Category Archives: INSIDE FLORIDA

Lake Jesup Flowers – 2013

INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers,

An update on the Lake Jesup Flowers – they are indeed back in full force.

Tom M. and I went over last Wednesday morning to check on them.  They seemed to me to still be a little before the peak.  I think they’ll get a bit higher and fuller before they start fading away in the next several days.  If you want to see them this year, you don’t have much time left.

The Marl Bed Flats are a little soggy.  There were places that were dry, but a large part of the area away from the woods had an inch or two of standing water.  The sky was incredibly clear and there was a soft wind blowing too – not ideal conditions for flower photography, but we looked for interesting compositions anyway.

Swamp Sunflower fields pano

With the sun so low, it was hard to keep myself out of this shot – hence the photographer shaped shadow in the middle bottom

Swamp Sunflowers

Finding flowers that reach above their neighbors is one way to isolate subjects

Swamp Sunflower

The light was very pretty in spots. This blossom was sheltered in a pocket of calm along the path out to the fields.  With a nice dark background, it called out for a close up.

For a different perspective and an example of how diverse the view here can be, look at this blog post from Jeff Stamer.  Jeff timed his visit better than we did and hiked out before sunrise on Thursday when the sky was beautiful.

Here are links to previous articles with more info:

And you can browse some of my photos of the area in this set on Flickr.  There’s also an article about the flowers in this month’s Orlando Magazine.

When you go, please be careful.  Stopping on the side of 417 is 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 photos!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Hillsborough River State Park

Hillsborough River State Park, INSIDE FLORIDA, , , , , ,

For some reason, I’d never noticed Hillsborough River State Park until fellow Photography Interest Group member JT Smith asked me about it – thanks JT!  There are a lot of photos of the park on Flickr, many of them quite nice.  So I decided to go over on a scouting trip.  Flickr’s a great place to research new locations and I spent a while going through their search results as well as Google maps before my trip.

Dark river in the deep woods
Dark river in the deep woods.  A Hoya 8 2/3 stop neutral density filter let me stretch my exposure time to 25 seconds at f/8 and ISO 100 to smooth the water surface.

The park is about 20 miles north-east of Tampa and an hour and 40 minutes west of where I live.  Not too long a trip.  With all the rain we’ve had recently,  added water’s made the current look pretty fast through the rapids.  My kayak would get a few scrapes paddling through this.

Hillsborough River rapids
Hillsborough River rapids.  I’m a sucker for Cypress Knees and it was a treat to find some by the rapids to use as foreground.  Since the wind was blowing a bit, I made two exposures.  A slow one (30 seconds with the ND filter), and another not so slow one (no filter, 1/13th second).  To eliminate the blurred leaves, I combined them in Photoshop using layers and masking the first for the water and second for the foliage.

I want to see what this looks like when we haven’t had so much rain.  I think a few more exposed rocks would be nice.  Here’s one last image from the trip:

Hillsborough River

Hillsborough River.  This is an Infrared, false color, three exposure panorama.  This place is near the kayak put-in.

I’m going to make a return trip and bring my kayak.  I think I’ll paddle the parts in the first and third photos and not the second.

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

And if you know of a good photo photo-op in Central Florida – please let me know.  I love to explore new places.

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The flowers are coming! The flowers are coming!

INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Must do list,

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.

Lake Jesup Wildflowers
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!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Two Merritt Island Moments

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

I got up early Thursday morning and checked the weather.  The maps (both Radar and IR clouds) were clear. This isn’t a strong sign for a good sunrise, but I was itching to photograph something and I was already packed, so I went on over to MINWR to check activity there. My first stop was East Gator Creek Road – one of my favorite sunrise locations.  The sky was mostly clear about 45 minutes before dawn and with plenty of stars out, it was beautiful.

The stars above
The stars above: Gator Creek Road in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, before dawn.

The bugs were bad and it was hot and humid too but I stayed for over an hour and enjoyed watching the sky change over time.  I only saw two other people:  Someone in a pickup truck looking for a spot to fish and a jogger.  Neither slowed down – I hope they appreciated the sky too.  In spite of the earlier weather map, clouds developed on the horizon and with no wind, the reflections were lovely.

Clouds and reflections at dawn
Clouds and reflections at dawn: Along on Gator Creek Road

After Gator Creek, I headed to Black Point Wildlife Drive but found it closed due to heavy rain.  I didn’t think to check for news / closures before I went.

