I visited Black Point Wildlife Drive at Meritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville, Florida this morning with my local Photography Interest Group. Central Florida’s recent lack of rainfall has dramatically affected the region. We saw small puddles in areas that are normally covered in water, birds and photographers. If you’re planning to visit this normally very photographer friendly place, be advised that it may take a while for the birds to return once the rains do.
I did make a nice sunrise photograph (with a little help from the computer), and a few other “keepers”.
So, gentle reader. In this post, I will describe some of the upcoming events that will be happening in this blog.
First, Lynn took me to Disney’s Animal Kingdom for my birthday at the beginning of May. I have a little over a hundred “selects” to go through and finish so that I can post a gallery and write a blog post about our visit. Stay tuned on this one. Animal Kingdom is a photography must see in Central Florida!
Next, there are several ideas I have for future photo expeditions / galleries / blog posts around Central Florida. Here are a few I’ll try to write about: Leu Gardens, Gatorland in Kissimee (and a comparison to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm), Butterfly exhibits (Lucas Nursery and UF), Orlando photowalks, and several more.
Lynn and I are also planning an Alaska Cruise with some very good friends. I’m going to be keeping notes on this and plan to turn it into one or more entries after we return.
Finally, I have an idea for a series of philosophical entries on how to be successful in general and I think these can also be applied to photography in particular. I’m going to try to intermix these entries with my photo gallery / blog entries.
Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, here’s a teaser from Animal Kingdom:
I drove over to Orlando Wetlands Park last Friday morning and walked around the 2.5 mile ‘Birding Route’ foot path. I arrived around 9 am and didn’t expect to see much wildlife. But once again this urban oasis didn’t disappoint me. I saw the usual alligators, including one that posed with some flowers, as well as many herons, egrets, ducks, etc. (Note: you can go to my gallery to see larger versions of these photos).
Alligator and white flowers
New for me this visit were some Sandhill Cranes, and a raccoon. I was walking quietly down the middle of the path taking pictures when the raccoon came around the corner. It had it’s head down and I took several photos before it looked up.
Oblivious Raccoon
It did a double take, decided it didn’t like what it saw, and took off pretty quickly.
Not so oblivious raccoon
There were also a tremendous number of dragonflies out there. I’m worried that this means the lovebug season will be especially bad for us here in Florida this year.
The highlight of this trip was the many varieties of flowers in bloom. It made for a very colorful stroll.
The biggest problem this time of year is that our weather is turning very hot. By the time I left the park to head home around 11 am the temperature was approaching 90 degrees. Get out early and get back inside while it’s still cool!
There are many opportunities around Central Florida, especially at this time of year, to photograph flowers. Lynn and I drove out to Mount Dora last Saturday to visit the antique mall there. Along the way we noticed quite a few wild flowers along the road. On the way back, she pulled over to let me make this photo.
The yellow trumpet tree is very common in Central Florida. When in bloom, it is one of the most beautiful flowering trees you’ll see. When it isn’t in bloom, you won’t notice it.
Lynn and I noticed this one on the way to breakfast this morning and made a few photos on the way home. It’s already dropped quite a few blooms, but is still quite pretty.
Yellow Trumpet Tree (Tabebuia)Yellow Trumpet Tree (Tabebuia)Yellow Trumpet Tree (Tabebuia)
I’d been to Orlando Wetlands Park (25155 Wheeler Rd. Christmas, Florida 32709) several times, but always on foot and I always walked the 2.5 mile “Birding Route”. (Note: you can see larger versions of this photo in my gallery for this post.)
Great Blue Heron in flight
I wanted to explore the rest of the park, so yesterday I went back out there with my bicycle and rode around the perimeter. It was a very pleasant 5 or 6 mile ride. The dirt roads are very well maintained – no problems at all getting around with the bicycle. The scenery was similar to what I was familiar with around the Birding Route, although there seemed to be more wildlife – perhaps because there’s less visitors out there. The wildlife did seem more wary. I don’t know if it was because they’re not used to seeing people or bicycles.
In addition to what you see in the photos I posted on my website (gators, Great Blue Heron, Anhinga, Ibis, Bobcat (?), and flowers) I also saw a large turtle, and many other birds, including ducks, grebes, and many black vultures. The park ranger was anxious to close the gate at 7:30 so I had to leave before the sun had completely set, which was a very minor disappointment in an otherwise very pleasant late afternoon visit. I wonder when they open the gate in the mornings? It’s always been open when we get there before sunrise.
For some reason, the shapes of trees appeal to me as a photographic subject. I think it’s at least partially related to their fractal nature. Here are two different views of a tree in the parking lot of my local library. The first one was taken back in 2003 with a Minolta 7Hi camera using an infra-red filter over the lens, converted to black and white. (Note: you can click on each of these to see a larger version)
Infra-red Library Tree
This second photo was made yesterday in color. I like the way the blue sky showing through the clouds seems to follow branches in the top middle portion of the tree and the the green growth in the canopy behind the tree lines up with its branches on the right side.
Library Tree, color
The third photo is of a Ferris wheel in the parking lot at a local mall against the storm clouds this morning. Hopefully the storm will clear before evening or not too many people will be at the fair.
Ferris wheel and Storm clouds
The fourth and last photo is a macro shot of an African violet plant. I had to take this hand-held, since I don’t yet have an l-bracket for my D700.
Well, we had a tripod swap this week, so I went out last night to try my “new” used tripod. I made this photo in my front yard using my D90, Tokina 12 – 24mm zoom, and my new Nikon wired remote release. I set the lens at 12mm, f7.1, and exposed for 25 seconds at ISO 200, using matrix metering. I also set Exposure Delay mode on, Active D-Lighting on Auto, and used Long Exp. NR on. I recorded it in RAW and processed it in Adobe Lightroom. If you click on it, you can look at a larger version.
Moon, pine, palm, Orion
I like the way the palm tree leads your eye to the constellation Orion in the top right part of the photo, and the wide angle distortion causes both trees to lean in and point up. I also think the dynamic range here is pretty impressive. The moon is completely blown out of course, but the detail in the trees (lit by street lights) along with the how the stars are captured by the sensor in this camera is something I’ve never seen in a photo I’ve made before. Especially with such low noise.
Also interesting is that at 25 seconds, star trails are already visible. 25 seconds = 25/(24*60*60) or ~.1 degree. At 12mm, this lens has about a 99 degree field of view, so .1 degree is about 4 pixels.
By the way, I found out recently that the reason the wired release changed from the D80 to the D90 is that the pin out had to be modified to accommodate the GPS unit. Otherwise I could have kept and used my D80 wired release.
We had tickets to see Leo Kottke at the Lyric Theatre in Stuart Florida on Friday night. It was a wonderful show – the first time I’ve ever seen him live, although I’m long time fan. In addition to some great guitar music, he told a few very funny stories and we were both sorry to see the evening end.
On Saturday morning we took our time coming back and drove the first part home on A1A up the Atlantic coast, stopping at a few places to look for pictures. I had my photo backpack and tripod with me, and Lynn was a very good sport and even carried tripods and lens hoods for me and helped me scout for photos. She noticed this interesting tree (I think it was a seagrape ) along the beach at one place we stopped at. The early morning sun shining through the combination of new and old leaves and branches on this seagrape tree against the bright blue sky was very colorful. (You can go to my gallery to see a larger version of the photos in this post.)
Colorful Seagrape Leaves
On the other side of these trees was a little play ground with what I think were some Parrot Fish toys to play on. They were also very colorful in the early light.
Colorful Playground
Further on up the road, nearer to Port Saint Lucie we stopped at another little park called “Bear Point Sanctuary ” and walked out a dirt road along a canal. This little park is along the Indian River lagoon, and I didn’t realize it stretched this far down the coast. We saw several birds – even though it was almost lunchtime, some calm, scenic water, and some pretty mangroves:
Canal, mangroves, sky (with polarizing filter)
There are a lot of little parks like this in Florida, and if you have time when you’re driving around, it’s worth stopping and wandering around with your camera. You can almost always find a photo or two hidden away.
I used my polarizer filter to make the photo above. One of my friends asked me why they should get one and I wanted to show the effect, so I made a second version with the polarizer rotated 90 degrees. That’s my shadow at the corner of the dock. You can see a pretty dramatic difference between the two versions. Carry a polarizing filter. It’s one filter effect that is very hard to duplicate in post processing on the computer.
Canal, mangroves, sky (without polarizing filter)
The birds were pretty shy and flew off whenever we tried to get close enough for a good picture. (I just had my 16 – 85mm with me).
Shy bird
All in all, a pretty nice photo excursion, and an unexpected bonus well worth the little time we invested.
I posted these photos and a few more on my website here .
Ansel Adams said: “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter. ”
Birds at sunrise
For me, last Friday was one of those times. When I find myself in in a situation like this I have to be careful not to be overwhelmed. It’s too easy to start clicking the shutter and forget many things I’ve learned about photography. I have to slow down, concentrate on the basics, make the best images I’m capable of, and capture at least a little bit of what it was like to be there. Of course, we all know that Ansel Adams would have made better photographs than I did. But I was the one there with my camera and so maybe you can look at the images I made and get some idea of how beautiful this place is, how nice that sunrise was, and something of how it feels to experience mornings like this. Black Point Wildlife Drive (http://www.nbbd. com/godo/ minwr/BlackPoint /index.html ) is only about an hour away from my house. I haven’t ever been there in January, and I was curious about how active it would be in winter. I had Friday off, so I left at o-dark-thirty to get there before dawn. It wasn’t as active as it is in spring time – there were only about 5 other photographers there. In the spring the photo flock can number more than 30 and it can actually be hard to find a spot to put your tripod up. On Friday there were many birds around (egrets, herons, ibis, ducks) and although I usually see spoonbills I didn’t find any this time. I also saw a gator or two, a wild pig, and some kind of feline (a bobcat?).
And I was treated to a wonderful sunrise. All in all, well worth the drive.
If you’re from this part of Florida and you haven’t been to this place, you’re really missing out. Plan on being there for dawn. In addition to a chance for a good sunrise, the wildlife is more active and the winds are calm, which will give you some good reflections in all the water.
Mangroves in calm water
If you’re from out of state and in Orlando with your family, you should think about a visit too. You could make a pilgrimage at dawn and be back before ~10am. They might not even miss you.
I posted some additional photos from this trip here.
