If you’re planning a visit to Central Florida to do some birding during the nesting season, check out this post from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm rookery blog.
Gen Anderson has posted a very handy Typical Rookery Schedule. You can get an idea of what the birds will be doing at the rookery when you stop by.
Check it out.
You can read my previous blog entry about Ravine Gardens at this link. In that article, I recommended that you visit this unique state Park in Palatka, Florida in the spring time so you can see the many flowers there in bloom. January through April is supposed to be the peak blooming season and Lynn and I wanted to check and see what’s happening up there so far. We’d hate to miss the peak flower time.
Eastern Redbud Tree in bloom at Ravine Gardens
There are a few flowers and trees in bloom already. We noticed the very pretty tree above right away. Most azaleas had buds, but there were very few so far in bloom. The 15th annual Azalea Festival is planned for March 5th this year, and we think that the azaleas will be at the beginning of their peak about a week before then (end of February). So if you want to see this place at it’s best, start planing your visit!
Unusual two trunk palm tree at Ravine Gardens
© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
Hello again, readers! I apologize for a somewhat lengthy post, but today I wanted to catch you up on photo related happenings over the last couple of weeks – so there are several topics worth mentioning.
A week ago (Saturday, 22 Jan), I returned to the Circle B Bar over in Lakeland Florida with the Photography Interest Group. The first time I wrote about this place, I said: “I’ve only been to the Circle B once, and need to go several more times to get an idea of how consistent the photo ops there are.” Well, the second visit lived up to the first, starting with a quite pretty dawn:
Dawn at the Circle B Bar Reserve
One of the highlights of this trip was seeing a Barred Owl and getting a relatively good photo of it. The owl was high in a tree and ended up attracting quite a crowd before it got tired of us and flew off. The lighting was a bit tough – I’m glad I had my flash and Better Beamer ready.
Barred Owl watches photographers
We also sighted Ospreys, Red Shouldered Hawks, a Red Bellied Woodpecker, Whistling Ducks, and many other birds. Unfortunately, the beautiful yellow sunflowers that were all over the place last time are no longer there. They are seasonal and to see them you’ll have to return around mid to late November next year. All in all, a very nice trip and the Circle B definitely lived up to its reputation once again. You can look at more of my photos from the Circle B in this set on Flickr.
Yesterday, I visited Black Point again. I’m not sure why, but this place seems to be really great for photos with reflections. Quite often the water is extremely calm and you can see scenes like these:
Clear day, calm water
Spoonbill and reflection
There was a lot of activity at Black Point. We spotted an otter, Hooded Mergansers, Belted Kingfishers, Hawks, and many other species. We also paused for a while to watch a pair of Ospreys fishing. They were too far away for good photos, and never came closer even though we had fish jumping out of the water right in front of us! You can look at more of my photos from Black Point in this set on Flickr.
A couple of weeks ago on Flickr, I saw some very nice photos of Florida Scrub Jays, made by “moonfloweryoli“. I commented on them and she mentioned a trail in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where she saw them. This led us to an add a second expedition to yesterday’s Black Point visit. We wanted to try to observe this unique species that only lives here in Florida. To make a long story short, we tried hard, but we never saw any. We’ll have to go back and try again. Kevin K. did make this image to document our search:
“Wilbur” and “Donuts” looking for the hard to find Florida Scrub Jay (image courtesy of Kevin Krause); Your humble author is the one on the left.
A quick update for those of you looking for info on the St. Augustine Alligator Farm or Gatorland. I reported back in November that Gatorland was canceling its photographer early entry program. The Gatorland Blog hasn’t been updated since then, so it’s a bit hard to find out what’s going on at that park.
Meanwhile, the St. Augustine Alligator Farm announced they would continue their photographer early entry program. They’ve been running a mailing list on Yahoo where you could find information, and last week they announced that they’ll be discontinuing this and starting a blog of their own. It’s now up and running, check it out.
Finally, here’s an equipment update. I’ve been doing much of my bird photography since early last year with a Sigma 150 – 500 OS lens. I’ve been very happy with it and one of my few complaints was that the Optical Stabilization was a bit noisy. Lately, it’s developed a “chatter” where it sounds like the OS motor is vibrating back and forth. While it does this, you can see the image vibrating through the viewfinder. I called Sigma and they said to send it back. So I’ll be without it for a while. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
That’s all for today. Thanks for stopping by.
© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
It’s been a while since I posted an in depth technique article, so I thought I’d do another one. Warning: Major photo geek out ahead. If you’re not into HDR, panoramas, post processing, etc. please move along.
…
OK, now that it’s just us photo nerds left, wanna see some sausage made? Let’s get started.
