Category Archives: Lake Jesup

Sunflower Status – Oct 2, 2021

Lake Jesup Sunflowers, ,

Lynn drove me over the Lake Jesup bridge yesterday so I could scout the Swamp Sunflower fields to the east of HW 417 in the Marl Bed Flats area north of the lake. It’s not very safe to park on the side of 417 – this was the best photo I got with my iPhone from the passenger seat of our moving car:

Lake Jesup Swamp Sunflower Field. iPhone photo, made on 10/3/2021

You can see that the annual Swamp Sunflower bloom has started here in Central Florida and it looks like it’ll be a good year for the flowers. These are about 2-3 feet tall – they’ll reach up to 6 feet or more later, so I’m guessing they might peak in the next week or two.

Here’s a better photo of one from 2013:

Water drops and insects on a Swamp Sunflower Water drops and insects on a Swamp Sunflower. October 2, 2013

It’s been a little wet this summer, and they’ve closed this area in the past due to high water. So I searched on-line for any info on whether it’s open. Marl Bed Flats is part of the Lake Jesup Conservation area and I couldn’t find any mention of closures on their web page. I did see this on the Lake Jesup Wilderness area page (which is a short distance away from Marl Bed Flats on the west side of 417):

“The Lake Jesup Wilderness Area is currently closed due to wet season conditions.”

https://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/locations/Lake-Jesup-Wilderness-Area.stml

I’ve enjoyed photographing these flowers since 2006, but I probably can’t visit this year. Since I can’t give you a better report, you’ll have to venture out there on your own. If you do go or find a better status, please leave a comment here so others will see the info.

I’ll leave you with one more close up. I like the water drop in this image from 2010:

Water drop on a Swamp Sunflower Water drop on a Swamp Sunflower. October 10,2010

If you’re interested, I have more photos from this lovely field of wildflowers in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72157622430520287

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Please take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can – and make some photos!

©2021, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Lake Jesup’s South Shore

Lake Jesup, , , ,

I doubt many landscape photographers have the south shore of Lake Jesup in Seminole County on their must do list. But local parks are a great resource and we should take advantage of them. At the very least, you can practice your landscape photo skills and maybe spot some wildlife too. I went for a very short drive last week and made three stops. Here are some photos from the trip.

By the shore
By the shore I

This first one is in Central Winds park in Winter Springs, down past the playground and basketball court where there’s a short nature trail leading to the the lake and this view. I used a 16mm focal length (with a variable ND filter to lengthen the exposure and smooth the water) and made two frames (using this technique) to capture both the tree / sky in the distance (ISO 100, f/11, 1/4 second ) and the foreground (ISO 100, f/11, 1 second). Then I blended them by hand in Photoshop using layers.

By the shore - II
By the shore II.

Stop two is a little west, on the pier that you’ll get to when you turn in at the dog park and drive past it down to the lake. Two frames again with the same general approach as the first image. Sky at ISO 100, f/11, 1/6 second; Foreground at ISO 100, f/11, 1/2 second.

By the shore - III
By the shore III

And stop three is east of the other two at Overlook Park in Oviedo. Also using the same general approach (although no ND filter for this one). Sky at ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 second; Foreground at ISO 100, f/11, 1/80 second.

Finally, this Oak tree caught my eye and I made one last photo on the walk back to my car:

Hanging moss
Hanging Moss

I used my phone – 13mm equivalent focal length, ISO 25, f/2.4 at 1/240 sec.

Here’s a map image showing all three locations (yellow markers) to give you a better idea of where they are:

Three Stops

Note: If you clicked on any of the photos, you’ve noticed I’m trying a new way to embed Flickr photos. Starting with this post, a click on a photo will still take you to that image on Flickr, but now it will open in “Lightbox” mode and fill your browser widow. You can still click once (or twice) to enlarge it, and you can hit the escape key to return to the non-lightbox view. Then use your browser’s back button to return to the blog.

By the way, the tree in the center of the first photo has been on the blog twice before, here https://edrosack.com/2010/11/21/local-park-landscapes/ and here https://edrosack.com/2010/05/16/under-the-weather/. I think I like this latest version the best.

And you can review all my posts about Lake Jesup at this link: https://edrosack.com/category/photo-ops-in-florida/lake-jesup/.

