Tag Archives: fountain

One Year Later

March 21, 2021INSIDE FLORIDA, Miscellaniousblack and white, creek, Fern, flower, fountain, pool, tree, waterEd Rosack

Last March at the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a post called “In the Neighborhood“. It was just a few photos I made as Lynn and I walked cautiously around near home while we tried to figure out the whole lockdown thing.

I don’t really have any profound thoughts I want to share about what we’ve been through since then. I’ll just say I’m extremely grateful we have smart scientists that created safe and effective vaccines in so short a time, and that they’re becoming available to more of us each day. Things seem to be veering back toward normal now.

Anyway, I thought this week I’d follow up with more neighborhood wandering, and post photos of things I noticed on the way. I’ll try to include tips and hints that you can use in your photograpy. This first image looks like an infrared photo, but it’s not. The bright white leaves are from the low morning sun lighting the tops of the trees.

All to myself

We have several varieties of flowering trees here in Central Florida. They only bloom for a short while in the spring so don’t wait too long if you want to photograph them. These lovely blooms are on what I think are Hong Kong Orchid trees, I find it hard to show the beauty with an image of the whole tree, so I moved in close. I like this frame with a single flower isolated against the sky.

Flower and sky

Slow shutter speeds are commonly used for images of moving water. But forcing your shutter as fast as possible is also worth trying. The details it can reveal make the water look like ice.

Frozen Splash

The early morning sun helps in this photo too. Its warm color on the Spanish Moss is a subtle contrast with the sky.

Branches and moss

Okay, a little fun here. I might have made a few small creative enhancements in Lightroom to bring out the hidden scarecrow face.

Knot a Scarecrow

New growth leaves are sometimes called fiddlehead ferns since they resemble the scroll on a fiddle. They’re hard to spot as you walk by.

Fern

More tiny, close wildflower blooms.

Blossom

The woods are very thick around this pool. It’s only a few feet from the sidewalk and looks like it’s been there for many years. I need to be more observant – I only just noticed it even though I’ve passed by it for years. It’s a three frame vertical stitched panorama.

Forest Pool

I crouched down and used the camera’s tilting LCD to frame these cypress knees against the lake in the background. This is a 7 frame focus stack. If you haven’t tried focus stacking, a web search will return lots of info.

Cypress Knees

This last one is also a focus stacked image of some blooms along a trail in Central Winds Park. (Edit: They’re Carolina Yellow-eyed Grass – thanks Dorothy C.)

Wildflowers.

So that’s some of what I saw on photo walks over the last week or so. I hope you enjoyed looking at them and I hope they give you some ideas to try. Thanks again for coming back and and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And when you can – make some photos around your neighborhood!

Header image: Down low and close to Howell Creek in Winter Springs.

Winter Park at Night

October 3, 2015INSIDE FLORIDA, Winter Parkblack and white, buildings, fountain, night, trainEd Rosack

Greetings, wonderful readers! Things are a bit busy here at the Central Florida Photo Ops HQ this weekend, so I’ll leave you with a quick post and some photos from a stroll down Park Avenue through Winter Park last Wednesday evening.

A quiet night “on the avenue”

A path into darkness

Blue Hour Motion – A train passing behind one of the fountains in Winter Park, Florida

I made these a little after sunset during “blue hour” – I like the look of the light. You can see a few other photos I’ve made in Winter Park in this album on Flickr.

Sunflower update: The flowers are in bloom and are peaking. If you want to see them this year, you should probably do so in the next week. Here’s a report from Jeff Stamer’s blog on his trip out there last week.

I haven’t made it yet this year, but plan to do so next week.

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

Oviedo and Port Orange Camera Clubs

October 26, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, VARIOUS, Winter ParkCamera Club, fountainEd Rosack

Just a quick post this week (a schedule update and one recent photo).

I’ve been invited to speak at both the Oviedo and Port Orange Camera Clubs next month. I’ll talk about “Winter Photo Ops in Central Florida” and recommend things / places to photograph in our area this winter along with sample images. Depending on interest and time, we may go a bit further and talk about other times of year too, or we may also discuss tools and techniques for any of the photos I show. Questions on anything else presented are also welcome.

The Oviedo Photo Club meeting is on November 4th at 7PM in the Memorial Building in Oviedo (38 South Central Avenue, Oviedo FL 32765).

The Port Orange Camera Club meeting is on November 13th at 7PM in the Port Orange Adult Center (4790 South Ridgewood Ave. Port Orange FL 32127)

If any of you are at one of these meetings, please say hello – I love to meet readers!

And since we can’t have a blog post without a photo, here’s one I made at the beginning of October in Winter Park, Florida.

Stationary water

I liked this fountain, but wanted to make the photo look a bit different. My normal approach might have been to use a very slow shutter speed to make the water silky smooth. This time, I decided to use as fast a shutter speed as possible to “freeze” the water. So I opened my aperture and ended up with a 1/8000 sec shutter speed. The wide aperture also helped to blur the background and isolate the subject. I don’t think you can make a photo like this with your cell phone!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos – and go to a camera club meeting!

A few photos from St. Augustine

March 2, 2013INSIDE FLORIDA, St. Augustineblack and white, church, fisheye, fountain, infrared, landscape, lighthouse, stair, treeEd Rosack

I visited St. Augustine, Florida last week with fellow Photography Interest Group member Tom M. It’s a high density photo-op environment and if you haven’t ever been there you really should go. We only spent a few hours, but we saw interesting things to photograph almost everywhere we looked. Here are a few examples:

Three trees, their shadows, and the Castillo de San Marcos

Bottoms up – The St. Augustine Lighthouse staircase

Alcove in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine

Whistling waters

I’ve written about this town several times before. You can browse through those posts by selecting the category from the pull down on the right (or click this link). And you can visit this set on Flickr to see other images from St. Augustine.