Category Archives: INSIDE FLORIDA

Manatees!

January 28, 2017Blue Spring State Park, INSIDE FLORIDAmanateeEd Rosack

We’ve had a few days of cooler weather here in Central Florida – good news if you’d like to see Manatees in the wild! When temperatures drop, they tend to gather in and around springs where the water is warmer than the rest of the environment.

We were over at Blue Spring State Park in Orange City last week for a wonderful family picnic. One of the highlights of the trip was spotting these large gentle mammals from the boardwalk along the spring run.

Manatees

Many extra activities are planned for this weekend’s annual Manatee Festival. But if you can’t make it now, try later in the winter. The Manatees are often there through March.

Depending on where they are, you can make photos with just about any camera. Up by the swimming area they get very close. Down nearer the river, you’ll want to have a longer lens to fill the frame from the boardwalk. Bring your polarizing filter to help cut glare / reflections on the water surface.

I have some other photos from Blue Spring in this album on Flickr.

Thank’s for stopping by and reading my blog. Now, go make some Manatee photos!

A Couple Composites

January 22, 2017Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, Orlando Wetlandsbirds, Flowers, focus stacking, landscape, multiple exposure, panorama, techniqueEd Rosack

I went for another walk last week at Orlando Wetlands Park with Tom M. It was a pretty morning and in addition to the normal bird suspects, we also saw Soras, Purple Gallinules, and heard reports of Bald Eagles and many Black Crowned Night Herons.

In this post though, I want to discuss compositing. Wikipedia says:

“Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene.”

Multiple exposures are a subset of compositing, and are much easier to produce in today’s world of digital photography. In addition to creating an illusion, they can be used to show things that are difficult for a camera to capture in a single frame and better show reality. Examples are panoramas, focus stacking, HDR, etc.

There’s a lovely Pink Trumpet tree on the west side of the main path into the park. It’s in bloom and that morning the moon was setting behind the tree. This snap from my iPhone shows how the tree looked against the sky and moon.

I wanted to isolate one bloom with the moon and clouds behind it, but the depth of field with my telephoto lens was too shallow to show both in the same frame. So I made two, with one focused on the flower and the second on the clouds / moon. Then in Photoshop it was relatively easy to combine the two frames to show what I wanted.

Moon, clouds, and flower

Here’s a second example:

Ibis flight sequence

This one is from a sequence of a single White Ibis flying by in a little under 2 seconds. I brought all 25 frames into Photoshop on separate layers and aligned them. Then I used the focus select function to mask the birds from each layer into a single composite. I ended up having to omit every other frame to avoid overlapping birds.

If you’re willing to dive into Photoshop or any other image editing software that offers layers and masking, you can do the same sort of work. Think about techniques like these when you’re out photographing. If you capture the source frames you need when you’re out, then when you get back to your computer you can use them to solve problems and enhance your creativity.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Now, go make some multiple exposure photos!

Viera Wetlands – 1/13/16

January 15, 2017INSIDE FLORIDA, Viera Wetlandsbird, black and white, Hooded Merganser, infrared, landscape, life bird, limpkinEd Rosack

Kevin M. offered to help me scout for the Smooth-billed Ani that’s been seen at Viera Wetlands. I’ve wanted to get over there – so I readily agreed to meet him Friday Morning.

It was the first Friday the 13th of the new year, but our luck wasn’t completely bad. The day started early with some challenging light and fog at sunrise. I’m glad I brought my IR modified camera and used it to cut through the limited visibility. I did get one or two pleasing photos, including this one. But it’s a B&W sunrise! What’s up with that?

The boardwalk by the boat ramp in the fog – at SR 520 and the St. Johns River

Kevin led us right to the Smooth-billed Ani (thanks Kevin!). The light was still poor and we ended up coming back later for a better look / image. These aren’t normally found this far north in Florida and they’re unusual looking with a very large beak – fun to see. People have also reported a close relative (Groove-billed Ani) on Apopka Wildlife Drive.

