Tag Archives: black and white

Feathered Feeding Frenzy Photo Fun

February 18, 2018Merritt Island NWR, Techniquebirds, black and white, BPWD, Great Egret, Ibis, infrared, landscape, Spoonbill, sunrise, wildlifeEd Rosack

Once in a while, conditions are just right. Low water levels force fish into small pools and birds flock to the spot to feed. When you can get close to a scene like this early in the morning, with soft golden light from the rising sun behind you – count your blessings!

Great Egret in flight

This happened to me at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge a week ago (2/9/18). I lucked into seeing a bird feeding frenzy along Black Point Wildlife Drive. It’s always a treat to watch and photograph these. I’ve written about them before (see this post from December of 2012). Here are some observations. / hints that may help you in a similar situation:

The birds all compete for food. Watch for interactions and squabbles – they can lead to great poses and action shots.
Since the birds are very focused on the fish they’re more tolerant of close photographers. Be quiet and move slowly so you don’t stress them.
They’ll be constantly coming and going and moving in the pond. Watch for good compositions as they shift around.
When they fly in, you can often track them as they get closer and land in the pools for some great images. After a while you’ll be able to anticipate their paths.
As the birds land, they’ll be low and close to you – great for eye level BIF photos (BIF = Birds in Flight)!
You’ll need to balance zoom level, composition, background, exposure, focus, etc. And conditions change rapidly. Set up your camera in advance and be nimble. I have a BIF preset programmed so I can quickly shift to it when needed. It shoots at 10 frames / second with continuous focus, large focus area, and higher ISO settings to keep my shutter speed high. You’ll need 1/1000 sec. exposures (or shorter!) to freeze wing motion.
A white bird against a dark background vs. a dark bird against the sky will require exposure compensation adjustments. I have EC mapped to the rear wheel control so I can easily vary it when needed.
Your “keeper” percentage may be lower than you’re used to. But there are so many photo opportunities at a feeding frenzy that you’ll likely come home with images you like. Practice when you can and you’ll get better.

Landing Ibis – I like the composition / background on this one. But my shutter was too slow to freeze the wings and I didn’t get the exposure compensation right either. I’m still practicing!

It’s not all about birds in flight. Interesting groups or poses on the shore or perched on nearby branches are also photogenic.

On the banks of the pond. I like compositions with multiple species in the frame.

That was a wonderful morning. I’m glad I was able to see all the action. Oh, and before the bird activity, I also made a couple of landscape photos:

Dawn at the dock on the Indian River. Olympus Hi-Res mode.

Florida clouds along Black Point Wildlife Drive. Monochrome infrared.

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

Pretty Pelicans and Playful Porpoise

January 27, 2018INSIDE FLORIDA, New Smyrna Beachblack and white, brown pelican, Dolphin, infrared, landscape, Osprey, PorpoiseEd Rosack

MK has been trying to get us to go on the Dolphin Discovery Tour Eco boat ride out of New Smyrna Beach. We finally made time and Lynn and I went with her last Sunday. Howard and Nancy T. joined us for a wonderful two-hour tour and a nice dinner afterward.

Brown Pelican in Breeding Colors

Brown Pelicans were very numerous. They look pretty now in their breeding colors. There’s a small island they use for a rookery and roost near the tour start and you get good views of them.

Landing at the Pelican Rookery

This tour is offered once a day at 1:30pm. We arrived about 1pm at the Marine Discovery Center, picked up our tickets and headed over to the dock.

The 40 passenger boat is covered so you can stay out of the sun if you want. We had nice weather although it was a bit windy and a little chilly too. We were glad to have the sun and our jackets (I know, Florida people, right?). There’s ample room on board, especially since it was only about half full. The bench seats are comfortable and we had a lot of room to move around for the best views.

I was expecting to see porpoise (dolphin) – they’re quite common in the Indian River. This is a typical view:

Four Dolphins, four vultures, a gull, a buoy, and two wrecks

But we were in for quite a treat. On the way back to the dock, this group of four or five put on an exciting show for us right next to the boat. I wasn’t expecting to see them breech like this up close.

Of course, I wasn’t well prepared and it was over very quickly. I ended up just watching them and trying to shoot blindly without bringing the camera up to aim. This isn’t a really great photo, but I’m lucky I got it.

