Winter Park at Night

October 3, 2015INSIDE FLORIDA, Winter Parkblack and white, buildings, fountain, night, trainEd Rosack

Greetings, wonderful readers! Things are a bit busy here at the Central Florida Photo Ops HQ this weekend, so I’ll leave you with a quick post and some photos from a stroll down Park Avenue through Winter Park last Wednesday evening.

A quiet night “on the avenue”

A path into darkness

Blue Hour Motion – A train passing behind one of the fountains in Winter Park, Florida

I made these a little after sunset during “blue hour” – I like the look of the light. You can see a few other photos I’ve made in Winter Park in this album on Flickr.

Sunflower update: The flowers are in bloom and are peaking. If you want to see them this year, you should probably do so in the next week. Here’s a report from Jeff Stamer’s blog on his trip out there last week.

I haven’t made it yet this year, but plan to do so next week.

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

Lake Toho

September 27, 2015INSIDE FLORIDA, KissimmeeFish, lighthouse, Osprey, reflection, snail kite, sunriseEd Rosack

Kevin McKinney wanted to go by Shingle Creek for a sunrise photo and I’ve wanted to do that too. We went last Saturday – and found out that park doesn’t open until 8am. A little late for sunrise. 🙁

Fortunately we got there early enough for our backup plan to work and we ended up in Kissimmee along the Lake Tohopekaliga shoreline. They have a park there too – and it was open. 🙂

Lake Toho light at dawn

There’s a little lighthouse at the end of the jetty and the protected water makes for some nice reflections.

We saw a few birds hunting the shoreline close by that turned out to be Snail Kites. I’ve only ever seen these before at Viera Wetlands and didn’t get a very good photo. This one perched nicely for a minute or so before flying off.

Snail Kite

And this Osprey flew by with its morning meal. I like sushi too, so I went ahead and make a photo of it.

Another Osprey with a “take-out” breakfast

A pleasant morning after all and I’m glad the backup plan worked.

Reminder – it’s that time of year again: The Lake Jesup flowers are getting ready to bloom. I got an email last week from my on-line friend Jeff Stammer. He’s already been out to Marlbed Flats to check on the flowers. He says that while it isn’t as wet as last year, it is quite grown up with tall plants and there aren’t as many cow or horse paths as there have been in the past. So the hiking may be tougher than usual. I skipped going last year and regretted it. I’m going to try hard to get out there this year. When we drove by Friday evening we could already see some yellow color. I think they’ll start to really peak in a week or two.

Maybe I’ll see you there!

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

Vacation, part 2: Shenandoah National Park

September 20, 2015Must do list, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, Virginiafog, landscape, mountain, shenandoah, sunrise, travel, vacation, virginia, waterfallEd Rosack

On July 4th, 1936, in the Virginia Blue Ridge mountains along Skyline Drive at Big Meadows, President Roosevelt dedicated Shenandoah National Park. Since that time, people have greatly enjoyed wonderful vistas, beautiful waterfalls, quiet wooded hollows, hiking, wildlife and the night sky.

Sunrise at Spitler Knoll

I’ve been to Shenandoah many times. It’s the first national park I ever visited – too long ago to admit. I hiked there with our Boy Scout troop from Bowie, Maryland when I was a very young man . Hiking’s a major activity at the park – the Appalachian Trail runs along and crosses Skyline Drive in many places.

Appalachian trail view

Lynn and I also took Mike and Mary there when they were younger and we have fond (and scary!) memories of hikes with those two scrambling over rocks and along ridges to be first to see a view. On one of our visits, we also picnicked with our good friends the Sullivans, and hiked with the kids down to Dark Hollow Falls.

Dark Hollow Falls – A gorgeous waterfall, although crowded at times since it’s one of the closest ones to Skyline Drive. (Photo from 1996).

To get the most out of your visit, you need an up to date guide-book. We had one from our previous visits (printed in 1988!), but unfortunately we didn’t realize how out of date it was. Fires and other events have changed places in the park, sometimes quite dramatically. Fortunately, we found updated books at the park. One example of the changes:

Dead eastern hemlock trees – Hemlock Springs, Shenandoah National Park. We really enjoyed hiking through large stands of hemlock trees the last time we were there, 20+ years ago. Now, 95% of the Hemlock trees in Shenandoah have been killed by the hemlock woolly adeligid, an invasive species introduced by humans.

Weather can vary in the park. All of our visit was beautiful, but we spent one day completely socked in with heavy rain and visibility of 50 to 100 feet. I had fun walking around in the fog looking for photos, while Lynn wove a White Oak basket from scratch.

Rain drops in the mist

We saw lots of wildlife while we were there. The deer are all over and not very skittish, since animals are protected in the park. We also saw 2 black bears – exciting! I didn’t look too hard for birds, but managed to spot at least one life bird (Dark-eyed Junco).

If you search the web you’ll see things to do in the surrounding area too. We’ve been to Luray Caverns in the past, although we didn’t have time to explore outside the park this time.

In summary, Shenandoah National Park deserves to be on your bucket list. If you haven’t been there yet, just go. If you have been there, you know what I mean.

You can see larger versions of the photos above by clicking on them and some other photos from our trip in this album on Flickr.

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

Vacation!

September 13, 2015New Jersey, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, VARIOUSbarn, people, train, travelEd Rosack

Lynn and I returned yesterday from our longest vacation in a while, to New Jersey and Virginia. We enjoyed riding the Amtrak Autotrain from Sanford, Florida to Lorton, Virginia and back – something we last did about 25 years ago. We highly recommend it for travel up and down the south-east coast.

Sanford Auto Train

In Newton, NJ, we attended the International Congress of Iron Collectors, and the Pressing Iron and Trivet Collectors convention. After that we drove to Shenandoah National Park in VA and stayed for 5 wonderful days.

I was the “semi-official” photographer, so I spent a lot of time there photographing all the activities, displays and people. And Lynn photographed too, especially when I wasn’t around.

Something that you might not know: Lynn is the author of two books on trivet collecting: The A-Z Guide to Collecting Trivets, Identification and Value Guide and The Expanded A to Z Guide to Collecting Trivets – Identification and Values (read more about them on her blog), and I made the photographs for her books. Which, by the way, is an excellent justification for camera and lens purchases. 😉

Pressing Iron and Trivet Collectors business meeting

Lynn and I have a lot of work left to finish going through the photos from the conventions and distributing them to people. I also have a lot of work to finish going through photos from Shenandoah, so I’ll try to write about that next time.

I didn’t do a lot of photography outside of the conventions in New Jersey, but there was a nice red barn next to the fair grounds where the meetings took place and I made this photo one day when I had a few minutes off.

New Jersey Barn Window

I like the peeling paint texture and the reflections in the surviving window panes.

More to follow…

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

Viera Wetlands – 8/28/15

August 29, 2015INSIDE FLORIDA, Viera Wetlandspeople, reflection, sunrise, vultureEd Rosack

Kevin M. organized a trip to Viera Wetlands on Friday and Kevin K., and I went along. We were at the small park across from the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp where SR 520 crosses the St. Johns River about 45 minutes before sunrise. It was very dark – making focusing difficult and exposures long. It was also very calm, and I thought the reflections in the water were lovely.

Before Sunrise – Two frame panorama, 24mm, f/8, 30 seconds at ISO 160

Kevin M. noticed a puddle in the parking lot and we spent several minutes using it to frame the sunrise. You should check out Kevin K’s version of this here on Flickr.

“Hey Ed – sunrise is over here!” – Kevin K. helping me figure out which way is east. Isn’t it amazing how level he’s holding that leg of his tripod?

At Viera Wetlands, the rangers closed the roads because of all the rain we’ve had, so we walked around the cell closest to the entrance. It was quieter than the last few times I’ve been there, but we still saw many of the usual Florida avians. This Turkey Vulture was posing in good light on one of the observation platforms.

Why don’t I ever see Eagles posing like this?

It’s still plenty hot here in Florida, but the days are getting shorter. We can look forward to cooler weather soon along with the arrival of migrants and winter visitors to make the birding even more interesting.

We’ve posted many more photos from this trip on Flickr. You can see Kevin K’s photos here, Kevin M’s photos here, and mine are in this album.

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

Prowling Egret Composite

August 23, 2015INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, Techniqueblack and white, post processing, Reddish EgretEd Rosack

This is a five frame composite B&W image of a single Reddish Egret patrolling a small pool of water at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Prowling Egret

There was some interest in how I did this and it’s relatively simple, so I thought I’d show you the steps.

To start with, the light was very strong, so I overexposed to get details in the bird and this washed out the water / background. I’d made several frames, so I processed all of them identically in Lightroom to force the background further to white and then loaded them into layers in Photoshop.

I selected all the layers and set their blend modes to “Darken” which forces only the darkest parts of each frame to show through. This is a key step – with the right background, the blend mode does all the work and you don’t have to do any selection / cutting / pasting.I made the canvas larger so I had room to work:

Then I used the move tool (top of the tool bar) and selected each layer so I could place them:

Once I moved them to where I thought they looked good, I use curve adjustments on each layer to reduce brightness differences and followed with the clone tool to smooth a few remaining variations. After cropping out the extra canvas, and adding a bit of clarity to the bird shapes I was ready to return to Lightroom.

