Lake Jesup Conservation Area Wildflowers

October 10, 2009INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Sanfordcloud, Flowers, Marl Bed Flats, moon, panorama, Sanford Florida, storm, Sunflowers, sunriseEd Rosack

Intro / Description

I’ve posted once before about wildflowers on the north-west shore of Lake Jesup. They bloom this time of year and I’ve photographed them since 2006, mostly from the side of the road.

October 10, 2006: Lake Jesup Flowers and Sunrise. 4 shot panorama, assembled in Photoshop; Nikon Coolpix P1, ISO 50, 126mm eq. focal length, f/5.2 at 1/30 sec.

In 2008, the area was completely under water and there were no blooms.

August 31, 2008: Lake Jesup flood waters from tropical storm Fay; Nikon D80, ISO 100, Nikon 18-70 lens at 18mm, f/16, three exposures combined with Photomatix

All year, I really hoped that the flooding hadn’t killed the flowers permanently. Once the water receded, I did a little exploring and found a park and a path out into the blooms through the Lake Jesup Conservation Area. About two weeks ago, I revisited the park and made these photos. As you can see, the blooms came back from the flooding. If anything, there are more than ever. If you are into flower photography, you have to ask yourself why you’ve never explored this wonderful place in late September. Get ready for next year!

September 28, 2009: Lake Jesup flowers and moon; Nikon D700, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70 lens at 62mm, f/16 at 1/50 sec

Here’s a close in photo of one of the blooms. There are so many different types of wildflowers, that Identifying them isn’t easy (for me anyway). These are in the Aster family and resemble Black Eyed Susans, but are taller than the 14 – 36 inches my book says Black Eyed Susans should be. If you recognize them and can supply a positive ID, please let me know in the comments.

1/24/2010 update – These are most likely Narrowleaf Sunflowers, also called “Swamp Sunflowers”.

September 28, 2009: Lake Jesup flower closeup; Nikon D700, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70 lens at 70mm, f/4 at 1/500 sec

Photo Hints

This web page has directions on how to get to the Marl Bed Flats part of the conservation area, where I made these photos. It’s a short hike over flat ground from the parking area to where the flowers are.

The plants are fairly tall and the blooms range from a few feet off the ground to as high as 6 feet. A tall tripod will be helpful to get your camera above the vegetation. Bring a wide-angle lens to take in the incredible vista of so many flowers in one place. You might want to carry your macro lens too.

Get there early for calm winds. I was a little leery of walking out there in the dark, so I passed on sunrise shots this year.

If you plan to do this, you should scout the area and the time-line before hand. The blooms last a couple of weeks, but they are definitely better in the middle of the period than at either end.

Summary

Website:	http://www.sjrwmd.com/recreationguide/lakejesup/index.html
Address:	Off of Oakway loop Sanford, Florida
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating:	Nothing here until late September – then, WOW!

You can click on the photos in this post to go to Flickr, where you can look at a larger version. I’ve also posted several more photos in my Lake Jesup Wildflower set.

Our vacation – Ch. 3: Other Alaskan and Seattle photos

October 5, 2009Must do list, Techniqueastronomy, panorama, sunrise, travel, vacationEd Rosack

This is the third installment of our vacation adventure, where I’ll show you the some of the other things we saw, both in Alaska and Seattle. Chapter One is here and describes the wildlife we encountered on our trip. Chapter Two is here and is about the glaciers we visited.

I’ve finally gotten through the rest of the photos that I made. The only ones left to process are the “people pics”. When I finish these, the final part of my post processing will be to go through everything and then selecting a “best of all set” to try making into a photo book.

Before we get started, please note that the photos in this post are linked to my Flickr account and you can click on them to go to Flickr where you can see a higer res version.

First of all, here’s my favorite photo of me from the trip. It’s a picture of Lynn and I that Sully made. We spent a lot of time sightseeing from our balcony, and looking at this really brings back memories.

Ed on vacation with three cameras. Lynn on vacation with two glasses of wine.; Canon PowerShot A700,11.546 mm,1/80 sec at f / 3.5,, Dimensions are 2816 x 2112, Photo by Marin Sullivan

There were quite a few impressive sunrise and sunset opportunities. I often shot in “panorama mode”. Most of these I took hand held and they seem to have worked out quite well. I was careful to line up the horizon or another feature in the terrain with one of the marks in the viewfinder, and this really helps when you stitch. I’ve also found that running Nikon images through CaptureNX before I stitch them in Photoshop really improves the final image quality. The key is to use the CaptureNX function that corrects lens distortion. Here’s a sunrise from our final morning on the ship. It’s composed of 4 images stitched together vertically. In the full res version, you can see the planet Mars (if my astronomy software is correct) underneath the moon!

Seattle sunrise panorama with moon and Mars(?); NIKON D700,48 mm,1/50 sec at f / 2.8,ISO 800, Dimensions are 4312 x 7619

Here’s another one I really like. I took this in Juneau, when Lynn and I went gold panning. I had just my Canon G9 with me (in a pocket most of the time – it was raining), and I used a flat rock in the creek as a tripod. By the way, Lynn and I both found flakes of gold in this creek!

Juneau, Alaska – gold panning creek; Canon PowerShot G9,7.4 mm,1.0 sec at f / 8.0,ISO 80, Dimensions are 4000 x 3000

And here’s one last photo for the blog of some trees at the Lake Washington Ship Canal. I’m not sure what this tree was and whether it was turning already for fall, but I really liked the color contrasts.

Trees; NIKON D90,19 mm,1/50 sec at f / 3.8,ISO 100, Dimensions are 2848 x 4288

As before, I’ve posted the rest of the photos for this blog entry in two ways. I added a set of “other” photos here to my photo galleries. You can also look at our Alaska photos together in a single time ordered set of 72 photographs here on Flickr. Clicking on one of the photos above will also take you to Flickr, where if you click on the “all sizes” button, you can see the photo in a higher res version.

Our Alaskan vacation – Ch. 2: Glaciers

September 27, 2009Alaska, Cameras and Photography, Cruise Ships, Must do listglacier, Glacier Bay, landscape, panorama, sunrise, travel, vacationEd Rosack

This is the second installment of our Alaskan adventure, where I’ll show you the glaciers we visited. Chapter One is here and describes the wildlife we saw on our trip.

Our ship, the MS Westerdam left Seattle on Sunday, September 6th and headed north to Glacier Bay National Park where we arrived on Tuesday. Glacier Bay was one of the main reasons that we picked this itinerary and we were looking forward to seeing it. The morning started out beautifully, with a very nice sunrise.

While cruising in Glacier Bay, we visited Lamplugh, Johns Hopkins, and Marjorie glaciers. Several cruise ships had been unable to reach the Johns Hopkins glacier this season due to ice, so apparently we were lucky. Here’s a panorama I made from the 4th deck of the Westerdam at Johns Hopkins glacier.

One of the first things we noticed is that the color of the water close to the glaciers is a very distinct greenish blue. According to ~~this article~~ (sorry – no longer available) on wired.com (which also has some stunning photos of glaciers taken from space) the color is due to the very fine silt that is ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the water. This “glacial flour” can be very reflective and turns the water this color.

At Marjorie glacier, I was in the right place at the right time to photograph the ice calving. Here’s the middle photo of a three photo sequence (you can see the others when you visit the gallery for this post).

When we exited Glacier Bay, we headed for Juneau where we also visited Mendenhal Glacier, among other things.

When we were back on board in Juneau, the captain made an announcement about gale force winds and 40 foot seas that were expected off of Sitka, which was supposed to be our next stop. To avoid this weather he decided instead to cruise through Tracy Arm fjord, where we spent all of the next day (Thursday, September 10th). Tracy Arm is a truly spectacular place that isn’t often visited by cruise ships as large as the MS Westerdam. We were able to get in there since our Alaskan waters pilot was very familiar with the place. It was amazing to watch the ship maneuver in such tight waters — at times we were within 30 yards or so of cliff walls and we must have seen hundreds of waterfalls. There was quite a bit of fog and haze, which made photography difficult, but I did manage to get some good shots. Here’s one example of the scenery:

I also put my Canon G9 on a Gorillapod, mounted it to the balcony rail and made some movies. Here’s a time lapse video (one frame per second) that I made in Tracy Arm. It has a sequence of clouds forming and moving along with the ship. We saw this same phenomenon several times that day. Was it perhaps the great spirit of the northwest accompanying us on our tour?

That night after exiting Tracy Arm fjord, our course carried us back into the Pacific Ocean in order to get to Ketchikan. It was still pretty rough with about 25 foot seas. We had a great view of the ocean from the second deck during dinner. It was like eating on a roller coaster! The next morning, when we arrived in Ketchikan, we had seaweed on our 6th deck balcony!

You can view the rest of my glacier photos in two places. I added a set of glacier photos here in my photo galleries. You can also look at all of our Alaska photos together in a single time ordered set here on Flickr. Clicking on one of the photos above will also take you to Flickr, where if you click on the “all sizes” button, you can see the photo in a higher res version.

Coming next: “North to Alaska, Ch. 3: Miscellaneous photos. I’ll also probably wrap up with a Chapter 4: Photo hints.

North to Alaska, Ch. 1: Intro and Wildlife

September 20, 2009Alaska, Cameras and Photography, Cruise Ships, Must do listBear, Sea Lion, travel, vacation, Whale, wildlifeEd Rosack

Lynn and I have talked for a long time about taking a cruise to Alaska. Since we’re celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary this year, we finally decided to book on Holland America’s MS Westerdam. We did this early in the year and it seemed like forever before we departed Seattle on September 6th for Glacier Bay, Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, and Victoria. We spent some time before boarding with our good friends, the Sullivans who cruised with us in the next stateroom with a shared balcony.

It was our first visit to the US northwest and Alaska, and we saw spectacular things that we’ve never seen before except on TV. Coming up with words to do justice to what we experienced will be hard. We came home already talking about plans for our next trip. I hope I’ll be able to share some of the feelings of being there through the photographs I made. Although far away and expensive, this vacation most definitely qualifies for the “Must do list” .

Instead of a day by day description, I’ll break this up into subjects. This will help me organize my editing efforts. I’ll talk first about the wildlife. We spent a bit of time on the balcony and were rewarded on occasion with whale sightings, like this killer whale.

North Pacific Killer whale from the MS Westerdam; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/320 sec at f / 5.6

We also saw humpback whales and I was grateful that Chuck loaned me his 80 – 400mm lens, since these were quite a distance away – every millimeter helped.

In Juneau, Sully and I went on a “Photo Safari by Land and Sea”, which was a guided whale encounter and glacier trek run by Gastineau Guiding. Our guide Rick, and boat captain Gary, were both extremely knowledgeable and helpful in finding whales, seals, and sea lions. Also eagles were quite abundant, feasting on the remains of the salmon run, which was still ongoing although according to locals slower than it had been. Here’s a few photos:

Breaching humpback; In the full res version, the two white dots in tree to the upper left, behind the whale are bald eagles.; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/1600 sec at f / 5.6

The whale in the first photo is an adult female. Her calf was also with her. He/she seemed to jump upside down or do barrel rolls most of the time. It’s hard for me to imagine they were not having fun doing this.

Humpback whale calf breeching; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/1250 sec at f / 5.6

Humbolt Sea lion and gull watch two male Sea Lions arguing; NIKON D90,300 mm,1/1250 sec at f / 5.6

Rick also took us to Mendenhal Glacier in Juneau, where there were reports of black bear sightings. Sure enough, as we descended to the lake by the glacier, a bear was seen napping under a bush. I didn’t get a good photo, but here’s one that Sully made. The bear had more sense than us. It was sheltered from the rain taking a nap. We were out in the rain trying to make pictures of it. When we got back to the ship, another couple we ate lunch with told us about encountering bears on a different path than the one we took at Mendenhal. I wonder how common they are?

Bear in the bushes (photo by Martin Sullivan); Canon EOS 40D,135 mm,1/30 sec at f / 5.6

Clicking on one of the photos above will take you to Flickr, where you can see it in a higher res version. I made many more photos than will fit on a blog page and I’ll post them two different ways. You can look at them all together as a time ordered single set here on Flickr. I’ll also post them as galleries on my website, organized by subject:

Alaska wildlife photos are here.
Alaska glacier photos are here.
Alaska other photos are here.

Coming next: “North to Alaska, Ch. 2: Glaciers.” I’ll also collect my hints for fellow Alaskan vacation photographers into a single post to follow.

Back home from Alaska

September 14, 2009Alaska, Cruise Shipspanorama, rainbow, travel, vacationEd Rosack

Lynn and I are so fortunate. We’re home again after a wonderful vacation! Round trip, we traveled 5,092 statute miles by air to / from Seattle and 1930 nautical miles by ship, as far as Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Along the way we visited our good friends, the Sullivans. We saw beautiful sunsets and sunrises, glaciers, mountain vistas, humpback and killer whales, sea lions, harbor seals, otters, many birds including bald eagles, a bear blob, and several types of fish including spawning salmon. We saw the sites and shopped in Seattle, Juneau, Ketchikan, and Victoria, panned for gold and went to salmon bake dinners. The Holland America MS Westerdam is a superb ship, with a fine crew, although we were also thrilled by roller coaster like rides through gale force winds and 25+ foot seas.

Photography wise, it was a target rich environment, but the weather was mostly overcast with fog, low clouds and frequent rain. I took too much photo gear, but since I had it with me, I used most of it. I made thousands of photographs and my friend Sully made thousands more. Many of these are bracketed or panorama sets. I plan to go through them, choose the selects, and post process them as time permits. Hopefully there will be a few that are worth sharing here on this blog and in some galleries. I think that the next three or four of my posts will all be Alaska related. I also want to go through and create a photo book about our trip.

But we just got home, we’re tired, and we have to go to work tomorrow. For now, here’s one photo I really like. We saw this rainbow on our first day at sea, about an hour after leaving Seattle.

Photographic "level of detail" -continued

August 31, 2009Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, Technique, VARIOUSAlligator, wildlifeEd Rosack

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about level of detail in photos and how to best present it on the web.

In an interesting temporal coincidence, I ran across a post (no longer on line) on Jay Kinghorn’s blog, where he talks about Seadragon , which is Microsoft’s tool for creating deep-zoom images on-line. This looks like it would be one way to present high res images that you can zoom into and experience the sensation I described. Another link in his article leads to the Zoomify website .

Since I don’t think I can do everything I need to with Seadragon on my Mac, I took a look at Zoomify.

Zoomify Express seems to offer the capability I think we need to show photographic level of detail. It is a free zoom and pan authoring, publishing and viewing application and has downloads for both Mac and Windows available. It also makes it difficult to download the high res version of the photo. I didn’t have time tonight to figure out how to embed the Zoomify window directly into my posts, but that is something I want to do.

~~Here’s the result~~ (sorry – no longer available), using the same photograph of a gator that I posted before.

What do you think?

Canaveral National Seashore

August 23, 2009Canaveral Nat. Seashore, INSIDE FLORIDAAnole, beach, birds, fishing, Lizard, reviews, Sandpiper, wildlifeEd Rosack

Intro / Description

Three of us from the Photographic Interest Group went over to the Canaveral National Seashore yesterday to explore. We entered at the north end near Turtle mound. We could only go about 2 or 3 miles into the park, the road was closed after that.

