Kevin M. and I went to Viera Wetlands (Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands) last weekend. On the way, we stopped by Riverfront Park in Cocoa for a sunrise photo. Unfortunately, the sun didn’t cooperate – we didn’t even see it until about a half hour after sunrise! But I thought the fog, boats, and lights were … Continue reading Viera Wetlands: 2/2/2014
I went over to the coast yesterday with Kevin M., Kevin K., Lutfi E. Sunrise sure is happening really early again! We started out on the 520 Causeway near Port Canaveral – Kevin M. wanted to make a sunrise photo with a lit up cruise ship in the scene. Here’s how my version turned out: Disney cruise … Continue reading Viera Wetlands update, 5/18/13
The Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands near Viera, Florida is known to most simply as Viera Wetlands. And even though I hadn’t been there in a while, it’s one of my favorite places. So I took a trip down to check on things last week – it didn’t disappoint.
I realized I hadn’t been to Viera Wetlands since last year, so I went over yesterday morning with Kevin K.
I’d never been to Viera Wetlands in the late afternoon or for sunset and wanted to see if that time of day is any different from the mornings when we usually go.
The woman I’m with is wonderful! I thought I used up all my husband points yesterday when she went to see Harry Potter with me. But this morning, she nudged me and asked if we were still going birding. So we did.
There is quite a bit less activity than it was a month or two ago, but we still saw a good variety of birds.
At Viera Wetlands, the migratory birds have left and many of the year round residents seemed to be taking the day off yesterday. But there was still plenty to see. We especially enjoyed watching adults taking care of their offspring.
I exposed at -2 EV to prevent blowing out the sky and then brought up the shadows in post processing. The D7000 recorded a very broad dynamic range and has remarkably little noise in the shadows at base ISO, even when under exposed. This real world example, along with the the results from the recent DxOMark test of the D7000 indicate it’s going to be a very fine landscape camera.
Lynn and I went out to Viera Wetlands this morning to survey the wildlife that’s around and so I could get a little more field testing in on the Nikon D7000. Once again, this great birding spot didn’t disappoint and although the activity and number of birds were down quite a bit from the peak in the nesting season, we found plenty to observe and photograph.