In Lightroom I finished tweaking it (white and black points, sharpening, vignette, etc), converted to Black and White “and Bob’s your uncle“.

I’m sure there are other ways to do this, but I found this method easy enough. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments. And if you’ve tried anything like this, I’d love to see your images.

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

Museum of Seminole County Displays Senator Sculptures

August 16, 2015Big Tree Park, INSIDE FLORIDA, VARIOUSart, sculpture, treeEd Rosack

There’s an interesting exhibit at the Museum of Seminole County History through September 30, 2015. It features over a hundred works of art made from the charred remains of The Senator – the 3,500 year-old cypress tree that burned in 2012.

Big Tree Exhibit - Mark Rice Senator Painting — Big Tree Exhibit – Mark Rice Senator Painting

I’ve written about The Senator before. You can view those posts at this link. This latest chapter in the story provides some beautiful artwork made from the ruins of a tragedy.

Big Tree Exhibit - Ted Page Seminole Indian Carving — Big Tree Exhibit – Ted Page Seminole Indian Carving

It’s well worth going over to see these in person. It you’re there this Wednesday night (August 19th, 2015) between 5 and 7 pm, you can also meet the artists. I have some other photos from the exhibit at this link.

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

Thoughts on Processing Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II High Resolution Photos

August 9, 2015Cameras and Photography, Haulover Canal, INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, VARIOUSE-M5, equipment, Hi-res, landscape, Mark II, Olympus, OM-D, OM-D E-M5 Mark II Hi-res, sunriseEd Rosack

Introduction

I’ve been using an Olympus E-M5 Mark II for several months and I’ve mentioned it once before (in this post about algorithmic and computational photography). I very much like the camera and the photos I’ve made with it. You can see many more images I’ve made with this and other micro 4/3 cameras this set on Flickr.

Today I’d like to talk more about its high res mode and some things I’ve learned so far while working with it. I’ll use this recent image from the north bank of Haulover Canal in Merritt Island NWR for my example. By the way, please click on the photo, you’ll be able to see a higher resolution version on Flickr.

Daybreak at Haulover Canal

For those of you who aren’t interested in this particular camera or capability, here’s the tl;dr summary: Your capture and processing tools, technique, and skill make a difference in the resulting photo. But that’s true of every camera. And you already knew that, didn’t you?

Okay, for those of you that are interested, here’s some hints on how to get the best out of this mode.

RAW Import

I’ve found that the software I use makes a big difference in the detail that shows up in the file. I normally use Lightroom for all my photos, although I also have DxO Optics pro and I think it does a good job with higher ISO images. But I noticed issues when using either of them with the Olympus high-resolution files. Here are three 1:1 crops, processed in the three different software packages. These are just after importing from the RAW file, with (mostly) default processing, although I did adjust sharpening on the first two to try to improve detail.

Processed in Lightroom CC Version 2015.1.1

Processed in DxO Optics Pro 10 Version 10.4.2

Processed in Olympus High Res Shot Raw File Photoshop Plug-In

To my eye there’s no question: the Olympus software does a better job processing the High Res Raw file. The result is sharper, with more detail – so I’ve switched to using it instead of either Lightroom or DxO Optics Pro for initial input of the high res files. There are limited adjustments available with it, so after importing the file I usually add an Adobe Camera Raw adjustment layer in Photoshop to help fine tune the highlights, shadows, etc.

Motion Artifacts

You can see artifacts on the water surface in the crops above. These are from the way the high res files are created. Each file is composed of 8 separate captures that the camera combines into the high res RAW output file. So any motion during capture will result in strange-looking distractions. If your camera is moving, the image will be unusable. So I use a sturdy tripod, a cable release and / or a shutter delay. If part of the scene is moving (like water, or wind-blown branches) you’ll see the distracting artifacts in that part of the frame. For some subjects (e.g. still life) this isn’t a problem – nothing moves. For landscapes, you’ll need a very calm day or you may want to remove the artifacts in post processing.

If they bother you, there are (at least) a couple of things you can try. Olympus also saves the first of the 8 frames that it uses to create the RAW file. You can open this, up-res it, and mask it into the high res version wherever there are artifacts you want to remove. (Note that you’ll have to rename the normal res file – your software probably won’t recognize the .ORI extension). And you’ll have carefully process the normal and high res files exactly the same up until the point where you do this so that any color or brightness difference doesn’t show. And finally, you’ll have to recognize that wherever you do this, the resolution will suffer.

For water surfaces, you can also try applying a motion blur in Photoshop and masking it in to hide the artifacts. That was easy to do in this photo, since it was a relatively long exposure (1/2 sec.) and the water surface was calm. Here’s a before and after 1:1 comparison:

Motion Artifacts – prior to removal

Motion Artifacts – masked out using a motion blur layer in Photoshop

Other Artifacts?

Olympus outputs 64 Mega Pixel RAW files. Olympus themselves say there’s not 64MP of information in the file. It’s more like 40MP, so they downsize their JPG files to 40MP. When using this mode keep that in mind.

There’s not too much else to worry about, although I have seen some things that look like “hot pixels” in the high res images (2 or less per file). I’m not sure if that’s what they are and I also don’t see them in normal res files from the camera. But they are pretty easy to remove with the Healing Brush in Lightroom. By the way, If anyone else has seen these, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

High Res “Hot Pixel”

Conclusions

So, the E-M5 Mark II High Res mode:

Is most suitable for still life types of images when the camera is mounted on a tripod and nothing is moving.
Is best processed from RAW by the Olympus High Res Shot Raw File Photoshop Plug-In – at least with current (August 2015) versions of software.
Offers better resolution and improved color and noise characteristics than the normal mode images.
Can be used in other situations (e.g. landscapes), but unless the subject is still, you’ll need to deal with motion artifacts.
Provides the greatest benefit with better lenses. Lower quality glass could compromise the output resolution of the system.

If you capture images in high res mode and the artifacts are too difficult to deal with, you can always drop back and use the normal resolution file. The results will be almost as good for anything except large prints (or pixel peeping).

Have you used a capability like this? What have you discovered?

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

Blue Moon and Sunrise at Ponce Inlet

August 2, 2015INSIDE FLORIDA, Ponce Inlet, Techniquebeach, jetty, landscape, moon, reflection, sunriseEd Rosack

I met Tom M. at Ponce Inlet last Friday at dawn. We arrived at 6 am when the park opened and were the first ones in. We didn’t see anyone else for about 30 minutes. I was surprised by how few people were there. I guess it helps to go during the week instead of on weekends.

I thought I’d share three photos along with some details on how I made them.

The moon was full on Friday for the second time in July and was just setting as we got out on the jetty. I found this vantage point to highlight the “Blue Moon” over the water along the rocks. This is a two exposure composite that I blended manually using layers and masks in Photoshop. I exposed the top part for the moon (ISO 50, f/11, 1.6 sec.) and the bottom part for the water (ISO 50, f/11, 5 sec.). I used my Nikon 24 – 120mm f/4 lens at 120mm – it’s very versatile for these kinds of outings.

Blue Moon descends

I liked the way the area just north of the jetty looked, with the sun and clouds above the water and rocks. I made a few exposures, and then waited for the sun to rise a bit more so it would be behind the clouds and the light would be less harsh. I saw a pelican flying by and managed to catch it just about under the sun (52 mm, ISO 100, f/11, 1/100 sec.). I thought it would look better with silky smooth water, so I made one more exposure using an 8 2/3 stop Neutral Density filter to slow my shutter speed (52 mm, ISO 100, f/11, 8 sec.). This image was also blended manually using layers in Photoshop. I did have some issues with color balance. The ND filter added a yellowish tint to the bottom that the top didn’t have. So I adjusted it to match as closely as I could before blending.

Ponce Sunrise – Early morning, just north of the jetty at Ponce Inlet.

For comparison, here is one of the photos I made about 5 minutes earlier when the sun was lower. This is a single exposure (50 mm, ISO 100, f/11, 1/100 sec.). I made a burst of several and picked one that best showed the sun highlighting the spray on top of the breaking wave. I like the framing on this one better too as I can see the sun reflecting off the jetty wall. The colors are more orange since there’s more of the sun showing through the clouds.

Ponce Sunrise too – Same place as the previous photo, and a few minutes earlier.

I’m not sure which one of these sunrise images I like best. I’m leaning toward the second one. Too bad the Pelican wasn’t in place when the wave broke! Which one do you like? Have you tried any techniques like this?

On a side note, I used my Nikon D800 camera that I’ve had for more than three years to make these. A couple of weeks ago, Nikon sent me an email and offered to clean and inspect it and fix anything they found wrong – for free! I took advantage of the offer, got it back, and was anxious to test it out. It seems to work fine and it’s nice to know it’s still in good shape. Thanks Nikon!

You can see more images from Ponce Inlet in this set on Flickr. Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos! And do it more often than “once in a blue moon”!