Since I couldn’t explore Black Point, I stopped briefly at Bio Lab Road, Scrub Ridge Trail, and Haulover canal.  The Haulover canal bridge was still closed, although it was supposed to re-open on 9/13.  I watched two Manatees near the Bairs Cove Boat Ramp for a few minutes.  They seem to like this place – I think I’ve seen them every time I’ve been by.

eBird has a handy new Hotspot Explorer site that shows birding hotspots all over the world.  It lists species seen and how many were reported at each spot by month.  Here’s the specific page for MINWR. September is normally the slowest month and I didn’t see anything to contradict this when I was there.  Activity should ramp up beginning in October.

So … a pleasant trip.  I came back with two captured moments.  I wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t gone, and I couldn’t have shared them either.

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

©2013, Ed Rosack.  All rights reserved

Review and Reprocess

Blue Cypress Lake, Cocoa, INSIDE FLORIDA, St. Augustine, Technique, , , , , , , ,

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:

Reflections at Kelly Park
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.

Main Sanctuary of the Cathedral Basilica
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
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!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Sunset Sports Shot

INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, VARIOUS, , , , ,

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:

UCF Knights defeat the Akron Zips 38 - 7
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!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Captive wildlife

Theme Parks, VARIOUS, , , , , , , , ,

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

Not sleeping
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

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.

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.

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Topaz ReStyle Mini Review

INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, , , , ,

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

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
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

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:

__D8C4109_HDR_Ed-Rosack
Before:  Down on the beach at dawn.

_P8110813_Ed-Rosack

Before: Survivors

Sea oats

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!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

St. Augustine, Florida and vicinity – photo hints

INSIDE FLORIDA, Marineland Beach, Must do list, St. Augustine, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lynn was out-of-town last week at the Pressing Iron & Trivet Collectors of America Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. I talked her into letting me out of my spousal support services subcontract, so I had a chance to sneak in a few days of photography while she was away. I spent the time in St. Augustine, Florida, which is “the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement and port in the continental United States”. I’ve written about it many times (see this link) and it’s one of my favorite places to photograph. Photo ops abound and include landscapes, architecture, street scenes, beaches, historic landmarks, wildlife, and much more. It’s hard to go anywhere in the area and not come back with a photo! Here are some of mine along with hints on how I made them.
There are some wonderful sunrise and sunset spots. Friends told me about Marineland Beach (thanks Kevin M. and JT) which is just a little south of St. Augustine. It’s now one of my new favorites. The coquina rocks there worked really well as foreground objects in my photos.

Long exposure sunrise

Long exposure sunrise – Marineland Beach, Florida

This is a single exposure, made through a Hoya ND400 filter right after sunrise. The waves were coming in around me, but I stood my tripod on one of the rocks to keep us dry. I used my lowest ISO setting (50) and even with the sun in the frame, the 8 2/3 stop ND filter gave me a 14 second exposure at f/8 . The long shutter speed makes the water surface contrast nicely with the rock texture.

One thing you’ll run into in Florida on summer mornings is condensation. It’s so humid that if you take your camera gear directly from your air-conditioned room or car out into the moist air, you can expect 15 to 30 minutes of fog before they clear. You can decrease this by not running your car’s AC on the way. You can also seal your camera and lens in a plastic bag with as much air removed as possible until it warms up. And it’s a good idea to bring along a micro-fiber cloth to remove condensation if needed. The larger your camera / lens is, the longer it will take to warm up. This is one time that good glass works against you – at least until the temperature equalizes. One more point: try not to change lenses under these conditions. If water condenses on your sensor, it can be hard to remove and may cause dust to adhere to the surface.

The harbor and fort (Castillo de San Marcos) also provide interesting detail for sunrise or sunset and landscapes in general.

A calm morning in the St. Augustine harbor.
A calm morning in the St. Augustine harbor: Clouds to the north over the Castillo de San Marcos and the quarter Moon above the Bridge of Lions add interesting detail to this image.

This photo and the next were both multi-shot panoramas made with the techniques I described last week. Images like the harbor scene can be tough to blend due to smooth gradients in the sky and water. Be sure you check carefully and correct any glitches.

Another thing about summer in Florida: We have awesome afternoon thunderstorms. Clouds add a lot of drama to photos, but the storms were so bad on two of the days I was there that I couldn’t go out for sunset. Plan accordingly.

St. Augustine Sunset
St. Augustine Sunset behind the Castillo de San Marcos

On this evening at the fort, there was a large thunder-storm to the west. The sky wasn’t colorful at all until the sun moved down below the thunder head, resulting in these shadows and rays. One big advantage of sunset photography vs. sunrise is that you can wait to see what develops. At sunrise, you need to be in place extremely early to see all the variations happen.

I had a great time walking around the fort at sunset with my large tripod and big DSLR camera. Most people were oblivious and walked right through my photos (I don’t blame them – I don’t own the place).  I’d wait for a clear spot in the traffic and make another exposure. Other folks stood next to me since they thought wherever someone with a big camera is has to be a good spot. At one point, a tour guide in a pirate costume leading a group of 20 or so people saw me and stopped his group from walking in front of me until I finished my exposure. It turned out he’s a photographer too.

I wanted to try a night photo of the lighthouse. I also wanted to capture the look of the beam coming out of the light. This turned out to be a tough assignment. The contrast range is huge and there’s a lot of glare from the lights in the scene.

St. Augustine Light Station
St. Augustine Light Station

I ended up merging two exposures. The first one was long (f/4 @ 3 seconds) at a low ISO (400) to decrease noise. The slow shutter blurred the light beam, so I made a second exposure (ISO 3200, f/4 @ 0.4 seconds) and this stopped the beam enough to highlight it. The second exposure had some noise, but was fine with a bit of post processing before I blended the two manually in Photoshop.  I made this photo about an hour before sunrise. It was dark and there was no one around. One of my contacts on Flickr commented that spooky things happen in this area. I’m glad I didn’t notice any when I was there.

Tom M. met me up there on one of the days and we spent several hours just walking around. There were many interesting scenes, and I never saw any two doors  alike.

Red door #33
Red door #33

We were walking down one street and saw someone in the distance photographing this house with his iPhone. He was really working it, making multiple photos / compositions and was still there when we arrived several minutes later. We waited for him to finish and when he looked up and noticed us he asked what kind of cameras we had. It turned out he’s a photographer too and was there on vacation, but forgot his Nikon D3S DSLR. He said using the iPhone was “very liberating”. Photo hint 101: If someone’s taking a picture, look at what he’s photographing – it might be interesting. Photo hint 102: Don’t forget your camera.

A little later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this waiter zipping through traffic on the way to work.  On a skate board.  I managed to make a quick photo.

Morning commute
Morning commute – very eco-friendly

We also noticed this person reading on the bench.  I really liked the symmetry of the columns and how they led my eye towards the subject. Tom posted a different composition (sorry – no longer available) that I think is really good too.

Reading
Reading.

By the way, if you have Lightroom 5, try out the “Upright” settings in the Lens Corrections panel on photos like the one above. It does a great job squaring things up.

Like I said, there’s a tremendous amount of photo-ops in the area. I didn’t make it by the St. Augustine Alligator Farm on this visit, but from March to June, it’s one of the best places in Florida to photograph a variety of wild birds nesting in the rookery there.  I also didn’t get to Fort Matanzas.  It’s a little south of the city and makes a nice side excursion. The Nombre de Dios Mission in the northern part of the city has a beautiful chapel and grounds as well as a view into the harbor.  And I’m sure that there are a great many more photo ops that I still have to discover in this beautiful place.

You can see these photos larger if you click on them and I have many others from St. Augustine in this set on Flickr.

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

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Merritt Island Sunrise

INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, , ,

Just a quick post today. I haven’t done a sunrise in a while, so Kevin M. and I got up early this morning for a quick trip over to MINWR. The sky was very plain at first with some fog and very high humidity. But as dawn developed, a few clouds moved in and this was the scene right after sunrise. If you look at a larger version (click on it to go to Flickr), you can just see the alligator in the middle distance that swam into the sun reflections as I pressed the shutter.

An alligator wimming through sunrise at East Gator Creek Road
An alligator swimming through sunrise at East Gator Creek Road, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida.

After sunrise, we continued on Gator Creek Road and saw a few of the regular birds, but nothing too unusual. It was the same story on Black Point Wildlife Drive. Things are a bit slow over there at this time of year.

I hope all of you are doing well. Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved