Tag Archives: Flowers

The flowers are coming! The flowers are coming!

September 21, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Must do listFlowers, SunflowersEd Rosack

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Swamp Sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius, also called Narrow Leaf Sunflowers) start blooming at the end of September in our area. One of the largest concentrations is in the Marl Bed Flats in the Lake Jesup Conservation Area where the blooms stretch as far as you can see.

Swamp Sunflowers at the Lake Jesup Wilderness Area

This is a truly unique photo-op and worth checking out. See these links for more info:

You can browse some of my photos of the area in this set on Flickr. And here’s an article about the flowers in this month’s Orlando Magazine – featuring my photo!

When you go, please be careful. Stopping on the side of 417 can be dangerous. And the Lake Jesup Wilderness area is wild. It’s also a bit of a hike from the parking area out to the flowers. Bring water and use sun screen and bug spray. Long pants and waterproof hiking boots are a good idea too.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some flower photos – maybe I’ll see you out there!

Central Florida Zoo (Sanford)

May 25, 2013Central Florida Zoo, INSIDE FLORIDA, Sanfordbee, birds, Flowers, macaw, Otter, Snake, sunriseEd Rosack

I hadn’t been to the Central Florida Zoo in Sanford, Florida since early 2007 and Tom M. had some new gear he wanted to try – so we decided to visit this week. Here’s a few photos I made along with some photo hints.

The River Otter exhibit was fun. If you’re patient and the otter’s in the mood, you can make a nice image of it swimming. Up your ISO to get a fast shutter speed and get close to the glass to block reflections. Then press the button right before “the moment”.

One of our Photography Interest Group members, Jeff S. has a write-up about the zoo on his blog: http://www.firefallphotography.com/central-florida-zoo/. There’s some good info and photos there – well worth a read.

Macaw – Many zoos have these very photogenic birds around. They’re good posers!

Photography at this zoo can be challenging. Many of the animals are behind glass or wire mesh fences, and far away or in bad light. You’ll need to look for situations where you have a clear view of the animals and if you’re patient they’ll often come closer. You can also try the standard techniques i.e. Use wide open apertures to blur the fencing; Hold your lens close to the glass or use your hands to block reflections; etc.

Snake eyes – Albino Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. The “herpetarium” is dark. I didn’t bring a flash, but If I had, I might have tried using it (held out to the side to avoid reflections). The snakes don’t normally move fast – in this case I braced my camera so I could use a slow shutter speed (I also didn’t bring a tripod).

Busy Bee – There are a lot of pretty plantings and flowers at the zoo. I made this photo in the Butterfly Garden area.

And one last photo – we went by the marina in Sanford before going to breakfast and then the zoo. It’s a nice place for sunrise.

I’m glad we got up early

As usual, you can click on these photos to go to Flickr, where you can see larger versions. You can also see a few more photos from the Central Florida Zoo in this set on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Bok Tower Gardens – Lake Wales, Florida

October 14, 2012Bok Tower Gardens, INSIDE FLORIDAbirds, Flowers, Hummingbird, infrared, Lake Wales, landscape, reviews, RufousEd Rosack

Intro / Description

Kevin M. saw some internet chatter about a Rufous Hummingbird sighting at Bok Tower. The bird had been hanging out in some flowering bushes near the “Window by the pond”. Although the Rufous does sometimes migrate through Florida, Ruby Throated Hummingbirds are normally the only kind we see, so this is a bit unusual.

Kevin organized a Photography Interest Group expedition and he, Lutfi, and I headed over on Saturday morning to try to find this bird. It was right where it was reported and in fact there were several of them. We saw multiple Ruby Throated Hummingbirds too. The Rufous seem more aggressive – they chased the Rubies away from the plants where they were feeding.

Rufous Hummingbird resting on a twig, Bok Tower Gardens. Tiny birds: this one was about 3 inches long.

Info for Photographers

Bok Tower is open every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m and admission is $12 for adults and $3 for children, although if you arrive on Saturday mornings between 8 and 9 like we did, you can get in for half price.

Personal photography is permitted in all areas. Commercial photographers should contact management to receive authorization before visiting.

This is a 250-acre botanical garden and bird sanctuary, located near Lake Wales and is one of the highest places in the state at an elevation of almost 300′. It’s named for the 205′ pink marble and coquina tower which includes a carillon that you’ll hear every half-hour and at twice daily concerts (1 & 3 p.m). Bok Tower is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Bok Tower door and reflection – the base of the tower from the reflecting pool side.

