Well this is quite a bit different from what I normally photograph and post about. But in order to keep learning, it’s good to occasionally stretch your skills, move outside the box, and try something you haven’t done. And as your intrepid Central Florida Photo Ops reporter, I have an obligation to report on more than just the landscape and wildlife opportunities in the Central Florida Area. Right?
So last Saturday, I found myself at the American Photo Magazine Model Shoot Workshop at the Marriott World Resort in Orlando, Florida. The magazine organizes the event, hires models, brings lighting equipment and sets the whole thing up for you. You just need to show up with your camera and plenty of memory cards.
It’s hot and muggy here in the land of sunshine and the later in the day you go, the hotter it gets. This is real motivation to get out early – so Frank and I were on the road at 5:30 am yesterday to drive over to the Circle B Bar Reserve near Lakeland, Florida in time to catch the sunrise.
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.
Introduction Welcome to Central Florida Photo Ops – a great place to find out about photography in our area! I’m a photographer living in Central Florida. My main photography interests are nature / wildlife. I enjoy writing about places around here that I’ve visited and photographed. In addition to sharing my experiences, I try to make … Continue reading Contents →
… one question I hear quite often is “why post process?”. Their argument seems to be that the photos “straight out of the camera” (SOOC) are much better than they’re used to with their old point & shoot cameras and they don’t understand why anyone should waste time learning about software and processing photos on their computers.
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I’ve been using Photoshop since sometime in the early ’90s, so I really have to stop and think when someone questions why I they should use photo software. My answer comes down to: Control, Quality, and Change.
…this “Two Image Pano / HDR / Focus Stacking” technique can be useful and it has several advantages over the standard approaches …
It’s simpler than conventional techniques, and yields very good results. You can hand hold in many cases, especially if you use an image stabilized camera or lens. It uses the camera’s auto exposure effectively to expose correctly for the different areas of the image. You can post process with just Photoshop – other software isn’t required. It greatly increases the dynamic range of the final image without requiring HDR processing or software. Depth of field can be increased over a single photo approach or the conventional pano / HDR approach. It also substantially increases vertical field of view.
A few weeks ago, I promised to compare the St. Augustine Alligator Farm to Gatorland from the point of view of a nature / wildlife photography enthusiast. And in this post, I’ll do it.
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.) I wanted to explore the rest of the park, so yesterday I went … Continue reading A bicycle ride 'round Orlando Wetlands Park →
This is the story of a photograph that I made a couple of weeks ago when we were in Wisconsin at the Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary, and how I eventually made a print that I was happy with. Along the way, Lynn laughed at me for taking so much time to print a single photo and … Continue reading Sometimes you take the photo, and sometimes the photo takes you →