Happy New Year! We’re all looking forward to better times in 2021! Lynn and I are waiting to get vaccinated so we can visit family and friends again and life can return toward normal. I hope that doesn’t take too long.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can – visit your local park and make some photos!

©2021, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Lake Jesup Sunflowers?

Lake Jesup Sunflowers, , , , ,

It’s getting to be that time of year again – when the Marl Bed Flats part of the Lake Jesup Conservation Area along HW 417 north of Lake Jesup usually fills up with wild swamp sunflowers. It’s a late September / early October event and lasts for a couple of weeks. Lynn and I drove by yesterday to scout the area.

Swamp SunflowersSwamp Sunflowers (from 2012)

The good news is that we already saw a few sunflowers blooming. The bad news is that we also saw a lot of standing water, especially near the lake. Flooding or standing water in the flower fields usually means fewer flowers.

There’s more bad news. This morning while putting this post together, I checked the Lake Jesup Wilderness Area website. It says:

“The Lake Jesup Wilderness Area is currently closed due to high water levels …”

It seems we’ll have to wait until next year to photograph these flowers. Sorry about that.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Stay safe! Take care of yourselves, your friends, and your families! And if you can, make some photos – although probably not Lake Jesup sunflower photos this year.

©2020, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Sunflower Scouting Report

Lake Jesup Sunflowers, , ,

I hiked out into the Marl Bed Flats part of the Lake Jesup Conservation Area yesterday morning (10/4/19) to visit the swamp sunflower fields that grow wild along HW 417 north of Lake Jesup for a few weeks this time of year.

One more Swamp Sunflower imageSwamp Sunflower panorama

I left a little late because I don’t really like to go out there in the dark.  I’ve never had any issues though, so just be careful if you do go before or after it’s light (official hours are “Dawn to Dusk”).  There were two cars already there when I arrived and the gate into the larger parking area was closed.  Parking could be tight at the end of the road – hopefully there will be plenty of room if you visit.  I met one of the other photographers on my way in.

Swamp SunflowerInfrared Swamp Sunflower

There’s a PDF trail map you can download and print out or look at on your phone.  I do get a good cell phone signal out there (on AT&T).

We haven’t had much rain recently, so both the red and yellow trails are dry and clear until you get out to the flowers. The flowers are in great shape although they didn’t seem as dense as I’ve seen them in other years – they may still be filling in. The ground in the fields is damp in spots but not very muddy in the areas I went through. I didn’t have any problems with bugs but I used insect spray before hand.

Swamp SunflowerSwamp Sunflower

If you’re interested, there’s a lot of coverage on the web and you can find  info in my posts at this link: https://edrosack.com/category/photo-ops-in-florida/lake-jesup/sunflowers/.   You can also see more of my swamp sunflower photos in this album on Flickr.

Right now is a great time for a visit and I think the flowers will last for at least another week or so.  You’ll get a little exercise and you’ll witness a wonderful Florida nature spectacle!  Take water, bug spray, etc. and watch out for snakes and other wild animals.  It is a wilderness area!

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

©2019, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Looks like a good sunflower season on the way!

Lake Jesup Sunflowers, ,

I’ve been photographing the swamp sunflowers in the Marlbed Flats / Lake Jesup Conservation area since at least 2006.  Last year, the fields by HW 417 next to Lake Jesup were flooded and the Swamp Sunflower season was disappointing.  But I’ve driven by there a couple of times in the last week or so and it looks like we’ll have a a lot of flowers this year. Blooms are already visible from the road.

Lake Jesup Wildernes Area - Swamp SunflowersLake Jesup Wildernes Area – Swamp Sunflowers.  This is a fisheye photo from 2012.  I think I’ll take that lens out there with me again.

If you’re interested in hiking out there, you can find a lot of info in my posts at this link: https://edrosack.com/category/photo-ops-in-florida/lake-jesup/sunflowers/.  And Jeff Stamer has a good article about the flowers on his blog: http://www.firefallphotography.com/lake-jesup-wildflower-update-october-10-2015/.

It might be a bit early for a visit right now.  I’m guessing they’ll peak around the first or second week of October. If you do go, be careful.  Take water, bug spray, etc. and watch out for snakes and other wild animals.  It is a wilderness area!

You can see more of my swamp sunflower photos in this album on Flickr.

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

©2019, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Enhanced details?