Our guide pointed out a wide variety of other wildlife: Ospreys, Great Blue, Little Blue, and Green herons; Great Egrets, Cormorants, Anhingas, Black Vultures, gulls, terns, and more.

Osprey with fish

The mid afternoon light was harsh – not the best for landscape photos. But an infrared camera can tame contrast, so I used mine for an image or two. Here’s one from the trip – I like the look of the weathered tree along the shore.

Weathered wood – A gnarly old tree along the Indian River

The Marine Discovery Center offers several boat, kayak. and walking tours. They also have an indoor exploration area with exhibits, aquariums, and more. Plan to go next time you’re in New Smyrna Beach. Call before you visit, since they sometimes cancel due to weather. I hope the dolphins will be as playful for you as they were for us!

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

Merritt Island & Blog Status

January 14, 2018Merritt Island NWR, VARIOUSbirds, black and white, BPWD, cloud, landscape, panorama, sunrise, wildlifeEd Rosack

First an announcement: If you’re here because you didn’t get an email from the blog this week, please see the very last bullet at the bottom of this post.

And for those interested, you can read much more about other blog tech details / status / news following the Merritt Island photo update.

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

Late Thursday, Kevin K. asked if I wanted to go photographing Friday morning. I did and we decided to meet early and visit Merritt Island. We arrived way before sunrise, so we stopped first at the Titusville Municipal Marina for a quick photo in the dark.

Pre-dawn at the marina – Titusville. Olympus high res mode, two frame panorama

Next we went by the fishing pier on the North west side of the causeway. From there you can shoot through the bridge toward sunrise. I liked the viewpoint, but I wish the sunrise color had been better.

Dawn through the bridge. Olympus high res mode, two frame panorama

After this we headed to Black Point Wildlife Drive. There were a lot of birds there and we ended up going around twice. I was worried that it would be dull and overcast, but we actually had some very pretty light for most of the morning.

Roseate Spoonbil feeding in the shallows

Hooded Merganser (female)

We also saw (among others): American Robins, Great snowy and Reddish Egrets, Great Blue and Tri-Colored Herons, White and Glossy Ibis, Norther Shoveler and Pintail ducks, Belted Kingfishers, gulls, terns, Osprey, Vultures, and more. We were hoping to spot some White Pelicans, but didn’t we couldn’t find any on this trip.

Enough of the pleasant content. Now on to the agonizing stuff.

Blog status / news

It’s been a very tough week at Central Florida Photo Ops HQ. Our head of tech support (me) along with Google search, and two different hosting provider customer support lines struggled mightily to get the blog transferred and back up and running again.

There’s good and bad news. Good news: The blog is mostly back up. And the head of tech support probably won’t get fired since there’s no one to replace him. Bad news: He’s not getting a raise anytime soon.

I started looking for a new hosting provider over the Christmas break since my agreement with GoDaddy is almost up . My blog’s been responding a little slow and GoDaddy’s renewal fees and their SSL (https) offerings were expensive. And even though Bob Parsons is no longer CEO, there’s the whole GoDaddy Elephant thing.

I did some online research and discovered that inMotion hosting is highly rated and has some inexpensive plans. Since this is a non-commercial, personal blog, I don’t feel I need a high end hosting plan and decided to go with them.

It was very easy to open an account and purchase their WPS500S plan. The rest of the process wasn’t as easy. Here are some of the issues I ran into:

