Category Archives: INSIDE FLORIDA

Alligator Farm Spoonbill Chicks Take Off!

July 6, 2010Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Must do list, St. Augustine, St. Augustine Alligator Farmbirds, Spoonbill, wildlifeEd Rosack

I’ve found that one of the pleasures of bird photography and bird watching in general is the repeated observation of locations over the course of a nesting season. When you return to a place regularly, you can watch the behavior of the parents over time as well as the young birds as they develop.

I’m fortunate to live relatively close to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Bird Rookery and I was able to visit four times recently. This was the first year that Roseate Spoonbills have nested there and the farthest north that they’ve been recorded nesting. In this post, I’ll show you a sequence of photographs made over about six weeks of the two easily seen Spoonbill nests at the Rookery. Nest 1 is on the right side of the boardwalk closest to the entrance. Nest 2 is the one you can see from the far end of the boardwalk close to the large tree.

This first photo was taken at the end of May and shows one Spoonbill above and to the right of nest 2. At the bottom left you can barely make out one of the very young and small Spoonbills. This is the first photo I managed to make of the chicks. Sorry about the quality. The chicks didn’t come out in the open at all when I was there that time.

Mother Spoonbill keeps an eye on chick, nest 2. May 30th, 2010

Here is the same nest (#2) two weeks later. The chicks have grown a bit, have some beginning feathers, and are more active.

Roseate Spoonbill Mom and chicks in nest 2, June 13th, 2010

And this photo shows how large the chicks had grown yesterday when I visited – quite a difference in only 16 days!

Roseate Spoonbill Mom and chicks near nest 1, July 5th, 2010

Several of the young Spoonbills have fledged and I was able to capture this photo of one of them trying its wings:

Juvenille Spoonbill tests its wings, July 5th, 2010

So you can see how fast these Spoonbills develop. From just hatched and barely moving to flying in about 6 weeks. I’ve enjoyed following their progress this year. What a wonderful opportunity!

The bad news for those of you that haven’t yet visited the Alligator Farm is that you’ve missed most of the nesting season. Make your plans for next year!

PIG Tales 1

June 26, 2010Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, Techniqueastronomy, landscape, moon, nightEd Rosack

I belong to a camera club called the Photography Interest Group (the “PIGs). Our members vary in their photographic background and experience (as well as in age, gender and cultural background, by the way). A couple of us have used SLRs since the film days. Some of the others in our group are beginners with their first Single Lens Reflex camera. But we all love photography.

The “senior PIGs” often get questions about why we do things a certain way, or how to do a specific thing. I think it might be interesting to others if I post the questions and answers. When a junior PIG want to know, others may want to know too. So this post is the first of what may become a series. We’ll see how it goes.

Q. How do you make photos at night?

One member of our club has a trip planned to Yosemite. He (let’s call him “Donuts”) wants to do something a little different and make photos after dark. Do you need special equipment? What settings do you use? How do you focus when you can’t see anything?

Now before we get started, we’re talking about outdoor, landscape and nature photos, not your regular dinner party photos. That would be a completely different post – somewhere else.

A. Slowly and carefully

I’ll write this for people with DSLR cameras. Most of the principles will apply if you have a point and shoot, but your camera may not have the controls or flexibility you’ll need. Still, you should experiment – you may discover some good work arounds with the equipment you have.

1. Night Landscapes

Night landscapes can be different and add some interest to your portfolio.

Moonrise at sunset, a pasture near Orlando Wetlands Park – Base exposure: f/8, 2 seconds, ISO 200. Second exposure (for moon): f/11, 1/25 sec, ISO 200.

