Paynes Prairie, Florida

INSIDE FLORIDA, Paynes Prarie, ,

I used to drive on I-75 near Gainesville, Florida and see the marsh area just a bit south of the rest stop. From the interstate, it looked so picturesque that I always wanted to explore it and make some photographs. When my daughter went to UF, I made quite a few trips up there and discovered Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park . In addition to the state web page for this park, you can find some very good background information here and here .

This is an absolutely wonderful place – and there are certainly many photo ops in the park. More than 200 species of birds can be seen there, along with many, many alligators and other large animals such as deer, bison, and wild horses.

To really explore this park, be ready to take time and cover some distance – it’s very large (21,000 acres). If you only have a short time, you can start at the visitor’s center, climb the observation tower and hike out on Cone’s Dike Trail in an hour or two. If you have a bit longer, the La Chua Trail could easily consume a whole day.

Get out on the La Chua trail in the early morning and you will quickly be far away from any civilization. Please be very cautious, the alligators are everywhere, and if you don’t pay attention you can be right on top of them before you know it. The photo I made below shows a mama gator guarding her nest with her (out of focus) baby gators behind her. I made this photo with a 300mm equivalent focal length and didn’t want to get any closer.

Momma gator guarding nest and 4 (blurry) babiesMomma gator guarding nest and 4 (blurry) babies

Take a long lens so you can stay away from the gators too and to help you with bird photos. A wide-angle lens and a tripod will be good for scenic shots. I’ve been there several times most often late in the year, which seems to be a good time to go to avoid insects.

My photos for this post are here.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, ,

I hope you were able to see the lunar eclipse last Wednesday. It was quite a show in Central Florida.

I used my Nikon D80 with a 70 – 300 VR zoom on a tripod in the driveway to make these photos.

It was quite cloudy at the beginning, but fortunately turned perfectly clear during totality. This first photo was made early as the earth’s shadow started to move across the moon.

Eclipse photo 1

The three photos posted here are all croped versions of larger files. 300mm is not quite enough lens to get full frame magnification. I had thought about trying to make some photos through my telescope, but I don’t have a camera adapter for it and didn’t want to try to hand hold an exposure. I used the spot meter mode in the camera and bracketed +/- one stop. The one stop underexposure was the best choice (as you might guess), since the meter coverage is a bit larger than the moon was in the sensor. I used both ISO 100 and 400. During totality, ISO 400 helped to reduce the exposure time and improved sharpness. I also played with turning the lens Vibration Reduction on and off , but I couldn’t see any difference in the results – which is good. I’ve noticed that the image stabilization in my Canon G9 will actually make a photo worse if left on when the camera is on a tripod.

The next photo was made during totality.

Eclipse photo 2: Totality

Finally, the last photo was made using a wider angle setting to also capture Saturn (lower left) and Regulus (above), which were especially impressive.

Eclipse photo 2: Totality, wider view

I have posted a few more of my eclipse photos
here.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Dulles Air and Space Museum

OUTSIDE FLORIDA, Washington D.C., , , , , , ,

If you ever travel through Dulles International, it is well worth scheduling yourself in early or out late so you can take a short side trip. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center annex of the National Air and Space Museum is located a few minutes south of the airport. You can take a shuttle to and from the airport, or follow Highway 28 (the first exit as you leave the airport) south until you see the sign. It only takes 10 – 15 minutes to get there from the airport. Entrance to the museum is free, but parking is $12, so take a few friends (all in one car).

Wright Brothers Pano

The Smithsonian needed additional space to display items that they don’t have room for at the downtown Washington, D.C. location. This is very good news for traveling photographers. For a small investment of time (2 – 3 hours) you can see a lot of aviation and space history. They have Wright Brother flyers (click on the photo above for a larger version), an SR-71, a Concorde, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, The Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer and much more. Some of these items are beautiful, and all are historic.

Equipment: I took my Canon G9, which did very well. You’ll mostly want a wide angle lens for the interior shots – these things are big and you can get close to most of them. The light is pretty dim, so use a fast lens and plan on at least bracing your camera for longer exposures as I did. Flash won’t be too effective due to the distance involved.

The rest of my photos for this post are here.

On a side note, after you get to your hotel, keep looking for photographs. I made this one out of my hotel window.

Sunset

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Three things

Cameras and Photography, VARIOUS, ,

OK, here are three unrelated topics for today.