Photo hints:

There’s quite a variety of subjects to photograph here. You can shoot landscapes, architecture, many kinds of flowers, and several varieties of butterflies.

Path and trees – a false color IRFE (infra-red, fish-eye) photo. I made this photo right before they started to set up for a wedding.

Bok Tower Gardens is also a bird refuge where you can find a number of species. The day we visited, we saw the Rufous and Ruby Throated Humming birds, Blue Jays, Mockingbirds, Doves, a Gray Catbird, a Brown Thrasher, a Tufted Titmouse, Cardinals, Red Wing Blackbirds, a few wading birds, and others. We heard that wild turkeys and Sand Hill Cranes are often on the grounds too.

Tripod/Monopod: Allowed and very useful for the normal reasons.

Lenses: To cover all the subjects here, you should bring a variety of lenses from wide (for landscapes), macros (for butterflies and flowers), and telephoto (for birds).

Best time to visit: Fall is good for migrating birds and springtime is great for flowers.

Other:

The gardens are about a 90 minute drive from the Winter Springs and are close to Legoland. It’s also close to the can’t miss Spook Hill.

Summary

Bok Tower is one of the best botanical gardens in Florida, plus it has the tower, scenic landscapes, and at times an interesting bird population. Well worth your time.

My Gallery / Flickr photo set:	http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/sets/72157631763032197/
Website:	http://boktowergardens.org
Address:	1151 Tower Blvd., Lake Wales, FL 33853
Phone:	863.676.1408
Map:	View in Google Maps
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating:	Autumn hummer haven; Spring flower fun – well worth a visit.

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

Dealing with poor weather – Circle B Bar Reserve, 10-6-12

October 7, 2012Circle B Bar Reserve, INSIDE FLORIDA, Techniquebirds, Flowers, fog, infrared, landscape, limpkin, mist, people, Spider, sunrise, wildlifeEd Rosack

The Photography Interest Group decided to organize an expedition to the Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland, Florida yesterday. It’s about an hour and twenty-minute drive for us and since we wanted to try a new place a bit further out for sunrise, Frank, Kevin M., Lutfi, and I met at 5:30 to carpool over. Talk about getting out of bed at “O-dark thirty”! But I was excited, since I haven’t been to the Circle B Bar since last November – way too long to stay away from such a beautiful place.

It was getting foggy as we approached the parking area, but I wasn’t too worried – sometimes fog can add to a scene. We arrived in plenty of time, and walked out to Wading Bird Way (see this link for a .pdf map of the Circle B Bar trails). The closer we got, the foggier it became – and it looked like this right at dawn.

Frank, Lutfi, and Kevin M. in the fog at the Circle B Bar Reserve

To make a long story short – the fog was dense and dawn brought no color at all to the sky. There was no sunrise. We didn’t even see the sun until about an hour and a half later. Regular readers will know that I really like landscape photography and around dawn and dusk are the best times to photograph. With yesterday’s conditions, it just wasn’t meant to be. So what should you do in a situation like this?

First, enjoy the walk. Being out in nature is a wonderful experience and doesn’t have to include photography.

From a photographic perspective, what else can you do? For landscapes, try infrared – it can help cut though the fog, especially if you can include some foreground elements.

Foggy lake

If you can get close, fog and mist can be a great background to isolate your subject.

Posing Limpkin

And focus on details. Find some smaller things that you can zoom in on. Look for subjects enhanced by the mist.

Spider and misty web

Yes, not every photo expedition goes as planned. Yesterday’s sunrise was disappointing (non-existent?). But we saw and photographed many things: birds (Sand Hill Cranes, Egrets, Herons, Ibis, Osprey, Whistling Ducks, Hawks, Coots, Moorhens, a Purple Gallinule, Woodpeckers, and others), alligators, dragonflies, spiders, butterflies, and flowers while we were there. All in all, a great day. You can see more photos from the Circle B Bar in this set on Flickr, and check out Frank‘s, Kevin M.‘s, and Lutfi‘s too.

What do you do in situations like this? I’d love to hear your suggestions. Send me an email or add a comment to the blog.

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

Wow – it was really crowded over there!

September 29, 2012INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup Sunflowers, Must do listFlowers, landscape, Marl Bed Flats, SunflowersEd Rosack

Crowded with both flowers and people…

I’ve photographed the wildflowers (swamp sunflowers) that bloom near Lake Jesup at this time of year since about 2006. I’ve never seen as many people out there as I did tonight. When I drove by on 417, there were 8 or 10 cars along the shoulder and people with cameras and tripods were clambering down into the flowers to get photos. When I arrived at the Lake Jesup Conservation Area just before sunset, the gate was closed and the two parking spaces outside the gate were already taken – so I had to park on the road. On my walk in, I met up with two people with cameras and on my way out another person stopped me to ask what I’d seen. On most previous trips, I haven’t seen anyone. I guess the word has gotten around.

Lake Jesup Conservation Area – Fisheye fun with the Swamp Sunflowers.

The flowers are at their peak. If you want to see or photograph them, you should go in the next few days.

Lake Jesup Conservation Area Wildflowers

Check out these links for info and please be careful. Stopping along 417 could be dangerous.

You can see more photos of the area in this set on Flickr.

Add a comment to the blog or drop me an email if you go. I’d love to see your photos.

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

Get ready for the Lake Jesup flowers

September 22, 2012INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Jesup, Lake Jesup SunflowersFlowers, landscape, Marl Bed Flats, people, SunflowersEd Rosack

If you live in the Central Florida area and want to photograph an endless field of flowers, get ready to head over to the Marl Bed Flats in the Lake Jesup Conservation Area where Swamp Sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius, also called Narrow Leaf Sunflowers) bloom from horizon to horizon during the last week in September and the first week of October.

Kevin M. in the flowers at the Lake Jesup Wilderness Area

I drove by on highway 417 this afternoon to see what’s going on, and there are already a few flowers out. My guess is that they’ll start peaking next weekend. Check out these links for info and maybe I’ll see you out there!

You can see more photos of the area in this set on Flickr.

If you do go out there and make some images, please add a comment to this post or drop me an email. I’d love to see how your photos come out.

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

Cocoa and Viera Wetlands – August 4, 2012

August 5, 2012Cocoa, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Viera Wetlandsbirds, Flowers, Ibis, landscape, Moorhen, people, pier, reviews, sunrise, wildlifeEd Rosack

I realized I hadn’t been to Viera Wetlands since last year, so I went over yesterday morning with Kevin K.

We spent a few minutes with The Photographer’s Ephemeris and found a promising sunrise stop along the way. It’s just north of the first bridge into Cocoa on SR 520. If you don’t have a copy of this software, you should get it. It’s available (for free!) for the Mac, PC, and Linux as well as (paid versions) for Android and iOS. The iPad version is especially helpful. If you have a cell phone signal, you can use it wherever you are to visualize the natural lighting. It shows the sun and moon overlaid on a Google Map for the place and time you enter. Highly recommended.

The sunrise was pretty and there was even a nice bird posing at the end of an old dock for us.

Old pier at sunrise: North of the Hubert Humphrey Causeway in Cocoa, Florida.

When we got to Viera Wetlands, there was more going on than I thought there would be. We saw Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, both White and Glossy Ibis, Moorhens, Coots, Limpkins, and Black Bellied Whistling Ducks, among others. There were even some Roseate Spoonbills there – the first time I’ve ever seen them at Viera Wetlands. A few Moorhen chicks, surprised me too – I didn’t realize they hatched this time of year.

Moorhen and chick near Ibis: “Kid – I told you not to hang out with those Ibis birds. They’re nothing but trouble”.

You can click on the images above to get to larger versions on Flickr. You can also see more of my Viera Wetlands photos here on Flickr. For a slightly different perspective, you can also look at Kevin’s photos in his set on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2012, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

"How do you get your sky to look like that?" and "Do we still need HDR?"

July 22, 2012INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando Wetlands, TechniqueFlowers, landscape, sunriseEd Rosack

A couple of people asked me interesting questions recently. I don’t have final answers but I do have opinions. And sometimes opinions are more interesting than answers. Or at least more fun.

1. How do you get your skies to look like that?

Sky, clouds, star, calm, reflections – Orlando Wetlands Park at dawn.

Short answer: “It depends.”

Longer answer: There is no concise response to this. First of all, it depends on the sky. You have to have something to start with. Second it depends on your tastes as an artist.

I own and use a variety of software.