Use a tripod to steady your camera. Hand holding a camera at night just won’t work — unless you’re only trying to make sunset silhouettes.
Compose carefully. All the normal landscape concepts still count for night photography. Composition (e.g. the rule of thirds), and having something of interest in the foreground as well as the middle and far distance will help your photo. You might want to use a bubble level in your camera’s hot shoe so that you can make sure your shot is level.
Focus carefully. The light level might be too low for your camera to focus automatically. If your camera has a live view mode, it can be a great help for manual focus at night, since you can zoom in to see detail. If not, you can estimate distance and set your lens manually. If you’re using a wide-angle lens, depth of field will help you. You can also stop your lens down to give more depth of field (f/11 or f/16) and make the focus less critical. Try focusing 1/3 of the distance into the frame if the main subject is close to the camera, and 2/3 in if the main subject is far away. Again, you may want to set your camera / lens to manual focus after you get it adjusted properly.
You’ll need a remote release too so you can avoid shaking the camera when you press the shutter release. For many exposures, the light may call for an exposure longer than your camera’s longest shutter speed (typically 30 seconds). In this case you’ll need to put your camera in Bulb mode and use the remote release to time the exposure by hand (more on this later).
Exposure is tricky. Your camera’s auto exposure mode may work, but will probably make the scene too bright. You can adjust this a bit in post processing to make it look more like a night scene. You can also chimp your shots to make sure you’re in the ball park and the result is close to what you want. If not, use your exposure compensation – usually to dial in a bit less light.
Here’s one trick to try for determining proper exposure for very low light situations: Set your camera’s ISO as high as it will go and make a photo. Chimp the shot to see if it’s exposed the way you want. Then set your ISO back to its base value to get the highest quality photo and slow down the shutter speed by the same ratio as the ISO change. For example, if your exposure looks correct at f/8, 4 sec. @ ISO 3200, then it should also be correct at f/8, 64 sec @ ISO 200 (4*3200/200 = 64).
Many DSLRs limit the slowest shutter speed to 30 second. How do you make an exposure of 64 seconds? Use manual mode. Set your aperture, and use Bulb for the shutter speed. Hold the shutter open with your remote release and manually time the exposure.
Long exposure noise reduction: With any exposures over a second or two, sensor noise will probably be an issue. I use Nikon’s long exposure noise reduction in these situations. When turned on, the camera will take a second exposure with the shutter closed to measure noise and then subtract the noise out from the first exposure. Try it on your camera – it works well on mine
For more advanced projects, stars (and the moon) will leave trails in any exposures longer than a few seconds. One nice effect is to scout a good landscape scene to the north and make a very long exposure. The circular star trails will be centered around the north star. You can also make spectacular photos under a dark sky by placing your camera on an equatorial mount so that the camera follows the earth’s motion. I’ve seen beautiful photos of the Milky Way behind spectacular scenery made this way.

2. Shooting the moon

The moon is interesting and one of the easiest astronomical objects to photograph. But it isn’t easy. You’ll need to set up carefully, expose correctly and have your camera as still as possible. Your photographs will benefit from as much magnification as you can get.

The Earth’s satellite – f/11, 1/50 sec, ISO 200 (click the photo to go to Flickr, where I’ve uploaded the full res, uncropped version).

Use a tripod to steady your camera. Hand holding a camera to make a photo of the moon might work if you have very good image stabilization in your camera or lens. But with a high zoom ratio, hand-held photos will hardly every work out, especially when you zoom in so you can see some detail.
Zoom in so you can see some detail. A 300mm lens on a crop sensor camera (~450mm equivalent) should allow you to make a decent photo. Much smaller than that and you’ll need to crop the result a bit – which will lower the quality. I made the photo above with my Sigma 150-500mm zoom at 500mm (750mm equivalent) on a Nikon D90. It’s uncropped and doesn’t fill the frame, but this combination does yield some nice detail.
Focus carefully. You might want to set your camera / lens to manual focus after you get it adjusted properly. Don’t bump it later, and don’t forget to put it back in auto focus mode when you’re done.
Your camera most likely will not expose the moon correctly. With a lot of dark sky in the frame, the moon will probably come out way over exposed. For your exposure, use your camera’s spot metering function and then set your exposure compensation to about -1 EV. Chimp the result and adjust as necessary. If you don’t have a spot meter, then try using the “sunny 16” rule in manual exposure mode and adjust from there. For those of you that haven’t ever shot with slide film and a manual exposure camera, this rule of thumb says that for bright sunlight, your exposure should be f/16 at a shutter speed of 1/ISO. Since the moon is lit by the sun, this rule of thumb will get you close to a good exposure.
You can do even better if you have access to a telescope. It’s relatively easy to use a point and shoot camera to take a photo through the eyepiece of a telescope like I did below. If anyone is interested in this, I can provide more information.

ETX-125 Moon — Hand held, autoexposure, Nikon Coolpix P1 through the telescope eyepiece

I’m sure you’ll come up with more ideas as you practice this. Good luck, Donuts. And don’t forget your flashlight and bug spray.

Ravine Gardens State Park

June 22, 2010Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Ravine GardensAzalea, Dogwood, Dragonfly, Flowers, landscape, reviews, travelEd Rosack

Dogwood blossom in front of azaleas

Intro / Description

I had never heard of Ravine Gardens State Park until Lynn mentioned it to me after reading about it in our Florida guidebook in the St. Augustine section. The ~185 acre park is in Palatka, about 35 miles south west of St. Augustine and about 90 miles north east of the Orlando area.

This is a steephead ravine formed by ground water leaking through porous sand onto a sloping surface. The sand is eroded from the bottom causing sand above to collapse and be carved away by the stream. It’s from 70 to 120 foot deep.

It became a state park in 1933 when the Works Progress Administration began construction and also landscaped it with 95,000 azaleas including 64 varieties. They also planted 11,000 palm trees and more than 250,000 ornamental plants. There’s a multi-tiered rose garden with a fountain at its center. You can drive a 1.8 mile loop around the ravine and hiking paths and jogging trails also wind throughout the park, including one over a suspension bridge across the ravine.

Lily pond and suspension bridge

There’s also a playground or two and picnic tables if you want to eat lunch there.

Info for Photographers

Photo hints: The azaleas are a main attraction at this park. There’s other things to see too, including the abandoned water plant, the suspension bridge, and ponds. For photography, of course, early or late in the day would be the best time to get there. If you try to photograph during midday, you’ll be bothered by harsh sunlight and high contrast with the dark forest. Capturing a scene with this much dynamic range practically begs for RAW mode and HDR techniques. You might also want to bring a polarizing filter to help cut down on reflections from leaves.

Tripod/Monopod: Definitely allowed, and you’ll need it for any HDR work.

Lenses: A wide angle lens will be useful to try to capture the feeling of the change in elevation. We saw butterflies and dragonflies when we were there, so a macro capability might also be handy.

I believe this is an Ebony Jewelwing dragonfly

Best time to visit: Spring time is a wonderful time in Central Florida. The Azelea festival is usually one weekend in the beginning of March, however they bloom over several weeks, so you have plenty of time to visit.

Several varieties of azaleas in bloom

Other: Like most state parks, the entrance fee is a bargain at $5 per car. You’ll need to occasionally park and walk short distances to see all the views, but you can see most of the park from your car. Wear good shoes if you intend to do any hiking.

Summary

This park doesn’t seem to be very well known and it’s a wonderful surprise when you discover it. The elevation changes are interesting and very different for Central Florida. It’s fairly close to Orlando and worth a visit. Go in the spring time (March) so you can view the multitude of flowers.

Vine covered trellis.

My Flickr photo set:	http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/sets/72157624336756372/
Website:	https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/ravine-gardens-state-park
Address / Phone:	1600 Twigg StreetPalatka, Florida 32177 (386) 329-3721 View in Google Maps
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating:	Ravines in Central Florida?! Check it out at azalea time – in March.

Note: This post was updated on March 12, 2011 after an additional visit to Ravine Gardens, while the Azaleas were in bloom.

St. Augustine Alligator Farm – Bird Rookery Update

June 13, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, St. Augustine, St. Augustine Alligator Farmbirds, Cattle Egret, Spoonbill, Tri-colored Heron, wildlife, Wood StorkEd Rosack

Lynn and I paid another visit to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm this morning to check on things at the Rookery. Things are hopping!

After a somewhat slow start (cold weather?), the Rookery has had a very active and varied nesting season. If you haven’t visited yet, you need to get over there before you completely miss your chance until next year. You can still see many species in the nest with chicks, although there are also many juveniles that have grown very large and are even flying around.

According to Gen Anderson – who is the Bird & Mammal Curator at the Alligator Farm (~~via the birdrookery@yahoogroups.com mailing list~~ – no longer available), there have been over 250 nests with more than 700 chicks counted in the rookery. That’s a tremendous number of birds in a relatively small area! The following species are resident:

Wood storks:

Mama Woodstork preens one of her chicks

Cattle Egrets:

Cattle Egret nest with chicks

Tri-colored Herons:

Tri-Colored Heron nest with chicks

Roseate Spoonbills:

Mother Spoonbill with eggs

Great egrets, Snowy egrets, Little Blue Herons, and Green Herons are also in residence.

There are four Spoonbill nests in the rookery and since I’ve never seen Spoonbill nests or chicks, these have been very exciting for me. This is the first year that they’ve nested at the Alligator Farm and the farthest north they’ve been recorded nesting. Two of the nests are well hidden at the back of the property, but the other two are easily viewed. All four contain chicks although it is difficult to see them, since they’re still so small. The chicks in the easily viewed nests will only be there for about another 5 weeks before they fledge.

I’ve also posted a video I made this morning of one of the spoonbill nests. In it, you can see Mama feeding one of the two babies. You can also listen to all the noise at the Rookery as the chicks demand food from their parents.

You can see other photos I’ve made in St. Augustine in this set on Flickr.

You can't always get what you want* – Emeralda Marsh

June 5, 2010Emeralda Marsh, INSIDE FLORIDAAntiques, Cars, Cattle Egret, Dragonfly, Horse, plowEd Rosack

Four of us from the Photography Interest Group rolled out before dawn this morning to visit “The crown jewel of bird watching in Lake County”, Emeralda Marsh. It’s a little over an hour drive on mostly rural roads from our normal meeting place in Oviedo through Central Florida to Tavares. “Donuts” found this place on the web and it sounds really good. He called ahead to ask about it and learned that the driving route through the marsh is only open from February through May – but we still decided to go ahead and explore it. While up there, we also drove to and walked around Sawgrass Island Preserve.

It’s difficult to judge any place based on just one visit. Even at the best known and consistent locations we occasionally have a hard time getting photos of wildlife. Sometimes you just have to be patient and really work for your photos. Today was one of those times – especially since we were in an area we weren’t familiar with. [4/16/11 update: Here is a new post on Emeralda Marsh based on our return visit]

It’s disappointing that the Emeralda Marsh Interpretive Drive isn’t open all year. I’m certain that would’ve made our trip much more successful. As it was, we had to park and hike looking for scenic places and wildlife and we weren’t able to cover as much ground. The end result was that for wildlife, today was somewhat of a bust. We talked about returning next February when the driving route is open.

Over several hikes, we saw quite a lot of Florida scrub land and very few birds or other wildlife. But photographers are resourceful and we did see many things worth taking photos of. My photos seemed to develop a theme of “Things in people’s yards”, also known as TIPY. I’ve created of a set of thirteen of these photos on Flickr (set, slideshow), and I’ve posted a few below. If you go to the set on Flickr, you can see things like llamas, dogs, additional old farm equipment and a flower. See the captions for details.

Old plow and horse. It doesn’t look too much like a plow horse to me.

Old Blue Truck – We came across several old trucks this morning and this was the last one we found. Since it was blue, it completed my full spectrum RGB set. You can see the Red and Green trucks on my Flickr Feed.

Cattle Egret and Horse

Dragonfly in flight – I was waiting in the car for the rest of the group and noticed some dragonflies that were moving past the window. I decided to try to capture one in flight.

At the end of the trip, we found a close by Cracker Barrel restaurant and stopped to eat. Today, we had fun. We had breakfast. We made some photos worth posting. And we confirmed that even though you don’t always get what you want, if you try sometimes you find – you get what you need*.

*With apologies to the Rolling Stones

Memorial Day, 2010

May 30, 2010St. Augustine, VARIOUSflag, fort, Fort Matanzas, Memorial Day, military, PoliticsEd Rosack

Once again we pause to reflect and thank all those that serve or have served our country and helped keep us free. Please know that we appreciate your service and can never thank you enough.

The Flag of the United States of America, flying at the Fort Matanzas National Monument, near St. Augustine, Florida.

Many in our family have served in the military.

Lynn’s Grandfather, Harold Christensen was a Navy pilot in the second World War. As an electrical engineer I enjoyed hearing him talk about working on the top secret team that developed radar for use on aircraft. Lynn’s father, Doug was also in the Navy. He was stationed in Pensacola after WW II. Both Lynn’s Grandfather and father been gone for some time. We miss them.

Two of my Mother’s brothers, uncle Jack and uncle Fred, were in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. They never said much about their time in the service. Jack passed away a year or two ago. We miss him too.

My Dad and his brother were both young men during World War II and both were in the Army. My Dad started high school just as WW II broke out and he enlisted as soon as he could. After basic training in Florida and some additional training as an intelligence recon scout, he shipped out to Europe. By that time, the war had ended and he was stationed in Furth, Germany – just outside Nuremberg as part of the occupation. He was there during the time of the Nuremberg trials. Dad had several stories he used to tell about his time in the Army. Most were quite fun, although I never heard him talk about the trials. I’m not sure if all his experience was happy, but those were the only ones he shared with us. He passed away quite a while ago, and of course we’ll always remember him.

I didn’t know much about my uncle’s service until we visited him just after Christmas last year and I asked about it. Msgr. Edward V. Rosack (we called him Fr. Ed) also joined the Army Signal Corps after he graduated from high school during WW II. He was older than my father and served in the Pacific Theater of Operations for about two years. His tour of duty took him to the Hawaiian Islands, Marshall Islands, (Einewetok, Kwajalein, the Palau Island (Angaur), Mariana Island (Saipan), Ryukyu Island (Okinawa), Korea (In chon) and Yokohama, Japan. As a member of the 3922nd Signal Service Company of the 3117th Signal Service Battalion, his outfit was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star (Angaur, Palau Islands). Watching Ken Burns “Pacific” mini-series recently brought home what a great sacrifice and profound experience it must have been for him and everyone else in those battles. I can only imagine the hardships and horror that he and others endured. I wonder if that is at least partly what drove him to become a man of peace for the rest of his life. Sadly, Fr. Ed passed away in March of this year, not long after we visited him. We’ll always remember him too.

Sunrise and Wading Egret – Persistance Pays

May 23, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, Techniquebirds, BPWD, Snowy Egret, sunriseEd Rosack

A few of us from the Photography Interest Group drove over to Black Point Wildlife Drive yesterday morning. We had one new member with us and for the first half of the loop we were all a bit worried about the lack of good photo opportunities — although I had made one sunrise photo that I like.

Swampy sunrise

We didn’t see many birds at first and the water level was down a bit. I’m not sure why since I think we’ve had a good amount of rain lately. Perhaps it was due to tides.

We were more than half way around the loop when we came up on two pools on the left hand side with a lot of bird activity. It turns out there were large numbers of small minnows in the pools and a variety of herons, ibis and egrets were flying back and forth between the pools feeding on the fish. Situations like this provide a wonderful opportunity for photographers. Just as in the nest building scenario I wrote about a few weeks ago, the birds act in a somewhat predictable, repeatable way. You can study them and place yourself in good light and to show the birds’ activity in their environment. I was looking for something a little different and spotted this break in the reeds with the sun coming over my shoulder. I only had to wait a little while for an obliging Snowy Egret to pose between the reeds for me. Now, if it had only raised its crest!

Snowy Egret Posing

Remember when you’re making photos of very white birds like this to check your histogram. Make sure your exposure isn’t blowing out the white highlights so that you preserve detail in the feathers. If you do have pixels up against the right side of the histogram, use a little negative exposure compensation to move them back toward the left.

Once again patience and persistence paid off for us and everyone in the group had a chance at some very good photos. I’ve also written here before about not putting your camera away until you’re back in the car. Yesterday was another example of this very important rule!

Click on either of the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can view them larger. You can also see other photos I’ve made at Black Point in this set on Flickr.

Where's EdRo?

May 10, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Theme ParksAnimal Kingdom, birds, Flowers, Ibis, Owl, Rhino, wildlifeEd Rosack

So we’re going to try something a little different. This will be a variation on the game “Where’s Waldo”, except you have to guess where I was last Saturday, based on the photos below. And you have to find me in at least one photo. We’ll use my Twitter handle and call it “Where’s EdRo?”. All of these photos were made in the same general area. To play fair, you aren’t allowed to scroll down too far before you guess. Forensic investigation of EXIF data is possible, but also against the rules. There’s no prize, but if enough people demand it, I can see about having something for the next time we play.

The point of the game is to remind you that you need to look around and find the non-obvious photos wherever you are. Go ahead and get the “trophy shots” (photos that everyone takes at a popular spot), but don’t forget to share your unique vision, perspective, and outlook with others.

Want to play? Here goes…

Clue #1: An interesting wall.

Clue #2: Nice light on an Ibis.

Clue #3: Flowers, leaves, sky.

Have you guessed where I was yet? If not, here’s some more clues:

Clue #4: Blue wall, red windows.

Clue #5: River landing and flowers.

Do you have it yet? If not, here’s a couple more.

Clue 6: Surprise and delight.

One last clue:

Clue 7: Rhino profile

If you haven’t guessed yet, then go to this set of mine on Flickr for additional clues. I’ve added a total of 21 photos there. Some are obvious and some are not. Hopefully they all let you see this place through my eyes.

Thanks for playing my little game. Now, go out there and look past the obvious shots.

Three Topic Post

May 2, 2010Blogging, Gatorland, INSIDE FLORIDA, VARIOUSbirds, blog info, Cattle Egret, Cormorant, Great Egret, Moorhen, Politics, Wood StorkEd Rosack

I’m going to depart from my usual practice of one subject per post and include three different ones in today’s entry.

Photos and information on a visit to Gatorland, yesterday.
An update on this blog after three years of publication
A political comment

Feel free to read the portion you’re interested in, or indulge me and look at all three.

1. Gatorland May Day Update

If you haven’t yet visited Gatorland this year, now is still a great time. Yesterday morning, I decided to drive down there to see how the rookery is progressing through nesting season. We’ve had a cold winter in Florida and as a result, the birds are about a month behind the normal schedule. The last time I visited (in March), it was mostly the great egrets building nests, courting, and sitting on eggs. Yesterday the Great Egrets were still very active (many with large chicks), but there are also Cattle Egrets, Tri-Colored Herons, Anhingas, and Cormorants all very actively fulfilling the purpose of life.

~~By the way, have you looked lately at the Gatorland blog that Mike Godwin writes ? He’s posted a report on the current nesting activity~~ (sorry – no longer available), with a lot of detail and photos. There’s also an active Gatorland Flickr group and looking at the photos posted there on any given day can give you a real good idea of what’s going on.

Here’s some of what I saw yesterday:

Pair of Great Egret chicks in nest: You can get an idea of how far along the Great Egrets are by the size of this cute pair.

Cattle Egret: This one was hiding in the brush, but still posing. The Cattle Egrets seem to be just getting started with a lot of nest-building going on.

Mother Cormorant with just hatched chicks: Not a great photo, but you can see the chicks beside the very protective mother. Their eyes were not yet open and there was another un-hatched egg in the nest, so they had to be only hours old.

Common Moorhen Chick: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a moorhen chick before, but I have to admit I haven’t been paying that much attention to this species. They’re very common in the area.

Wood Storks and chicks on nests: Mike Godwin is a great host at Gatorland. He made sure we knew where these nests were so we could photograph them. There were two right next to each other and they were very crowded and active.

You can click on any of the photos above to view them on Flickr. You can also take a look at my Gatorland set on Flickr for some other photos from yesterday (the last nine in the set) as well as from previous visits.

2. Happy Birthday, Blog!

My first post was on the 4th of May, 2007, so it will be three years old on Tuesday. Not a long time in absolute terms, but more than a lifetime for some in “internet years”.

The blog has morphed a bit since then. Originally it was just a place to share my photos, photo experiences, and talk about photo related ideas. I still do that, but I’ve added a theme around all of this: I try to find interesting places around here to make photographs and then post blog entries including links to information about the places as well as some hints on what’s there and how to photograph it. My hope is that this will be interesting to photo enthusiasts visiting the area as well as people who live here. I know I’ve looked for similar blogs when I travel.

With this one, there are a total of 89 posts so far which is an average of about two per month, although lately I’ve been doing pretty well keeping up with my goal of one post each week. Of these, 45 are tagged “CFL Photo ops”, about photo opportunities in the area.

As near as I can tell from my server logs (and disregarding spam and robots), I seem to modestly successful – at least some people are reading what I write. If I’m interpreting the CyStats log correctly, I have over 100 RSS subscribers, and about 10 – 30 visitors on average each day. They are from multiple countries, which is really nice. The most visitors I’ve had in a single day was close to 200 early this year after Jim Goldstein posted his “best photos of 2009” entry on his blog. Thanks, Jim! The most viewed page is the main page, with the My Favorite Photos of 2009 post coming in second.

The most used browser, by a slim margin is Internet Explorer (~51%), followed by Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc. Many people still use IE version 6.0. If that’s you – update! Modern browsers are much more capable and secure.

Recent, frequent external search terms include things like: “focus bracketing”, “gatorland photographers”, “central florida photos”, “orlando bird photography”, “alligator farm orlando”, “orlando photo ops”, “photographing birds in central flordia”, “good area to photograph fl”, “central florida places to photo”, “wildflower photography in florida”, “photographing birds in central florida”, “photographing wildlife in central florida”, and “ed rosack”. I’m pleased that people are finding my blog with those search terms.

Of course, I’m my most loyal reader. I’ve enjoy writing it, but I also really enjoy going back and reading it and looking at the photos. I guess it really is a blog in the sense of a personal journal.

And what’s up with all the weird spam comments? Do they really think I’ll let those through? Would anybody? Why do they keep sending them?

I don’t really have any plans to change the blog going forward. However, I’d really like to figure out how to encourage more genuine comment and interaction. And, I’m always open to your ideas and suggestions. Especially for places around here to visit!

3. Warning – Politics Ahead

Caution – I apologize, but this paragraph is political. It does relate to photography and nature in general. Read at your own risk.

As I wrote down the words in topic one above about witnessing nature in all its glory, I couldn’t help but think a great deal about the gulf coast shoreline and what is beginning to happen there to countless birds, their chicks, and other wildlife from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The impact on people who are continuing to recover from hurricane Katrina will be an additional nightmare still to come. And the news this morning reports that it will eventually reach the east coast of Florida too as the Gulf Stream current spreads the spill.

The scope of this disaster is unprecedented – and it was a remote possibility. We can’t jump to conclusions yet, but complacency and the bottom line during the design of this oil drilling rig sure do seem to be causing great damage. I wonder how many of the decisions that were made in the design were probably financial in nature and not based on the worst case outcome, which by the way is occurring? The platform was either not designed or not built to preclude or handle it.

I also wonder if there are engineering memos or PowerPoint slides somewhere warning of this type of consequence if the design went forward as planned? I wonder how many fail safes in the well shut off valve didn’t fail safe and instead just failed due to shoddy workmanship or poor design? I wonder how the engineers that designed, built, and tested the equipment on that well feel today? I wonder how their management can sleep at night? I wonder how long British Petroleum will take to bring the well leak under control? And I wonder how they will ever undo the damage they’ve done.

So far there are no answers, only questions. And thousands of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico every hour of every day.