Smooth-billed Ani

We saw Scaups, Mottled Ducks, Hooded Mergansers, Limpkins, White Pelicans, a Wilsons Snipe, a Great Horned Owl, Coots, Moorehens, Roseate Spoonbills, and Osprey among other things.

Hooded Merganser pair

Mom and juvenile Limpkin about to enjoy escargot

The light was spotty all morning with periods of rain. There were a couple of images I tried that didn’t work out. I’m going back soon to try again. NOTE: Their website says that Viera Wetlands is closed January 16 – 20. Plan accordingly.

Based on this post and my previous one, I think you can see that the bird activity has picked up here in Central Florida. It’s time to get out and enjoy our natural wonders.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Now, go make some photos!

Black Point Wildlife Drive – 1/6/17

January 8, 2017INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWRAlligator, birds, BPWD, fishing, panorama, Reddish Egret, White Pelican, Wood StorkEd Rosack

I was planning to post more photos from our recent cruise this weekend. But after visiting Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge last Friday with Kevin K. and Tom M. from the Photography Interest Group, I changed my mind. There’s a great deal of activity there and it’s well worth a blog post (and a visit!).

One of the first birds we watched was a Redish Egret fishing close to shore. It’s great fun to see these birds dance and pounce.

Reddish Egret and Minnow

I had the Olympus E-M1 Mark II with me and practiced with the “Pro Capture” mode (I brought the right lens this time). This really helps you catch a decisive moment – it’s almost cheating. You’d better have a large card in your camera and time to go through all the images, though. I used low-speed and still had way too many frames. Here’s one example:

Wood Stork and Minnow

There were a huge number of White Pelicans and they treated us to “air ballet shows” all morning.

Synchronized Flying

We saw several huge fish in the canal along the drive. Possibly the same kind as in this post from last year.

Several (3 or more?) large fish (carp?) swimming in the canal near the road. These were about two feet long.

And there were more gators visible than usual. They look well fed – perhaps they’ve been after those large fish. These monsters stay so still that you can take your time and make a stitched panorama of them. Unless they’re chasing you 🙂

Gator panorama

We also spotted Belted Kingfishers, a Bald Eagle, Osprey, several varieties of duck, a wild pig, and many other interesting things.

You can look at my other photos from MINWR in this album on Flickr.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. There’s a lot going on over there – go see for yourself!

TURTLEy Awesome Adventure

December 24, 2016INSIDE FLORIDA, Juno Beachloggerhead turtle, rehabilitation, sea turtle, wildlifeMaryKate

While technically outside of the Central Florida Photo Ops area, this week’s post comes to you from the Loggerhead Marinelife Center down in Juno Beach, FL. The Center is a turtley awesome 12,000 square foot non-profit education and ocean conservation facility with a veterinary hospital, exhibit, outdoor classroom, research lab, resource center, and – my favorite – a really great gift shop (you don’t have to feel guilty leaving with souvenirs, it’s all for a great cause!).

Loggerhead Marinelife Center facility

For the second year in a row (now a tradition!), some of the family headed down to meet Pumpkin, the green sea turtle patient I adopted this Christmas for my sister-in-law Sara. Pumpkin was stranded at Palm Beach, FL and arrived to the Marinelife Center on November 2. The victim of a net entanglement, Pumpkin has an injury to its left front flipper and hasn’t been eating well. However, Pumpkin seemed active and in good spirits when we visited, and we can keep tabs on his progress (and hopefully eventual release date) through his patient page on the Center website.

Pumpkin, Sara’s green sea turtle adoptee

The main section of the facility has six large glass-front tanks where you can watch the turtles from the top or get a “fish eye” view from the front. We really flipped out over our two new friends: Squash and Nicklen were really shelling it out for the cameras!

Heros In A Half Shell: Turtle Power!

Squash was squishing against the glass to see us!

You can also watch the vet staff interact with and treat the turtles. In the picture below, they were draining the water in Waffle’s tank for a disinfectant treatment on its flipper. The Loggerhead Marinelife Center is great with education and makes the turtles very accessible to watch and learn about – you can also watch the vet staff in the turtle hospital through their large front windows.

Waffle prepares for his disinfectant treatment

The Center is a wonderful place for kids and adults alike – whether you visit in person, attend a turtle release, or check out their Turtle Cam, there are lots of ways to learn about these gentle giants. And if you’re looking for a last-minute 2016 charitable deduction, then consider donating or even adopting your own! You can help the Loggerhead Marinelife Center rehabilitate and release even more endangered sea turtles.

Editors notes:

Thanks, MK for another great write up!
If you’re interested in sea turtles and conservation efforts you may enjoy this post from 2013 about watching Loggerheads laying eggs on the beach.
MK has more photos from the Center in her album on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/marykate/albums/72157674425905743.
Ed has more photos in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72157678223520825
Also, we seem to be having a problem with the blog search function. I’m looking into it and will fix as soon as possible.

Thanks for stopping by and reading the blog. Now go save some turtles – and make some photos!

Don’t get thrown in the tank during your New Years SHELLebration!!

Wouldn’t it be nice…

December 10, 2016Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesuplandscape, sunset, technologyEd Rosack

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 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!

Cracker Christmas 2016

December 4, 2016Fort Christmas, INSIDE FLORIDAAntiques, buildings, music, panorama, peopleEd Rosack

Lynn and I went out to the Fort Christmas Historical Park this morning and met Nancy T. there for the 39th annual “Cracker Christmas”. There are craft vendors and historical demonstrations and it’s a great way to revisit some of our Florida history and maybe find a few unique gifts for friends and relatives.

The Union School – Originally established in 1906, it was expanded in the 1920s and used until 1969.

I was glad to go since I was hoping to make some photos for a blog post. I haven’t done any photography all week until today. Which is why this post is a bit late.

Victrola and RCA Victor record

One of the small buildings at Fort Christmas has a nice display of Victrolas and Edison phonograph machines. They have recordings too and it was a treat to listen to one of their wax cylinders from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

There was live music too:

Skeeter Creek band

Other things I enjoyed seeing were the tractor displays:

Farmall Tractor

And even the old furniture, some of which was very ornate.

Dragonfly and flowers chair

There was plenty to eat, too – although we left before lunchtime.

This post is a first for me. All of the photos are from my iPhone (in JPG mode no less!) with a bit of Lightroom magic added. I also carried my micro 4/3 cameras, but for some reason ended up not using them. Curious.

You can read other posts I’ve written about Fort Christmas at this link. And I’ve collected my Fort Christmas photos in this album on Flickr.

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

Pocket Computational Photography

November 13, 2016Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDAcomputation, iPhone, people, softwareEd Rosack

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you may have seen my earlier posts on computational photography. If not, you can review them at this link: https://edrosack.com/?s=computational+photography. The term refers to using software algorithms to supplement or replace optical capture processes. Common examples are multi-frame panoramas, focus stacking, HDR processing, post capture focus, and other techniques. You can read more about it at this link on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_photography

As phone capabilities increase, their computational photography power is growing. Camera phones have long been able to do on the fly panorama and HDR capture. And here’s an example of a new capability that arrived on the iPhone 7+.

Bokeh

Apple calls this “Portrait Mode”. It’s available in Beta on the iPhone 7+ in the latest version of IOS. Since the 7+ has two cameras separated by a small distance, it provides the info necessary to compute a “depth map” of pixels in the frame. The software uses this to selectively blur pixels based on distance to add a “Bokeh” (shallow depth of field) effect that helps with subject isolation. For comparison, here is the non-computed version of the image. You can see that the background looks very different.

All isn’t perfect. The algorithm has problems around small features at the boundaries. Look closely at the next frame and you can see blurring issues at the edges of the reed.

The processing blurred parts of the reed that we wanted sharp. For the first photo above – I cheated and used Photoshop to correct the problems. Maybe in future versions the software will be better.

Here’s one more example. This is Lynn, rocking an election day t-shirt. First, the portrait mode version.

And finally, the original. In this case, the software did much better, with no obvious blurring issues. These two are straight out of the camera with no processing on my part.

It’s fascinating how photography and computers are merging. For someone who started out programming a large room sized Univac in FORTRAN with punch cards, the power and ability that fits in my pocket is just stunning. I’m glad to have it with me.

What can they possibly think of next? Do you use computational photography techniques? Do you like or hate them?

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go compute some images!

The last late sunrise…

November 6, 2016INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWRbirds, blue hour, BPWD, landscape, sunrise, wrenEd Rosack

For a while anyway. Many photographers would agree that daylight savings time and “fall back” make it harder to get up for sunrise. Photography Interest Group members Kevin K., Kevin M., Tom M., and I met at 6am last Friday for a photo expedition over to Merritt Island. It was the last time we’ll be able to set the alarm that late until next year. Despite sleeping in, we arrived well before dawn. This was the scene at the boat ramp at the Titusville Municipal Marina.

Blue hour at the marina

There weren’t a lot of clouds, so my expectations for color were low but we did see a bit as the sun started to rise.

Calm morning

And as usual, after it was light we went looking for wildlife on Black Point Wildlife Drive. There are some winter visitors showing up there now. We saw warblers, wrens, and Kingfishers. But the ducks, Avocets and others are still missing. They’ll show up before long.

Marsh Wren (?) – At least I hope it’s a Marsh Wren – that would be a life bird!
At the rest area on Black Point Wildlife Drive, MINWR

So once again it was a good trip to one of my favorite places.

I’m going to miss sleeping later on photography mornings. By the way: New research says turning back the clock is not just bad for photographers. It impacts mental health too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/05/turning-back-the-clock-1-hour-takes-a-serious-toll-on-your-mental-health/

A couple other updates:

My friend Jim B. has heard that Biolab road in the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge is closed due to hurricane damage. No reports on when it will open again.

The Cat and Turtle blog has a report on winter birds returning to Orlando Wetlands Park. Check it out: http://www.blog.catandturtle.net/2016/11/04/winter-birds-returning-orlando-wetlands-park/

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

Around Dixie Lake

October 30, 2016INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Louisa State ParkCypress, landscape, panorama, reflection, sundog, sunsetEd Rosack

We spent a few days last week at Lake Louisa State Park. We stayed in one of their very nice 2 bedroom cabins with our friends Nancy and Howard T. The cabins are up high with a fabulous views of Dixie Lake, one of the three main lakes in the park. The photos in this blog post are all of this lake.

We were eating dinner on Tuesday evening when this started to develop. I quickly grabbed my camera, excused myself, and rushed to photograph this superb sunset.

View from the shore of Dixie Lake at dusk

We also enjoyed riding our bicycles – the hills are a change from the flatlands where we live. Returning from a ride on Monday, Howard noticed this Sundog – one of the most colorful I’ve seen.

Sundog

The cabins are just a short walk from the lake shore. The reflections and reeds made a pretty scene even in the middle of the day.

View from the shore of Dixie Lake

Across the lake from the cabins, the park has kayaks for rent. Wednesday morning we started there and paddled all the way ’round. It was windy and got stronger as we went, but we planned well and travelled clockwise which helped a bunch. The eastern shore sheltered us from the strongest winds and on the last bit along the western shore, the wind moved us along at a good clip. I like the many interesting trees and stumps we saw on the way.

Cypress stump

Wildlife was scarce on this visit. We did see a gopher tortoise on the way in and a few birds including (what I think was) a Common Nighthawk, a hawk or two, ducks going after fish and some others. I didn’t spot any deer, turkey, or even alligators but I’m sure they’re there.

Lake Louisa is close to Orlando and a wonderful place to relax and get away from it all. I highly recommend going if you get the chance! You can see other posts I’ve written about it here on the blog. And I’ve collected an album of Lake Louisa photos here on Flickr.

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