Lightroom 4
Photoshop CS 6 (including merge to HDR)
Nik HDR Efex 2
Nik Color Efex Pro 4
Topaz plug-ins (De-Noise, Adjust, B&W Effects)

What I use depends on the subject, composition and capture technique. Since the sun was in this scene, I captured it as a 7 shot bracket. In Lightroom, I set the camera profile to neutral, color balance to daylight, enabled lens corrections, and copied those settings to all 7 photos. Then I exported to Nik HDR Efex 2, chose a pre-set, and tweaked it to more or less match how I remembered the scene. I brought the result into Photoshop CS6 and used Nik Color Efex Pro 4 to neutralize the whites and add detail, followed by Topaz Star Effects on the sun. I usually apply these in layers or as smart objects in Photoshop so I can vary the transparency and control the strength of each one, or even brush it out on parts of the image. I then finished in Lightroom with some exposure, sharpening, and Hue / Saturation / Luminosity tweaks to get this result.

So basically I try things and adjust to taste. There’s more than one way to do this. That’s part of the fun. You’ll have to build up some experience with the capabilities of each piece of your software so you can adjust to your tastes.

2. With the new capabilities available in cameras and raw conversion software, do we still need to use High Dynamic Range imaging techniques?

Sunrise flowers – Orlando Wetlands Park at dawn.

Short answer: “Not as much.”

Longer answer: Read on.

DxOMark says that the Nikon D800 has a dynamic range of 14.4 Evs. This is under laboratory conditions using their measurement techniques. Can you achieve this in real world? No, but using a camera like this really does give you tremendous dynamic range.

The latest versions of Lightroom 4 and Adobe Camera Raw software provide enormous adjustment ranges for exposure, highlight and shadow recovery, even for older cameras. This improves your ability to get more out of your RAW images. By the way, you might want to re-process some of your favorites to see how much better they can look. You have been capturing in RAW format and saving your originals, haven’t you?

Other techniques such as graduated neutral density filters or fill flash can cut the dynamic range the camera sees – although depending on the scene, their use can be problematic. In this photo the horizon isn’t flat, and I didn’t want to overwhelm the morning light on the flower with flash.

My opinion: In some situations, we don’t need to use HDR anymore. I may have been able to get this output with one exposure, but it’s probably on the edge of what’s possible with just a single image. I chose to shoot a 5 image bracket and I’m glad I did. The bright sky combined with the lighting on the flower (with part in shade) made me very glad I had the bracket. Could I have come close with a single image? Maybe. Was it easier with a 5 shot bracket? Oh yeah.

For now, I’ll continue to bracket when I see a broad dynamic range / high contrast scene. Better safe than sorry. And I’m also going to save my RAW files – who knows what software advances are coming next? Now, where can I get a bigger hard disk?

What do you think? How do you get your sky to look the way it does? Do you shoot HDR?

You can click on the images above to get to larger versions on Flickr. You can also see more of my OWP photos here on Flickr.

Touchscreen Focus Stacking

June 23, 2012INSIDE FLORIDA, Techniquedepth of field, Flowers, focus stacking, Rose, touchscreenEd Rosack

Focus stacking is a computational photography technique where multiple images at different focus distances are combined to increase depth of field. This enables much more of a subject to be in focus than with a single exposure. I’ve written about this before. Please read that article for background on the methods and software used.

Normally you would set things up and carefully vary the focus or the distance to the subject by very small amounts using a focusing rail or else by very carefully changing the manual focus of your lens.

Knockout Rosebud

For this photo, I wanted to try something a little different. I placed the rosebud in front of my tripod mounted camera and used the touch screen to control the focus point and trigger the shutter. I had the self timer on a 2 second delay to prevent any motion due to my touches. It was a simple matter to point at various portions of the flower until there were enough photos for the depth of field I wanted. Then I used the focus stacking ability in Photoshop to blend the images together.

I think that a touchscreen is very useful for this type of photography. What do you think?

Return to Animal Kingdom

May 13, 2012INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, Theme ParksAnimal Kingdom, birds, Crow, Disney, Flowers, Gorilla, Hibiscus, wildlifeEd Rosack

We had family in town last weekend and they invited Lynn and I along on their visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I’ve blogged about this place before (here and here) and this was a chance to return and see if I still liked it as much as last time.

Yes, I did. I can confirm that Animal Kingdom is still the nicest zoo I’ve ever been too. It’s enhanced by the rides and shows, and seeing it with our young nieces and nephew makes it an even more wonderful experience.

Here are a few scenes from the trip. You can see more photos (and larger versions of these) in this set on Flickr.

Male Silverback Gorilla holding grass. In the gorilla enclosure on Pangani Trail at Disney’s Animal Kingdom

An American Crow enjoys a stolen onion ring

Hibiscus

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