My question to you: What if you want more pixels in your final image, more dynamic range in both highlights and shadows, and better depth of field, all by using a much simpler technique than you might normally use? How would you go about it? I’ll explain one approach I used recently to make this lead photo from my previous post:
Finished image (click to view on Flickr)
I made this with a 12 megapixel Nikon D700, but my final image file is 4238 pixels wide by 5776 pixels tall (about 24.5 Megapixels). It has good depth of field with objects from very close out to the horizon in focus. It also has good dynamic range with both the ground and the sunrise & clouds well exposed.
If you were going to create an image like this using conventional techniques, it could require 6 or more exposures. You’d mount your camera on a tripod and manual focus. You might analyze the scene to decide on an optimum exposure. Then you’d make three bracketed exposures around that, first of the lower portion of the image, then shifting your camera viewpoint up toward the clouds – three more bracketed exposures. Then you’d use panorama software to combine the three pairs of images at each exposure value, followed by HDR software to combine the three resulting panoramas into an HDR file and tone map it. You might have to play with the result quite a bit to eliminate noise, ghosting, etc. introduced by the HDR software. And if you wanted to stretch the depth of field, you might go through this twice with different focus points, and combine them too. In some situations, you could also try using graduated neutral density filters to control dynamic range.
Whew – that could be a whole lot of work! I didn’t do all that. Instead, I used a much simpler idea. Basically, I just combined two images manually in Photoshop.
If you’re still with me, read on (it might look complicated, but it’s actually harder to read about than do). Here are the details.
Once you go through this a few times, it’ll be easier and you can, of course vary some of these steps based on your own preferences.
I think this “Two Image Pano / HDR / Focus Stacking” technique can be really useful and it has several advantages over standard approaches normally used for this kind of image.
This technique is situation dependent: It’ll only produce portrait or perhaps square orientation output images (although you’ll have lots of pixels to crop to other formats). It only works where the scene is easily divided into two portions where the brightness varies vertically. Also,the dynamic range increase available from just two images may not be enough in all situations.
Why not? Under the right conditions, it can generate very good results with minimal effort. Now that you’ve heard about this technique, you can watch for scenes where you may be able to use it.
Then you can try it – and please let me know how it works for you.
© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
Although it was very tempting to sleep in this morning, I was up early and made it over to Viera Wetlands in time to witness another one of nature’s shows. The clouds cooperated and did their part, the sun and calm water pitched in, a couple of coots made just the right ripples, and all I had to do was snap the shutter.
Sunrise at Viera Wetlands
Once the sun was up, we parked the cars and walked for a while, thinking that the slow deliberate approach would yield better photos than the quick drive method. It didn’t – we failed to find much of interest on foot. The light wasn’t very good either – due to the clouds that made the sunrise so nice. We ended up getting back in the cars and using them to find things of interest. And after a while, the clouds cleared and we had better light for bird photography.
Last week we saw several Snipes, but couldn’t get good photos since they took off and flew fast and erratic as soon as we got close. This week our luck was better (or this bird was a bit tired). He stayed still for us to make his portrait.
Wilson’s (Common) Snipe
We saw the usual Heron and Egret suspects, along with Anhingas, Hawks, Black Crowned Night Herons, American Bitterns, Savannah Sparrows, Northern Shovelers, and Sandhill Cranes. I was able to photograph two new (for me) species – Ring Neck Ducks, and Lesser Scaups.
We also took a turn ’round the click ponds and there was a great deal of activity there. This Cormorant surprised me when he came up with his breakfast.
Cormorant with fish
We had a great time. Clicking on these photos will open them on Flickr, where you can view larger versions. You can also visit my Viera Wetlands set on Flickr to see other photos I’ve made there.
© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
Our local photography club organized an expedition to Viera Wetlands yesterday. It was one of our larger outings, with 8 people from the group there, including one new member. We arrived just after sunrise and spent a little over 2 hours exploring the main site, and also took a quick tour of the click ponds.
Great Blue Heron: These birds aren’t nesting yet, but they do seem to be reserving their spots.
Wow – what a day for avian variety and nature lovers! The weather was quite nice too – sunny with temperatures in the 50s. There isn’t much nesting going on yet, but we did see an amazing number of both year-round and winter visitor species. Several of these birds are difficult to spot and / or photograph well and it helps to make multiple circuits of the wetlands. It also really helps to have multiple sets of eyes watching for and pointing out interesting things. About the only thing we struck out on was the River Otters, but we did hear others talking about them – so they were around somewhere.
Belted Kingfisher: There were several of these at Viera Wetlands yesterday. They generally stayed out in the middle of the cells and so were hard to photograph.
Here’s a list of birds we spotted: American Bittern, Anhinga, Belted Kingfisher, Blue Wing Teal, Coot, Double Crested Cormorant, Glossy Ibis, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Green Wing Teal, Little Blue Heron, Little Egret, Hooded Merganser, Common Moorhen, Northern Harrier, Northern Shoveler, Red Shouldered Hawk, Gulls, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, Wilson’s (or Common?) Snipe, White Ibis, Wood Stork, and others that I probably forgot or that we still have to identify.