Kodak model 3A Pocket Camera
  1. My “new” camera: Lynn is really sweet. She saw this while out at an antique show and bought it for me. It’s a Kodak No. 3A Folding Pocket Camera, Model B-2, Serial no. 48805-A, and was made (as far as we can tell) around 1910. If you search the web you can find several sites with information on old cameras, download manuals, and even buy roll film to use in them. The camera appears to be in working order, except that the shutter sticks at slower speeds. It would be interesting to run some film through this one, but I doubt I’ll get around to it – I have so many photo projects on my list already. There are some very interesting features like a minimum F/Stop of F/128! The camera had an optional back (alas it didn’t come with this one) with a ground glass screen for focusing. Without the ground glass, you estimate the distance to the subject and use the distance scale on the rails to focus. It also has a perspective shift, but again this can only be used with the ground glass. To me it is very interesting to think about how much photography has changed in 100 years. Today’s cameras are much more sophisticated tools, but they still capture photons and to be good, the prints made from the captured photons will still have the same characteristics. Additional photos of the camera are posted here.
  2. Stock photography: As an experiment, I’ve joined the on-line stock photo agency PhotoShelter. I plan to post some of my photographs to see whether there is any realistic market for them.
  3. Software review: I haven’t wanted to join the Aperture vs. Lightroom debate, but here goes anyway. I tried both programs when I first started shooting in RAW, and ended up selecting Lightroom for my use. At the time, my main computer was a Mac with a 1.5GHz G4 CPU. Lightroom would run on it (although slowly and I had to close everything else). Aperture performance was just too painful. I’m sure Aperture performance has improved since then, but Lightroom has improved too. Another item to note when selecting which program to use is the frequency of software updates. Lightroom RAW support is built into the program. I believe that Aperture relies on RAW support built into Mac OS X. Lightroom supported RAW format on my Canon G9 from the very first time I used it. OS X still does not support G9 Raw. I also like the fact that Lightroom is cross platform and Adobe includes both versions in the box. My $.02.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Seaworld

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, Theme Parks,

I took my new Canon G9 to Seaworld to get used to it and see how well it works. First impressions are very positive. The photo quality / color is about the best of any point and shoot I’ve owned. The features and controls are plentiful and relatively easy to use. Noise does get noticeable when you use a higher iso, but it does pack a lot of photography creation tools into a very portable package.

Garden at Seaworld

The rest of my photos for this post are here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Storm and Flowers

INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Sanford, , , , ,

Storm and Lake Jesup Flowers

Lake Jesup is in Seminole County, Florida between Oviedo / Winter Springs and Sanford. Wild flowers on the north-east shore start blooming in late September and peak the first week in October. To see them, head north-east on the toll way (417) from Oviedo / Winter Springs. You’ll see them on both sides of the road after you cross the bridge. There are many more toward the east.

I made my first photograph here in October of 2006, using a Nikon P1 point and shoot camera (image 1 in the gallery). I liked it, but wasn’t completely happy. I made it facing into the sun just after sunrise, and the flowers were underexposed since the sky dominated the camera meter. Some post processing made the flowers more prominent but still not as bright as I remembered seeing them. By the time I returned the following weekend, the blooms had passed their peak – so I had to wait a whole year to re-make the shot.

The image above was made today at 5:45 pm, looking east, just before that rain storm swept over me. Luckily, I did get back into my truck with my camera gear before the storm hit – it was quite a down pour.

The light in the scene this time was much more balanced. I also used my Nikon D80 in raw mode, which gave me a greater dynamic range to play with. I do wish I could have gotten over the water filled ditch at the side of the highway to include some foreground detail in the scene. Oh well, there’s always next year.

I think this is a better image than the one from a year ago. You can see several more of my Lake Jesup flower photos here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

New Orleans – pre Katrina

OUTSIDE FLORIDA,

On the second anniversary of Katrina hitting New Orleans, I thought I’d post some photos I made there (prior to the flood).

World famous New Orleans fried chicken

Lynn and I have been twice. The first time was in March of 2001 to visit Loyola University (which Mary was considered attending). Our second trip was in June of 2004, when Lynn won the eBay “Crazy for Collecting” contest.

New Orleans was a very interesting and photogenic city. I’m not sure what these places look like now, but I’d like to find out.

My New Orleans photos are here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The Covered Bridge Capital of the World

Indiana, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, , ,

Lynn and I were in Indianapolis last weekend for the Midwest Sad Iron Collectors Club convention. Lynn did a presentation on trivets and got to meet a lot of her collector friends. I helped with the presentation, and did some tourist type things around Indianapolis while she was busy.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we both visited Mary Kate in Cincinnati. Tuesday night we went to the Prima Vista Italian restaurant where we had a wonderful meal overlooking the city’s skyline. Make sure to bring your camera. On Wednesday, we visited the Newport Aquarium , Hofsbrauhaus , and Skyline Chili . The Newport Aquarium is a nice place to make photographs. They have a large tank that you walk through, with fish of many descriptions swimming beside and over you and you can linger as long as you want. A fast lens with a polarizing filter to reduce reflections would help get better photos through the glass. The beer at this Hofsbrauhaus is just like I remember from the one in Munich.

Thursday, while Lynn went to the auction, I drove quite a distance (~3 hrs each way) from Indianapolis to Bowling Green Kentucky to visit the Corvette museum and factory. Along the way I went through Louisville, Ky – where they were holding a National Street Rod auto show – so there where some very interesting vehicles on the road with me. Factory tours are only $5, and the assembly line is fascinating, especially if you like cars. You can’t take pictures inside the factory, but the ones I took at the museum are here .

On Friday morning, we both went with other members of the MSICC on a tour of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and museum. My Brickyard pictures are here .

Friday afternoon Lynn was busy, so I drove over to Rockville, Indiana. Rockville is located in Parke county, about 50 miles west of Indianapolis. Parke County, has more covered bridges (30) than any other county making them “The Covered Bridge Capital of the World”.

Marshall Bridge, J. A. Britton, Builder, 1917

There is quite a bit of information about Parke County here . I wasn’t there at a good time of day (I had to be back at the convention for dinner – so I couldn’t wait around for sunset) but I made a few photographs anyway. If you go, you should plan to spend a day or two so you can scout out all the bridges and pick some to photograph at dawn and dusk. The tourist map they hand out isn’t the most useful. It was hard to locate some of the bridges. And some of them are way out in the country on narrow dirt roads. My bridge photos are here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The oldest city in the US

INSIDE FLORIDA

In January of this year, we spent a weekend in St. Augustine, Florida, which is on the east coast of Florida about an hour north of Daytona Beach. It was founded in 1565 and is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the United States.

There are a lot of scenic opportunities there. We’d visited before, so I looked for some of the less obvious ones.

An HDR shot of the interior of the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, Florida

This photograph is a high dynamic range capture of the interior of the Lightner Museum courtyard in downtown St. Augustine. I didn’t have my tripod with me, so I braced my camera on the railing. It has been processed through Photomatix.

Here are a few of the photographs I made. Details are in the captions.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Some more Denver pictures

Colorado, OUTSIDE FLORIDA,

Here is a gallery of three more pictures from our recent Denver trip.

The first image in the gallery is a colony of cliff swallows nesting under an overpass near my Mom’s place. Lynn first noticed these birds during our frequent trips in and out. They’re very hard to photograph since they seem to be in constant motion. When I tried to get close on foot, they grew very agitated and noisy. I finally got a not very good photo by using the car as a blind and taking the shot through the sun roof. I was zoomed in all the way with my 70 – 300mm, but didn’t have enough light to stop the motion, even though I upped the ISO to 400 to take this at 1/250 sec. Lesson learned: It’s better to get the shot, even with some noise in it – so up the ISO as much as you need to stop the action.

This old log cabin is just off the backroad between my sister's and my Mom's house.

I saw this cabin along the side of the road between my sister’s and Mom’s places, and really wanted to make a photo of it. I didn’t have time to go by at sunset, but this late afternoon shot captures the mood pretty well. I had to play around with curves in Lightroom to bring out detail in the clouds without losing it in the trees and cabin. I also cloned out a TV antenna on the roof and a power line on the right side. With those gone, it’s more appealing to me and could almost be a high definition window into the past.

The final shot in the gallery was taken from the balcony of my Mom’s place. The sunsets weren’t very colorful while we were there, since late afternoon thunderstorms covered the mountains to the west nearly every day. We finally saw a little color and this shot, especially the cloud shadows on the lower left, turned out pretty well.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.