Since I purchased a WordPress specific hosting plan, I thought InMotion would automatically install WordPress for me. They didn’t. I could have installed it myself through their cPanel interface, but I wasn’t familiar enough with their software and what to expect. A call to their tech support took care of this right away.
Next, I requested that InMotion transfer my content from GoDaddy. I gave them my login credentials, but for some reason they couldn’t access the old account. I ended up doing this myself by FTPing into GoDaddy and copying my content files first to my computer (for backup) and then uploading them to InMotion.
Next I initiated the domain transfer to move edrosack.com from GoDaddy servers to inMotion servers. This was probably a timing mistake (see the bullet below about follower migration). The domain transfer happened relatively quickly and I could see the new edrosack.com on the web.
Next I turned on inMotion’s included SSL capability. This was easy and I now have an https connection. My blog readers don’t do any business through my site and don’t sign in, so this probably isn’t strictly necessary for them. But Google factors this into search rankings so it’s good to have.
I then went about configuring WordPress to make it match the old installation. I had lots of problems with the Jetpack plugin. It turns out that InMotion enables the Mod Security firewall by default and the WPS500 hosting plan doesn’t allow customizing this. Jetpack relies on access to the site xmlrpc file to work and Mod Security blocks this by default. I was able to resolve this with another call to InMotion tech support.
Since I was now worried about security on the new site, I spent some time installing firewall / security plugins and testing / configuring them. In the process, I managed to lock myself out of edrosack.com at least once. Fortunately, I could still get to the site file system so I could nuke the security software and then reinstall / reconfigure it. Whew! It would have been embarrassing to have to call inMotion on my second day with them to get that fixed.
Most of my content transferred ok, but I couldn’t get the NexGen gallery plugin to display my Portfolio without re-setting it and starting over. In the end, I decided to use the gallery provisions included with Jetpack and re-did my portfolio pages. I needed to update them anyway and now they reflect some of my more recent work. Please check them out if you get a chance!
And late on Saturday as I was finally getting things fixed, my cable internet here at home went down for the first time in months! This stuff is just too hard!
The final problem (that I know of) and one that I haven’t resolved yet is that since I couldn’t connect WordPress.com to both my old and new providers at the same time, I was unable to use Jetpack’s subscriber migration tool. So for now, I’m waiting on Jetpack to respond to a support request. Once I hear from them, I’ll know how to proceed. If they can’t re-instate my subscribers, I’ll have to send out an email and request that folks re-subscribe. Stay tuned on this and I’ll let you know what happens.

Well, that’s much longer than a normal blog post, so I’ll sign off now.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos! And if you’re having issues with your server, don’t call me!

Christmas Eve Pancakes

December 31, 2017INSIDE FLORIDAblack and white, de león springs, infrared, landscapeEd Rosack

The Old Spanish Sugar Mill restaurant inside De Leon Springs State Park has become one of our favorite breakfast spots. Something about their batter recipe cooked on a griddle right at your table, and served hot and fresh makes the pancakes taste so much better.

Our family met there on Christmas Eve and really enjoyed the food and each other’s company! After, we strolled around a bit and I made this photo – looking toward the lake from the spring outflow. The morning was a bit gloomy, but I still like how this infrared image turned out.

Christmas Eve Morning at Spring Garden Lake

If you’ve never been there, go! It gets pretty crowded, so check the hours and arrive early so you don’t have to wait. You might find a few photo ops too!

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

P.S. Happy New Year!

Home for the Holidays

December 17, 2017Must do list, VARIOUSblack and white, Christmas, family, holiday, peopleEd Rosack

It’s getting chilly outside, presents are starting to show up, and we’re hearing carols on the radio. Family and friends are arriving soon and before we know it, It’s a Wonderful Life will be on TV around the clock. Whether you celebrate Christmas or another winter holiday, family gatherings are the greatest photo-op of the year!

Mom, me, Dad – Christmas, 1955

Gather folks up and make photos and maybe even some video. Include everyone and make sure you get yourself into a few. Don’t put it off and don’t take no for an answer. Technical perfection isn’t even required. You and people you love will cherish the photos anyway.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some family photos! And share them – someone will be very glad you did!

A day in Nassau

December 10, 2017Cruise Shipsastronomy, birds, black and white, landscape, reviews, sunrise, sunset, travelEd Rosack

Lynn and I took a short cruise on Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam starting last weekend. One highlight was a full day spent in Nassau.

This is an image heavy post, so I apologize if you’re on a slow connection. I’ll let the photos and captions tell the story.

Sunrise arrival: Docking at 8am made for a nice view as we pulled in.

The Dec. 4th super moon was still around the next morning.

Lynn booked us on the Bites of Nassau Food Tasting & Cultural Walking Tour. (please click on their link for details).

We met the tour a short distance from the ship, outside Christ Church Anglican Cathedral. It’s a lovely place – I liked the light and reflections in the polished floor.

Bahamian Cookin’ Restaurant & Bar – It was our second visit to this 3 generation, family owned business. This time we had conch fritters and a delicious light lunch.

Our guide Captain Ron, at the Talking Stick Bar in the Towne Hotel: Max the Macaw likes to steal straws and sample your drink!

Street art – there’s a lot of color in Nassau

News stand

Graycliff Hotel Dinning Room. According to Captain Ron, all the famous folks visiting Nassau stay here. Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) was there the week before we were.

Graycliff Cigar Factory – they roll their own and also sell Cuban cigars (for $75 and up – each!)

Street colors

Looking up from the Drawbridge Patisserie & Gelateria courtyard

Sunset view

Night departure – this is a high res image made from the deck after dark. Ships tied up at the dock can be a remarkably stable platform for long exposures.

Although I don’t have any more images to show you (thank goodness, right?), we also visited the Athena Cafe & Bar and the Tortuga Gift Shop & Rum Cake Bakery.

You might not consider Nassau a “Central Florida Photo Op”, but I do. It’s one of many places that are very accessible via cruise ports in our area. We left from Fort Lauderdale, but Tampa, Port Canaveral, Miami and other places offer cruises to many destinations. If you haven’t tried one, check it out.

We’ve been to Nassau several times and wouldn’t normally think of it as our favorite port. But this time we had a wonderful visit and got to see (and taste) a lot of new things. Highly recommended! I’ve embedded links to most of the places above. Please click on them for more info. And you can see more Bahamas images in this folder on Flickr.

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

Indian Springs State Park, Georgia

November 4, 2017Georgia, Must do list, OUTSIDE FLORIDAbirds, black and white, cemetery, infrared, sunrise, travel, treeEd Rosack

Indian Springs is about six hours by car from Central Florida. It’s east of I-75 between Macon and Atlanta and well worth the drive. Lynn discovered they have cabins and suggested that we go up for a few days to see if any leaves are changing. They definitely are!

Color

I think peak color will be in a week or so. We get very little fall color in Florida – so it was a treat to see.

The cabins are nice – some of the best we’ve stayed in. They must have been refurbished not long ago. They have two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, a screened porch, and are fully furnished. And the location on a gorgeous lake was wonderful. This was the view just a few steps from the back porch:

Good morning (three Frame vertical panorama)

There were other things to see in the park too. This creek runs along the road by the entrance.

Big Sandy Creek (using the new iPhone “Live Long Exposure” mode)

And we spotted this cemetery from the 1800s along the road to the cabins.

At rest in the wood (Infrared)

We saw a few deer and although I didn’t put much effort in, several kinds of birds. We had some fun watching (and listening) to Canada Geese on the lake. I managed to make this video one morning around sunrise. The flock took off just as the sun started to hit the lake.

There are several other places to see in the area. High Falls State Park is just to the east and Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge is to the west. We’ve explored several state parks in Florida, but after this experience, we’re going to expand our target zone! And Indian Springs is definitely on our “go back” list.

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

One and Two and One, Two, Three

October 8, 2017Haulover Canal, INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWRbirds, black and white, boat, cloud, Dolphin, infrared, landscape, manatee, Pelican, wildlifeEd Rosack

Here are a few photos from a scouting trip to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge last Thursday. I wanted to see how it was doing in the wake of Hurricane Irma and my shutter finger was itchy. Some things didn’t fare too well:

Wreck at Markers 1 and 2 – on the northwest side of the Max Brewer Causeway

I drove over on SR 46 from Winter Springs and the road was clear the entire way. Although the water’s very high in some locations (especially near the St. Johns River), it doesn’t reach the road.

I made these next three images standing in the same spot near the Bairs Cove boat ramp on Haulover Canal. It’s amazing how reliable a place this is to see wildlife. I almost always find at least these three species when I go there and I was glad to see them still around after the storm.

One Pelican

Two Manatees

Three Dolphins

They’ve finished the Haulover Canal Bridge repairs so it’s open now. I need to go back there and kayak again. It is going to cool off soon I hope!

There were a few shore birds along the causeway. I couldn’t check out the wildlife in two of my favorite areas (Black Point and Gator Creek) since they’re closed due to hurricane damage. I don’t know when they’ll reopen – you can find out the current status at this webpage: https://www.fws.gov/nwrs/threecolumn.aspx?id=2147578811

For everyone that ended up on this page after searching for math answers or song intros, I’m sorry about the title. I know it’s bad for Search Engine Optimization, but I couldn’t resist. I only wish I’d found a group of four somethings to photograph too.

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

Photography’s not important. Yes it is!

September 30, 2017INSIDE FLORIDA, Maitland, VARIOUSbald eagle, barn owl, Barred Owl, birds, black and white, FlowersEd Rosack

Sorry about the glitch last Thursday – I didn’t mean for this post to go out then. Hitting the wrong button in WordPress is embarrassing, but at least my email subscribers got to see an example of how my posts usually begin – as just a few words jotted down to expand on later. Here’s the rest of it.

Blooming

In the grand scheme of life, photography isn’t required. We managed for most of our history without photos. And even today, with cameras in every cell phone, many people never make a photo. So is photography important?

Barred Owl Pair

The world is awash in geo-political problems. World leaders with nuclear weapons call each other names and threaten annihilation. Scientists say global warming is going to drown our coast lines. Storms and earthquakes cause massive destruction and loss of life. Watching the evening news is overwhelming and sometimes even depressing. In this world, how important is an activity like photography?

Bald Eagle

Images and video play an increasing role in documenting problems and news in our society. Ubiquitous cell phone cameras give us a look into life as it happens, views that were less likely to be seen in the past. Is that a good thing? In general I think so, even though what we now see all the time is often uncomfortable.

Barn Owl

Photography is also a tool. It lets us explore and comprehend things we can’t view with our own eyes. Just look at the incredible images that the Cassini probe has sent back from Saturn. This is extremely important data leading to a better understanding of our universe. Vital? Maybe not, but it is important.

What about photos like the ones in this post? Are they important? Maybe not to you, but to me they are. When I’m out photographing I can forget all about many worrisome things and concentrate on an activity I enjoy. If I’m lucky I become completely absorbed in the process – “in the zone”. Worries drop away – at least for a time. And sharing the results may not be crucial, but I do think it’s worthwhile. Allowing others to see what I can and they can’t is an activity worth doing. The photos don’t have to worthy of the Louvre. But’s it’s nice to get one every once in a while that goes up on my wall.

These photos were all made at the Audubon Birds of Prey Center in Maitland Florida. They take in injured raptors, treat them, and (if they’re well enough) return them back to the wild. They’re able to release just over 40% of their raptor patients. Some birds (like the ones pictured here are too severely injured, so they become permanent residents that we can photograph when we visit.

The images don’t have a lot to do with the ideas in the post. But they’re good examples. The act of making them got me out of the house to meet a friend. We enjoyed seeing the birds, and our donations will help the Audubon society to continue to help injured raptors.

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

Florida and the Keys – an Update

September 24, 2017Florida Keys, INSIDE FLORIDAblack and white, buildings, landscape, sea turtle, sunset, wildlifeEd Rosack

A few more photos from our trip late last month along with some post hurricane(s) status in the area…

Watching the sun set in Key West. Sunset is a big attraction down there. This view is from the Hyatt Centric, where we stayed. They opened again on 22 September but say that “some amenities are temporarily limited or unavailable”. We’ve heard the marina where I made this photo is “gone”.Injured Loggerhead – Staff members treat an injured Loggerhead Sea Turtle at the Turtle Hospital on Marathon. Their website (www.turtlehospital.org) says the facility and staff made it through Hurricane Irma OK, but there’s extensive damage all over Marathon.Key West: Fort Zachary Taylor Fortress Interior. Their website says they’re closed until further notice with no info on how much damage they suffered.

Key West Street Scenes: Sloppy Joe’s Bar first opened the day Prohibition ended. Ernest Hemingway was a favorite patron. Their website says they’re open for business.

One of the people who run the snorkel boat trips at Bahia Honda has a YouTube channel: “Livin’ the Keys Life” and he’s posting info about Bahia Honda and Marathon. The damage there looks pretty bad. I imagine it will be a while before it re-opens.

As far as locations around Central Florida, please check them before you go too. For example Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is reporting lots of road closures due to hurricane damage while Orlando Wetlands Park says they’re open for public use (http://www.cityoforlando.net/wetlands/). And Lynn and I drove over the Lake Jesup bridge again today and the sunflower fields are still flooding. We saw a few blooms on high ground close to the road, but we’ll have to wait until next year on these.

You can check on other parks at the Florida State Park storm information web page: https://www.floridastateparks.org/content/storm-information.

And there’s info on National Parks in our area on this site: https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2017/09/no-details-fate-national-parks-caribbean.

Tourism is a huge part of the economy in Florida and especially in the Keys. One way you can help them recover is by visiting. Just make sure they’re ready before you go, and they’ll be very glad to see you.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog.