCFEd Rosack

Short post this week: my son Mike is visiting and I didn’t have time for a photo expedition.

He wanted to go to the University of Central Florida football game last night. Since it was a 7pm kick-off, I checked the open seats on the east side and there were still some available up in the nosebleed section. We enjoyed the first quarter while I waited to see if the Florida sky would do it’s thing. It cooperated – here’s my version of a sports photograph:

Football foreground: The sun set early on the visiting Akron Zips in the UCF football opening home game.

The Akron team was overmatched. We had a good time watching UCF win – the final score was 38 – 7.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go sneak in a sunset photo!

Captive wildlife

August 23, 2013Theme Parks, VARIOUSblackfish, captivity, Dolphin, philosophy, Politics, primate, Seaworld, tiger, Whale, wildlifeEd Rosack

I went over to Tampa last week with Tom M. and toured both the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary and the Big Cat Rescue Sanctuary.

Eyes of the tiger – resting in his den and watching visitors at the Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Tampa Florida.

Neither place is intended to be a good photo-op (lots of fences and obstructions) – you have to be lucky to get a good image. The geometry and light in the scene above worked well, but it’s the only animal photo I made that day that I like.

Volunteer caring for residents at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary

So why am I writing about these if they’re not good photo ops? This is supposed to be a blog about photo ops, right? Well, we met several volunteers at each place and learned a great deal from them about wildlife in captivity. If you care about wildlife then there are things about captives that you should know.

Tigers are endangered and there are more in captivity in the US than there are in the wild.
Many large cats in captivity live in deplorable conditions and are abused.
It’s not just large cats that have issues. Smaller wild cats are kept as pets and even cross-bred with domestic cats and sold for profit. A situation that hardly ever turns out well.
There are problems with primates too. Many can no longer be cared for as personal pets, or retire from the laboratory or film industries and need a home.
Dolphins are captured in especially cruel ways and sold to amusement parks throughout the world. The dolphin capture season in Japan starts 1 September.
Killer whales are captured or bred in captivity and separated from their families. They spend their lives in small tanks performing for audiences.

Seeing wild animals such as whales in their natural habitat is exciting and inspiring. Seeing them in captivity, knowing some of the background on how they’re captured, bred, and kept is depressing. The tiger in the photo above was well cared for and kept in nicer conditions than many others. Although sometimes big cats can be returned to the wild, this tiger will never be released. Wouldn’t it be better if they’d never been captured at all? Places like the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary and the Big Cat Rescue Sanctuary are doing their best to care for large, wild animals that can’t be returned to the wild. But there are so many of these animals that they’ll never be able to keep up.

Are all instances of captive wildlife wrong? Maybe not. But many situations are clearly bad and should be against the law.

I know you don’t come to this site for editorials and commentary, but thanks anyway for stopping by and reading this. And if you care about this subject, you should click on the links in this post to learn more.

Topaz ReStyle Mini Review

August 16, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Techniquebeach, infrared, landscape, reviews, sunrise, techniqueEd Rosack

Topaz released a new plug-in recently, called ReStyle. You can download any of their products for a free thirty-day trial, so I thought I’d give it a go. This isn’t a full review or tutorial (I haven’t used it long enough for either of those). But I have used it a bit so I’ll try to introduce you to some possibilities with three examples I’ve played with. If you want to see the “before” versions, I’ve included them towards the end of the post.

I had trouble with the white balance in this photo of Marineland beach at dawn. I could have separately adjusted the color balance on the sky and ground using layer masks in Photoshop or gradients in Lightroom. Instead, it was easy to pick out this version from the grid displayed inside ReStyle. It’s interesting how remapping changed the color in the beach and rocks differently from the sky.

Down on the beach at dawn (after Topaz ReStyle).

ReStyle maps color and tone statistics from a selected style to a target image. It seems like Photoshop’s “Image/Adjustments/Match Color” command. When you do this in Photoshop, you have to supply an image with the colors you’re trying to match. ReSyle comes with over 1000 presets and provides control / adjustment of the results that aren’t easily available in Photoshop. There are so many presets that they’re overwhelming, but ReStyle breaks them down into collections (e.g. “Landscape”), and you can mark your favorites. You can show a collection or your favorites as a grid applied to your photo, which makes choosing one very simple. You can also search for similar styles by color or by name. Within each style, you can further adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance of the five colors in each style, as well as the opacity, original image “Texture” strength, and others variables. It also includes mask / selections controls to apply the effects selectively. There’s a lot more info available in the manual at this link.

In this photo of some struggling trees on a small rocky island near Haulover Canal, I wanted a more dramatic color palette. Once again, it was easy to pick out this version from a grid of possibilities.

Survivors (after Topaz ReStyle)

For this infra-red photo of sea oats on the beach that I made in Fred Howard Park near Tampa , I wanted a different look from a typical IR false color image. I like this color mapping I found in ReStyle .

Sea oats – False color infra-red (After Topaz ReStyle)

There are so many presets, options and adjustments that ReStyle can be a little overwhelming. It’s not hard to use, but it is hard to grasp all the possibilities and decide what to do. It’ll take a bit more time for me to get comfortable with it, so I’ll have to play with it some more.

For comparison purposes, here are versions of the photos before I applied Topaz ReStyle:

Before: Down on the beach at dawn.

Before: Survivors

Before: Sea oats – False color infra-red processing.

Summary: Do you have to use plug-ins? Of course not, but they’re useful and save time. And ReStyle seems to offer something I haven’t seen elsewhere. It’ll definitely make your images look different. Are they better? I think ReStyle improved these three images, but only you can decide for your photos. Will this fix all of your problems and should you use it on every photo? Definitely not – I’m new to the tool, but on several photos I tried, I couldn’t get anything that I thought looked good. But it does look like something that’ll be good to have in your bag of tricks.

Off topic public service announcement: I’m always telling you to get out and enjoy nature. I also need to remind you to protect yourself from the sun. I had two skin cancers removed last week. I’m fine – but it’s not the most pleasant thing to go through. And it can be much, much worse than mine were. So when you’re out in the sun enjoying nature, please protect yourself. Use sunscreen, wear a hat and long sleeves, stay in the shade as much as possible, etc. The sun is brutal, especially in Florida. And no one wants to suffer the consequences of too much exposure ten or twenty years down the road.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos! And use sunscreen!

Central Florida Photo Ops

What and where they are and how to photograph them.