Tag Archives: tree

Driving home from the Leo Kottke show

INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, , , ,

We had tickets to see Leo Kottke at the Lyric Theatre in Stuart Florida on Friday night. It was a wonderful show – the first time I’ve ever seen him live, although I’m long time fan. In addition to some great guitar music, he told a few very funny stories and we were both sorry to see the evening end.

On Saturday morning we took our time coming back and drove the first part home on A1A up the Atlantic coast, stopping at a few places to look for pictures. I had my photo backpack and tripod with me, and Lynn was a very good sport and even carried tripods and lens hoods for me and helped me scout for photos. She noticed this interesting tree (I think it was a seagrape ) along the beach at one place we stopped at.  The early morning sun shining through the combination of new and old leaves and branches on this seagrape tree against the bright blue sky was very colorful. (You can go to my gallery to see a larger version of the photos in this post.)

Colorful Seagrape Leaves

On the other side of these trees was a little play ground with what I think were some Parrot Fish toys to play on. They were also very colorful in the early light.

Colorful Playground

Further on up the road, nearer to Port Saint Lucie we stopped at another little park called “Bear Point Sanctuary ” and walked out a dirt road along a canal. This little park is along the Indian River lagoon, and I didn’t realize it stretched this far down the coast. We saw several birds – even though it was almost lunchtime, some calm, scenic water, and some pretty mangroves:

Canal, mangroves, sky (with polarizing filter)

There are a lot of little parks like this in Florida, and if you have time when you’re driving around, it’s worth stopping and wandering around with your camera. You can almost always find a photo or two hidden away.

I used my polarizer filter to make the photo above. One of my friends asked me why they should get one and I wanted to show the effect, so I made a second version with the polarizer rotated 90 degrees. That’s my shadow at the corner of the dock. You can see a pretty dramatic difference between the two versions. Carry a polarizing filter. It’s one filter effect that is very hard to duplicate in post processing on the computer.

Canal, mangroves, sky (without polarizing filter)

The birds were pretty shy and flew off whenever we tried to get close enough for a good picture. (I just had my 16 – 85mm with me).

Shy bird

All in all, a pretty nice photo excursion, and an unexpected bonus well worth the little time we invested.

I posted these photos and a few more on my website here .

©2009, Ed Rosack.  All rights reserved.

Black Point Wildlife Drive – Friday, January 2, 2009

INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, , , ,

Ansel Adams said: “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter. ”

Birds at sunrise

For me, last Friday was one of those times. When I find myself in in a situation like this I have to be careful not to be overwhelmed. It’s too easy to start clicking the shutter and forget many things I’ve learned about photography. I have to slow down, concentrate on the basics, make the best images I’m capable of, and capture at least a little bit of what it was like to be there. Of course, we all know that Ansel Adams would have made better photographs than I did. But I was the one there with my camera and so maybe you can look at the images I made and get some idea of how beautiful this place is, how nice that sunrise was, and something of how it feels to experience mornings like this. Black Point Wildlife Drive (http://www.nbbd. com/godo/ minwr/BlackPoint /index.html ) is only about an hour away from my house. I haven’t ever been there in January, and I was curious about how active it would be in winter. I had Friday off, so I left at o-dark-thirty to get there before dawn. It wasn’t as active as it is in spring time – there were only about 5 other photographers there. In the spring the photo flock can number more than 30 and it can actually be hard to find a spot to put your tripod up. On Friday there were many birds around (egrets, herons, ibis, ducks) and although I usually see spoonbills I didn’t find any this time. I also saw a gator or two, a wild pig, and some kind of feline (a bobcat?).

And I was treated to a wonderful sunrise. All in all, well worth the drive.

If you’re from this part of Florida and you haven’t been to this place, you’re really missing out. Plan on being there for dawn. In addition to a chance for a good sunrise, the wildlife is more active and the winds are calm, which will give you some good reflections in all the water.

Mangroves in calm water

If you’re from out of state and in Orlando with your family, you should think about a visit too. You could make a pilgrimage at dawn and be back before ~10am. They might not even miss you.

I posted some additional photos from this trip here.

©2009, Ed Rosack.  All rights reserved.

Photography around breakfast time

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, ,

We were up early last Saturday, and on the way out to breakfast, I happened to glance up and saw the sun lighting up the pine tree in our front yard. The pine needles in the top of the tree were a glowing golden color, while the lower ones still in shadow were dark green. The contrast against the blue sky was very pretty. I went back in to grab my D80 and see if I could capture what I was saw. Here’s the result (click to see a larger version):

Pine tree intercepts the rising sun

And here’s a different perspective:

Pine tree intercepts the rising sun (2)

After breakfast, we stopped at a little park in our neighborhood called the Bear Creek Nature Trail, and I took a few more pictures. They’re posted here. It sure felt good to make some photos. It’s been too long.

Now I need to figure out when to re-make this photo with the moon in the frame.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Before and After

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Ocala, Technique, ,

I listen to the Digital Story podcast . The June 2007 photo assignment is “Before and After”. The idea is to submit two images showing how you “developed” the final photo.

I also just bought the book Examples, The Making of 40 Photographs , by Ansel Adams. He writes about how he re-visited his negatives over the years and was able to make better prints with additional effort / technique.

So these two things inspired me to go back to a photo I took in March, reprocess it and submit it to the Digital Story. Here are the steps I went through:

This view looked interesting from the road, and I talked Lynn into stopping (_DSC1423: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

The first photo is the scene as I saw it from the road. Lynn and I were driving to an auction up in Ocala Florida and this looked like it could make a good image. It was a bit cluttered, and the composition wasn’t good, so …

I took this shot after stepping inside the gate. A little under exposed, no detail in the clouds and the road into the trees goes dark. (_DSC1425: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

The second photo was taken after I stepped inside the gate. Better composition, I think. This is how it appears with no adjustments after importing it into Lightroom . I had underexposed it a bit so that the clouds would show up well. As a result, the road into the trees was pretty dark (and there still wasn’t enough detail in the clouds). I played around with it in the Develop module, but still couldn’t get the exposure quite right. So …

I exported two images from Lightroom. One at +2 exposure and the other at 0. This is the result after processing in Photmatix. (_DSC1425d-_+: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

Photo 3 shows the result after I exported two 16 bit TIFF versions of the image from Lightroom and combined them. One with an exposure bias of +2 and a second with it set at 0. Then I used Photomatix to create a High Dynamic Range / tone mapped version. Much better exposure and detail both in the clouds and trees. This was pretty good, but I still wasn’t happy …

I loaded #3 into Photoshop Elements, cloned out the distractions (lights, signs, houses, rags, fire hydrant, wires) and then re-imported it into Lightroom …

I loaded the previous image into Photoshop and cloned out distracting features (powerlines, etc) then imported the result back into Lightroom. This is the final version after converting to B&W. (_DSC1425-_+cloned8bit: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

Photo 4 shows the final result after using Lightroom’s wonderful B&W conversion tool. You can play around with different color channels to emphasize different things in the picture. It’s like being able to use color filters over your lens after you’ve taken the picture! I think the final result is much better than the original.

Here’s a link to my gallery with all of the images in sequence.

You can see all of the entries in the Digital Story June photo assignment here .

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Way too short a visit: Yosemite National Park

California, Cameras and Photography, Must do list, , , , ,

On May 5th, I was able to go to Yosemite for a day during my visit to San Francisco. The drive from where we were in Dublin, California (east of San Francisco) is about 120 miles. We were on the road at 6 am, and it took us about 3 hours to get to the park.

Two waterfalls: El Capitan, Cathedral Rocks and Merced River

May is a good time to go – The snow is melting and the waterfalls are in full force. There are some wild flowers blooming, but not as many as later in the year. We did see some nice Pacific Dogwoods in bloom. In early May, school’s not yet out, so the traffic is not as bad as it gets in the summer. We were there on a Saturday and I was very surprised by how little traffic there was.

Bridalveil Falls through dogwood tree

Recommended reading – I bought a book on the way into the park called The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, by Michael Frye . I highly recommend it, and I wish I’d had time to read it before I got there.

They’re hiring at the park! While we were checking out in the gift shop, I talked to the sales clerk. He lives in the park and explores every chance he gets. He told me they need 200 people. They pay minimum wage, but room and board is incredibly inexpensive (~$70 / week!). It was very tempting, but Lynn would’ve probably been upset with me if I didn’t come home all summer.

I wish we could have spent more time in the park. We were only there for a few hours before we had to head back. There’s so much more to see.

The National Park Service website for Yosemite is here .

Please take a look at the rest of my Yosemite photographs, posted here.

Mary also took some very good photographs of Yosemite and Muir Woods which are posted here. (no longer on-line as of 2019).

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.