Lake Jesup, Technique, VARIOUS, , ,

Have you heard about Adobe’s recent update to Lightroom?  It has a new feature called “Enhance Details”.  Adobe says it:

“approaches demosaicing in a new way to better resolve fine details and fix issues like false colors and zippering. Enhance Details uses machine learning—an extensively trained convolutional neural network (CNN)—to provide state-of-the-art quality for the images that really matter.”

You can read an explanation of what they’ve done at this link:  https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/enhance.html.  It sounds like a another fascinating advance in computational photography.  It’s also a great example of why you should shoot in Raw mode and save your original files – so you can take advantage of future software updates.  Of course I had to try this out!

Flower & bugWildflower and bug – processed in Lightroom with Enhanced Details (click for a larger view)

I chose this flower growing in Central Winds Park, near Lake Jesup as my subject.  By the way, this is the same spot and subject as this 2015 blog post.  There’s a lot of detail in the flower and insect and I was curious about how it would look using the new processing.

I ran Enhance Details on the Raw file.  At first, I couldn’t really see any improvement.  So I opened the original and enhanced images in layers in Photoshop.  I set the layer mode to Difference and then used a levels adjustment to highlight changes.

Difference map showing pixels changed by the Enhance Details algorithm

Using this method at 300% magnification to guide me to where the changes were, I could then see them clearly.  The enhanced image was indeed more detailed than the original.  But (for this example anyway) they’re extremely subtle!  Too subtle to show up in a blog resolution image without a difference map.

I did a little more research on-line and found this blog post:  https://elialocardi.com/adobe-lightroom-camera-raw-enhance-details-review/.  It’s got several samples where the differences are more obvious.  Well worth a read.

Here are my thoughts:

  • Adobe claims a 30% increase in image quality.  I’m not sure how they derived this number, but from the examples I’ve seen the results are much more subtle than that.
  • It works better on some subject than others, e.g. night photos of cities with lights, or images with artifacts.  Improvements are much harder to see on other subjects such as my flower.
  • I didn’t see (and haven’t heard of) anyplace where it made an image worse.
  • You pay a penalty in workflow, time, and disk storage when using this.  It shouldn’t be your default processing.
  • Consider it for portfolio images, or photos that you’re printing in a large format. Don’t bother with it for images shared to the web or ones that you’re printing small.  Keep your Raw files and you can always go back later and run them through.
  • If you use Fuji cameras, try it on their X-Trans Raw files.
  • We’ll hear more soon as the photo community explores this and we see results.
  • In the future this or something like it will probably become the default demosaicing approach.  Adobe should be commended and I hope they keep developing it

That was fun!  Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2019, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Sunflowers this year?

Lake Jesup Sunflowers, ,

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

― Yogi Berra

Sunflower SunsetSunflower Sunset – Reprocessed image from a trip in 2012

I’m a long time fan of the sunflowers that usually cover the Lake Jesup Wilderness Area near Sanford, Florida in the fall.  They normally start blooming at the end of September and last for a couple of weeks.  You can review my posts about them at this link:  https://edrosack.com/category/sunflowers/.

Lynn and I drove past the area yesterday.  There’s a lot of standing water visible from 417.  We saw a few flowers along the road, but none out in the fields.

When I got home, I checked their website.  It says:  “LAKE JESUP WILDERNESS AREA IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO HIGH WATER LEVELS. THE PROPERTY WILL RE-OPEN ONCE WATER LEVELS ALLOW.”

In previous years with this much standing water, the sunflowers didn’t bloom.  So for now, I’m predicting a poor sunflower season.   Yogi’s right, though – I’ll check again and if anything changes, I’ll update you.

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

©2018, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Wouldn’t it be nice…

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, ,

Lynn and I were driving back from dinner one day last week.  The sky was beautiful and I liked the way the clouds and color looked so I pulled out my iPhone and made this photo as we went across the 417 bridge over Lake Jesup.

Sunset over Lake Jessie.Sunset over Lake Jesup

This isn’t an earth shattering photo by any means, but there are things about it that are interesting.  I used the Lightroom mobile app on my phone to capture it in RAW mode.  Then I edited it (using the same app) and posted it from the car before we exited 417 a few minutes later.  When I got home, the image (captured version and edits) was already on my desktop computer.  What a frictionless experience.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do the same with our stand alone cameras?

