Tag Archives: reviews

Have you ever taken your camera to a flower show?

INSIDE FLORIDA, , , , ,

Description

If not, why not?  Flower shows can be a great place for photography.  They have plants in the prime of bloom and are often set in very scenic locations.  Lynn and I have been to a couple of Orchid shows and a Rose show here in Orlando and enjoyed each of them.  The most recent was last weekend’s Greater Orlando Orchid Show and Sale held at the Albin Polasek museum in Winter Park.  The museum is an interesting place to visit on its own, and is set in a beautiful lot close to Rollins college. This photo is of Polasek’s bronze sculpture of Svantovit , located in the back garden behind the museum where the orchid show was being held.

Svantovit

Photo hints

The one problem with this type of photo op is that you have to be pro-active and search it out.  Lynn noticed an announcement for this show in our local paper.  The table in the Summary section below has a link for a Google search that may help you locate upcoming flower shows in Central Florida.
orchid

Etiquette:  The purpose of these shows is to sell flowers, not to be your personal photo studio.  I think it would be rude to drag your tripod, lighting gear, reflectors, etc. in to one of the booths selling orchids and set up a shot and interfere with the vendor’s business.  So be polite – and buy an orchid.  You’ll enjoy it and you can make many photos of it in your home studio!

orchid

Lenses:  Macro recommended.  If you don’t have one, bring whatever you do have that will focus as closely as possible.  A mid range zoom lens might also be good to bring for the other things that are around the venue where the show is taking place.
orchid

Tripod:  Not recommended – see above.  There can be a lot of people at these shows.  Most of them are there to look at and buy flowers, not photograph them or wait until you get out of the way.

Flash:  Might be very handy to fill in shadows, especially in the shade or under canopies.  You might even want to get fancy and try using an off camera flash triggered with your on camera pop up flash.

For people new to flower photography, there’s quite a lot of how-to information on the web. For more information, you might try browsing through the results from this Google blog search for “flower photography how to”.

Summary

My Gallery (27 total photos): https://edrosack.com/090530_Orchids/
Website: search google for Central Florida flower shows
Location: 633 Osceola Avenue, Winter Park, Florida 32789
Central Florida Photo Op Rating: Great intermittent potential

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Disney's Animal Kingdom

INSIDE FLORIDA, Must do list, Orlando, Theme Parks, , , , , , , , ,

Disney has a “get in free on your birthday” promotion and Lynn and I used it when we went to Animal Kingdom theme park for my birthday earlier this month. When we checked in, Lynn made me wear the “Happy Birthday, Edward” button they gave me.  Then, everywhere we went – all the Disney employees and characters were telling me happy birthday all day long.  That’s probably more “happy birthdays” in one day than I’ve gotten in my whole life!

Animal Kingdom combines a “zoo without bars” with theme park rides and this results in a very well done attraction that has something to offer everyone.  Lynn and I really enjoyed it and for me it definitely makes the Central Florida Photos must do list .

Animal Kingdom is located west of Orlando off of I-4.  For more information, Wikipedia has a large entry, with articles on the various areas in the park and the animals you can see as well as the rides.

You might want to bring a variety of photo equipment.  My 70-300VR zoom lens on a Nikon D90 crop sensor body (1.5 crop factor) was about right for the long shots of wildlife (but we never have enough glass, do we?).  I also had my 16-85 zoom for scenic shots, and there are a lot of scenic shots.  I saw one or two people with tripods, but I didn’t bring mine in to the park.  I couldn’t have used it on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride, and it would have been in the way in many of the other places in the park.  One other thing, even in early May, Orlando is already very hot and humid.  Check the weather forecast and dress appropriately.  Cool clothing and sun block are a must.

This close-up photo of a giraffe was taken from the Kilimanjaro Safari vehicle.  Lynn and I went straight here when we got to the park, since it was at the top of our priority list and we didn’t want to wait in a long line.  Even so, it took about 20 minutes before we could board.  It’s a very nice experience, but  photographically challenging.  The vehicle almost never stops and the ride is designed to be bumpy and fun for younger folks, so you’ll have to make sure your shutter speed is high enough to freeze the vehicle’s motion.  This giraffe crossed the road in front of us and they do have the right of way, so I made a nice calm portrait of it while the vehicle paused to let it pass.  You’ll want to try to avoid the middle seats.  I sat on the far left, but I think both sides probably have as good a view at different times.

Giraffe

This next photo is of a mother and juvenile elephant coming toward us along the elephant trail, also on the safari ride.  I like the way the young one is kicking up dust out in front of Mom.
Elephants - dusty steps

The next area we visited was the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, where there are gorillas, meerkats, and a number of other animals.  There’s a photo of one of the gorillas in an earlier post .  Here’s a meerkat.

Meerkat

Another thing I liked about this park is the displays that are set up throughout the areas to give them some  cultural ambiance.  Here are two photos from the Maharajah Jungle Trek that I especially liked. This first one is a “water station.

Here is located safe water for Travellers. Please know it is unwise to drink local water, standing water, water from unidentified sources.

This one is of a cart in the village area.

Cart

Finally, here is a photo of the center piece of the park, the Tree of Life.

Tree of Life

I’ve posted a gallery of my Animal Kingdom photos at this location .  Please visit and browse to get an idea of some of the animals and things you can expect to see.  I haven’t been to Africa or India, but it seems like Disney has done a credible job re-creating pieces of those far away places here in Central Florida for us to visit and dream about.

2/9/2010 Update:  I have some additional photos posted in this set on Flickr .

©2009 and 2010, Ed Rosack.  All rights reserved.

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.

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.