CNS is a national park located on the east coast of Florida, south of New Smyrna Beach. It’s a very scenic place and there are many activities available. The surf was very high yesterday (due to Hurricane Bill?) and there were quite a few people out taking advantage of it.

In the short time we were there, we also saw people fishing:

and canoeing:

There’s a lot of wildlife in the area, but the number of people here at certain times of the year (like yesterday), probably makes it difficult to see much of the animal population, unless you’re here when the people aren’t. We did see some wildlife – here’s a CNS Anole:

And a sandpiper:

We also stopped by the Eldora Statehouse, which is a historic example of earlier life along the Mosquito Lagoon.

Speaking of mosquitoes, make sure you bring some bug spray – they were pretty vicious at times.

Photo Hints

Bring what you have. I don’t like to take my expensive DSLRs into the hot sun near the ocean for long periods of time, but you might if you’re careful. Shorebirds can be small (and fast) – so to get prize winning bird photos here, you’ll need to be lucky or a very dedicated and good photographer willing to forgo other activities. It might be a good place to practice "birds in flight" photos in your spare time – Pelicans often cruise down the shoreline. If the surfs up, that can be fun to watch / photograph too.

One non-photo hint: Be careful where you park. The rangers are rather zealous about enforcing the parking regulations. Parking on the grass is not allowed – even when it isn’t specifically posted.

Summary

The beach is a nice place to take some photographs and CNS is a very nice beach. We originally went there to explore a new place as a bird photography location. We didn’t find many birds, but we only stayed for a short time. I wonder if other times of the year would be more productive? The surfing would have been an excellent photo opportunity if I had been prepared for it (beach clothes, longer lens, etc).

If you’re here to visit the beach, bring a camera – over the course of of your visit, interesting photo opportunities will present themselves.

I have a few additional photos of this visit posted on Flickr .

Website:	http://www.nps.gov/CANA/index.htm
Address:	Visitor’s Center 7611 S Atlantic Ave, New Smyrna Beach, Florida (386) 428-3384
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating:	Come for the beach – take some pictures too.

Photographic "Level of Detail"

August 16, 2009Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, Technique, VARIOUSAlligator, wildlifeEd Rosack

I haven’t seen this discussed in the photographic blogosphere so I thought I’d comment on it. One reason may be that it is difficult to illustrate given the photo posting resolution that we often limit ourselves to on the web.

You can experience a very good example of what I’m trying to write about here when you visit an Ansel Adams print exhibition in person. For instance, viewing his "Winter Sunrise " from across the room, the print looks well composed and shows the overall scene of some mountains with areas of light and dark. Depending on how far away you are, most details are obscured by distance. As you slowly come closer, the details start to emerge. The closer you come, the greater the detail, until when you are standing right next to the print, you can see all sorts of things you didn’t see from across the room – subtle clouds, interesting light on the horse and trees, etc. The emergence of detail draws you into his photographs.

This experience – the discovery and exploration of a photograph is quite interesting and pleasant and is hardly ever possible on the web. On the web, we get one look at a photo – the low res "across the room look". The high res, up close version, where the subtle details emerge, is saved away on our hard drives, mostly due to worries about theft of our copyrighted, intellectual property (photographs).

The "level of detail" effect is something we all should strive for in our captures, prints and displays. When we do this well, there are a myriad of things for the viewer to discover as they view our prints. And while it is easiest to observe in a well made print, we should also try to make it an interesting thing on the web. When we achieve a good "level of detail" capture, how do we show it off? Here’s a couple of recommendations:

1. Study examples by the masters and and use them as we strive for this effect. Use it to draw in our viewers and keep them coming in for more. Print our work and hang it up where people can see it.

2. When we have a nice photo with some good detail and want to present it on the web, present the normal low res web version, along with a high res detail insert or two, like this:
Gator - whole print
Gator photo: "Across the room view"

Gator - partial crop
Gator photo: "Middle of the room view"

Gator - close in detail
Gator photo: Close in detail view.

3. I haven’t tried this, but another solution might be a video of the photo using a "Ken Burns" type of special effect. A "zoom in" motion video seems like an ideal way to showcase this type of photo and protect the intellectual property that everyone seems so worried about losing. Does anyone know of a ready made solution already out there?

P.S. There is also a very interesting inverse effect to what I’m talking about here. You will really enjoy visiting an exhibition of Ansel Adams prints at the same gallery with paintings by Monet . Monet understood the human mind’s ability to "fill in the details". If you approach many of his paintings from across the room they will look very real at first and they gradually dissolve into impressions in the middle distance and paint strokes when you are very close! This is a wonderful contrast to Ansel Adams prints, don’t you think?

Return to Black Point

August 9, 2009INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWRbirds, Black Crowned Night Heron, BPWD, Flowers, Green Heron, landscape, Spider, sunrise, sunset, wildlifeEd Rosack

The last time we were at Black Point Wildlife drive was back in May (https://edrosack.com/2009/05/16/birds-scarce-at-black-point-wildlife-drive-water-levels-down/) when water levels were down and there were very few birds anywhere around.

Yesterday, we made a return trip to see what the place is like after three months of almost daily rain in the Central Florida area.

We arrived right at sunrise, which was very pretty.
Sunrise reflections

Water levels are much improved: areas that were dry in May are once again filled. However, we were disappointed by how few birds there were in the area. My theory on this (which I didn’t come up with until the drive home) is that the severe drought in the area happened during nesting season and forced birds to build nests in other locations. The nesting season lasts for several months and is just now ending, so it was premature for us to expect to see many birds back at Black Point until chicks have fledged.

I did manage to get nice photos of a green heron:
Green Heron in tree

And a Black-crowned night-heron:

There were also some unusual flowers (1/14/2010 update – I think this is a “Spotted Bee Balm”):
Flower

And some very large (about 2 – 3 inches), horror show type spiders. How would you like to walk through this web in the dark?
Wolf spider?

So, even without a large bird population it was still a nice trip with plenty to interest the Photography Interest Group. And… there’s always Cracker Barrel on the way home!

Animal Kingdom Update – The Lodge

July 25, 2009INSIDE FLORIDA, Theme ParksAnimal Kingdom, Disney, Giraffe, Pelican, reviews, Spoonbill, Wildebeest, wildlife, ZebraEd Rosack

Intro / Description

You may remember my post from May about Disney’s Animal Kingdom . Disney also has the Animal Kingdom Lodge co-located with the park. It is an African style lodge / hotel with over 700 rooms and several restaurants. Lynn and I enjoyed our visit to Animal Kingdom so much that when we heard about the Lodge, we decided to go to the Boma Restaurant there for brunch on our anniversary in mid June.

Rooms at the Lodge overlook an area modeled after an African savanna, where 30 animal species roam about. There are also several viewing areas where guests can walk a short distance out into the savannas to observe what’s going on. When we were there, we saw Giraffes:

Zebras:
Zebras

Wildebeests:

Gray Pelicans:

And African Spoonbills:

Photo Hints

For this "expedition, I traveled light, took only my Canon G9, and shot hand held. A little more reach would have been welcome. I think you could bring and use a tripod – I didn’t see any signs prohibiting their use. We were there in the heat of the morning – about 11 am. Most of the animals had more sense than us and were out of sight somewhere cool. If you go, take the weather into account, it will certainly affect the animal behavior, as well as your comfort.

Summary

The breakfast at the Boma Restaurant was delicious and enjoyable. We also had fun wandering around the grounds afterward.

The Animal Kingdom Lodge is a unique experience. There is no where else in Central Florida that you can stay in the middle of an African savanna. Is it worth the premium over other hotels in the area? Since we didn’t stay in the Lodge, you will have to decide that on your own.

Website:	http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/resorts/animal-kingdom-lodge/
Address:	2901 Osceola Parkway, Bay Lake, FL 32830 Telephone number:407-938-3000
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating:	Best food at a zoo.