Anhinga
If you haven’t been to Viera Wetlands recently, you really ought to check it out.
You can click on these photos to go to Flickr where you can look at larger versions. You can see more of my photos from Viera Wetlands in this set on Flickr. You can also visit our photography club’s group photo pool on Flickr here.
© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
If you enjoy birding and / or bird photography – Central Florida offers many opportunities. The winter months especially can be quite rewarding. Insects and heat are much less of a bother, and many species that aren’t here year round, do visit. This allows us to expand our observation beyond the birds we typically see. Also, with less vegetation cover, some smaller birds are easier to spot.
I visited both Viera Wetlands and Black Point Wildlife drive over the past week and here are some of the less common (at least for me) birds that I saw:
Belted Kingfisher, Black Point – Winter, non-breeding (in central Florida; they are year round in north Florida)
Hooded Merganser, Black Point and Viera – Winter, non-breeding in Central Florida
Killdeer, Black Point and Viera – Year round, but easier to observe in the winter
Loggerhead Shrike, Viera – Year round, but easier to observe in the winter
Northern Harrier, Black Point – Winter, non-breeding in Central Florida
Savannah Sparrow, Viera – Winter, non-breeding in Central Florida
White Pelicans, Black Point – Winter, non-breeding in Central Florida
Last winter, I also saw these at Viera:
American Bittern – Winter, non-breeding in Central Florida
Masked Duck – uncommon in central Florida
I’m certain there are many more “snow” birds that I’ve yet to see in Central Florida. And that’s one reason to continue to look.
Happy New Year and thanks for looking at my blog.
© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
I apologize for not publishing a post last weekend. We’ve had a very busy week with family and the Christmas holiday. I’ll try to make up for it today with this Central Florida Photo Op review of Universal’s Islands of Adventure Theme park.
Dawn at Hogwarts Castle
Islands of Adventure is right next to Universal Studios and City Walk and is one of the newest theme parks in the Orlando area. It opened in 1998, and this year (2010), Universal added a new “island” to the park – The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. This much awaited addition has been extremely popular and is a must see for Harry Potter fans.
Ollivander’s wand shop
The park also has a Port of Entry and 5 other “islands”: Marvel Super Hero Island; Toon Lagoon; Jurassic Park; The Lost Continent; and Suess Landing. Depending on your interests these will be more or less appealing to you.
Photo hints: The line to the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey winds through Hogwarts Castle and has many, many photo ops along the way. Be prepared so you don’t hold up people or lose your place. Most of the photo ops are at close range, so use your flash and fire away.
Tripod/Monopod: I did see one person using a tripod, but I think it’s very impractical. When you’re inside and need it, you won’t have time or space to use it because you’ll be in a ride queue. Outside you’ll have plenty of light, and the crowds will make setting up very difficult. And the less equipment you have to carry on the sometimes cramped rides, the better.
Lenses: Nothing too extreme is needed – a mid range zoom is enough to capture many fine images at this park. You can use a flash too, so you don’t have to worry too much about fast, heavy lenses.
Best time to visit: Winter is a great time to visit, since you’ll be blessed with fine Florida weather. If you time your visit right, you can even see some color in our trees.
Fall colors
Pick a day when no fronts are coming through and you’ll avoid the rain. If you’re a big Harry Potter fan, you’ll want to research strategies for the best ways to get in quickly to this area – it can get quite jammed with muggles. We arrived at the park before it opened, made straight for the area and did pretty well. Other people have had luck avoiding long lines by going late at night just before the park closes.
The muggles crowd in Hogsmeade Village
Other:
Several rides at Islands of Adventure will get you and possibly your photo gear wet. Take precautions when riding Popey & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges, Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls, and Jurassic Park River Adventure. There are lockers where you can store your gear. I wasn’t comfortable taking expensive camera gear through wet rides or leaving it in lockers, so I made do with my small Canon S90 which I could protect in my pocket.
The Mythos restaurant in the Lost Continent area is rated very highly and has some of the best theme park food in the world. It’s also fairly reasonably priced. We very much enjoyed our meal.
Tempura Shrimp Sushi appetizer
You can click on any of the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can see a larger version. The link to the rest of my Islands of Adventure photos is right below. You can look at all of the photos from our Christmas holidays in this Flickr set. Thanks for stopping by.
| My Gallery / Flickr photo set: | http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/sets/72157625691192000/ |
|---|---|
| Website: | http://www.universalorlando.com/Amusement_Parks/Islands_of_Adventure/islands_of_adventure.aspx |
| Address / Phone: | Parking Garage:
6000 Universal Boulevard Orlando, FL 32819 Main Number: 407-363-8000 Longitude: -81.46228 Latitude: 28.47399 |
| Central Florida Photo Ops Rating: | Harry Potter fans can’t go wrong in this point and shoot paradise. |
©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
We went to Seaworld again at the invitation of the United Way group here in Orlando. They very graciously organize the visit each year to thank people that contribute to the charity. We almost didn’t go due to the weather.
The harbor area at Seaworld
There was a cold front coming through with a strong line of showers ahead of it. When we got out of bed, it was north of us but moving south fast. We decided we’d go anyway and timed our arrival for just after the rain came through. The park wasn’t very crowded. I think the weather discouraged many people from going. As you can see above, it cleared up nicely.
We’re not into roller coasters any more so we didn’t do many of the rides and spent most of our time just walking. I practiced with the D7000 and a wide angle lens. The photo above was made at an 8mm focal length – it’s a challenge to frame a scene with an 8mm lens and not have everything tilt in from the edges.
Here’s a couple more from yesterday.
Wood Duck
Demoiselle Crane
Seaworld is a pleasant place for a walk and offers a number of different photo opportunities. You can see other photos I’ve made at Seaworld in this set on Flickr.
You can read other posts I’ve written about Seaworld here: 2007, here: 2008, and here: 2009.
©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.
This nature wonderland in Lakeland, Florida is named after a cattle ranch that used to exist on the property. It was purchased by Polk County and the SW Florida Water Management District in late 2000. The area is 1,267 acres total and starting in 2005, 400 acres have undergone a marsh reclamation to recreate a natural habitat and food source for many kinds of resident and migrating birds and wildlife. The Circle B is also home to the Polk County Nature Discovery Center.
The western shore of Lake Hancock (from the Alligator Alley trail)
Circle B has a tremendous variety and number of birds. Alligators also inhabit Lake Hancock and can be seen from the trails in several places. There are a variety of different areas on the property including Oak hammock, freshwater marsh, hardwood swamp and the lake shore.
The Circle B has over 7 miles of marked trails for walking or biking. If you go, make sure you see at least the Alligator Alley and Marsh Rabbit Run trails. We hiked these as well as the Shady Oak, Windmill Whisper and portions of Wading Bird Way and Eagle Roost trails when we were there for a total hike of more than 5 miles.
Marsh Rabbit Run trail
In our one visit we saw Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Ibises, Cattle Egrets, Ospreys, Red Shoulder Hawks, Cormorants, Anhingas, Limpkins, Whistling Ducks, Alligators, Turtles, a very brave rabbit and some other things as well. One local photographer we spoke with told us about a Barred Owl in the area as well as some otters, but we never saw them. Next time!
Cormorant – These birds have been posing for me lately.
In addition to the wildlife, the scenery is quite beautiful and different from our normal areas near the coast. There were many types of trees and flowers, including this sunflower variety that was very abundant all over the property.
These sunflowers (?) were all over the Circle B Bar Reserve – very pretty. I wonder if they bloom all the time or if we just happened to be there when they’re in season?
Photo hints:
I’ve only been to the Circle B once, and need to go several more times to get an idea of how consistent the photo ops there are. If you have the kind of experience we did, you’ll have lots of opportunity for photos of still as well as in-flight birds. If you’re quiet as you walk, you can avoid scaring off the nearby birds and get some better shots. They are somewhat used to people here, but not overly tolerant. Make sure you look all around as you hike (especially up) and take an occasional glance behind to see if you’ve missed anything.
In addition to my photo set from the Circle B, visit the Circle B bar group on Flickr to see what others are photographing there and to read up on discussions about the reserve.
Tripod/Monopod:
Allowed, of course. Tripods would be very handy for landscape photos or (with a gimbal head) for birds. You’ll have to decide how much gear you’re willing to carry on your hike. Since this was a scouting trip, we traveled light and I wished several times that I’d brought my tripod.
Lenses:
Telephoto for birds / wildlife and and wide-angle for landscapes. You’ll need a good range of lenses to cover everything here, but you’ll be able to get some good photos no matter which lens you have with you.
Best time to visit:
As for any place when looking for birds and wildlife, early in the day (or late) is best. I’m not yet sure what times of year are the best here, but mid to late November is definitely worth a visit.
Other:
You’ll be walking a good bit. Make sure you wear comfortable shoes and bring some water with you.
You can click on any of the photos above to view them on Flickr, where you can also see a larger version.
| My Gallery / Flickr photo set: | http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/sets/72157625343566505/ |
|---|---|
| Website: | http://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/recreation/areas/circlebbarreserve.html |
| Address / Phone: | 4399 Winter Lake Road (SR 540)
Lakeland, FL 33803 |
| Central Florida Photo Ops Rating: | Another CFl Photo Op must do! |
©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.