Camera manufacturers are moving in this direction, but their progress seems slow.  You can connect many cameras (e.g. Olympus, Sony, Fuji, etc.) with an app on your phone and then process and post from the phone.  But it’s sometimes clumsy and not as well-integrated.  Phone manufacturers are moving toward higher quality mobile photography at a faster rate.  The 12 megapixel, RAW capture, stabilized images output from the iPhone approach (or exceed) the sensor image quality of some older DSLRs.  And RAW processing / editing on phones is really coming along.

Do you think the mobile capabilities of stand alone cameras will catch up with phones before the image quality of phones is more than good enough?  The question may already be decided.

Hmm – two blog posts in a row with nothing but iPhone photos.  What’s the world coming to?

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

©2016, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, VARIOUS,

In the United States, we observe the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow.  Traditionally, it’s a time to celebrate, give thanks for the harvest, and to eat too much.

Winter Springs Wild TurkeyWinter Springs Wild Turkey – At Central Winds Park, not far from our home

For me personally, it’s not about the harvest, but instead about all the good things I have in my life to be grateful for.  No day goes by without me being thankful for my blessings.

I wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving and continued good harvests and blessings in your lives.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog.  Now – go count your blessings!

©2015, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Photographing Florida Weather

Casey Key, INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Merritt Island NWR, VARIOUS, , , , , ,

Florida has wonderful weather photography opportunities.  They’re not often the kind that you see from tornado alley out west.  But the clouds here are awesome too.

Lynn and I traveled recently (New Jersey, Virginia, and Georgia).  I realized when going through those photos that they lacked dramatic skies like we often see here in Central Florida.  Maybe our timing was just bad.  Anyway, it inspired me to put together this post with some examples of our weather along with a few hints.

We’d had several days of rain last August and even though afternoon light isn’t usually the best for photography, I decided to drive over to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and see if I could capture some of the weather drama.  This one is from the south-east side of the causeway.  There was a slight drizzle where I was standing and rain drops ruined several frames. This one must have been right after I cleaned the lens.

Weather over the WaterWeather over the Water (24mm focal length)

And this one was that same day, looking south along the back side of  Black Point Wildlife Drive.

Storm AheadStorm Ahead (stitched panorama, nine frames at 24mm focal length).

This next photo is from September of 2012, also at Black Point Wildlife Drive.  These clouds actually stopped me in my tracks and made me shift out of bird photography mode to make this B&W, IR image.  You can see a color version of this here.

A little stormyA little stormy (stitched panorama, three frames at 24mm eq. focal length).

These next two have been on the blog before, but they also illustrate my point:  Clouds and storms in Central Florida are photogenic!

Stormy ShoreStormy Shore:  Storm clouds blow through north of our hotel on Casey Key, Florida.  June 15, 2015 (stitched panorama, eight frames at 24mm eq. focal length).

And this last photo is from way back in October 2007.  I put it in to honor our fading Lake Jesup sunflower season.

Lakes Jesup Wildflowers and RainstormLakes Jesup Wildflowers and Rainstorm (105mm eq. focal length).

We don’t have mountains here in Central Florida.  And we don’t have very good waterfalls either.  But our clouds are just as good as anywhere else.  How are they where you are?

Photo hints:

  • Although you can see interesting weather all year, the best time here is summer afternoons and evenings.
  • The storms are big.  As you can see from the captions, many times I find myself using a wide-angle lens or stitching panoramas for this kind of photography, although some situations (like the last image) benefit from a longer focal length.
  • You can shoot from your car in many cases or just dodge the showers.  Do bring a lens cloth and maybe a towel or some plastic to cover  your camera if it’s not weather resistant.
  • Be careful with your exposures.  If you have clear sky behind the clouds you can easily blow out highlights in the image which will be tough to fix in post.
  • When processing your photos, try using some mid-range contrast / clarity to bring out details in the clouds.  Don’t go too far though or your results will look unrealistic.
  • Find yourself some good foreground locations so you’ll be ready to head out when the weather gets interesting.
  • And be careful – don’t get struck by lightning or ruin your equipment!

If you click on the photos above, you can see larger versions on Flickr and I also collected  other Florida Cloud and Storm photos that you can browse in this set on Flickr.

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

©2015, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.