Tag Archives: Whistling Duck

Viera Wetlands on 7-19-2014

July 25, 2014Cocoa, INSIDE FLORIDA, St. Johns River, Viera Wetlandspanorama, sunrise, Whistling Duck, woodpeckerEd Rosack

I went over to Viera Wetlands last Saturday. It’s best not to expect too much in the middle of summer in Florida, so my expectations were a little low.

First on the agenda was a stop where SR 520 crosses the St. Johns River, near Cocoa, Florida. There’s a park on the north side of the road with a busy boat ramp and a boardwalk reaching a short distance out into the river. The sunrise was pretty – here’s one of the images I made:

Ultra-wide daybreak – Five frame panorama – The resulting horizontal field of view is about 130 degrees.

After sunrise I went on to Viera Wetlands to meet up with several Photography Interest Group members. Kevin M. organized it and we had one of the largest turnouts in a long time. Frank B., Kevin K. and his son Evan, and Tom M all showed up too.

With the heavy rains we’ve had lately they closed the berms to cars, so we took off on a stroll around the cells closest to the entrance. There were more birds out and about than anticipated.

A very colorful Red bellied Woodpecker

In addition to woodpeckers, we saw and heard a lot of whistling ducks.

Perched Black Bellied Whistling Duck

We also saw many of the regular Florida avians (Tri-colored Herons, Great Blue Herons, Snowy Egrets, Ibis, Anhingas, Moorhens, Coots, Black Vultures, etc.). Dragonflies and Alligators were also abundant.

I started with low photographic expectations and ended up coming home with several images I really like. I also got to spend a little time with friends. Once again I was pleasantly surprised by another wonderful Central Florida Photo Op!

You can see more of the photos from trip by clicking the links I included above to each person’s photo stream. You can also click here to view the Photography Interest Group photo pool. My Viera Wetlands album on Flickr is at this link, My St. Johns River album is at this link, and my Cocoa album is at this link.

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

My favorite photos of 2009

December 31, 2009VARIOUSAnimal Kingdom, birds, boat, BPWD, Cypress, fishing, Glacier Bay, Gorilla, Great Blue Heron, Humpback, Lake Lily, landscape, panorama, sunrise, tree, Whale, Whistling Duck, wildlifeEd Rosack

First, I want to wish all readers of this humble photo blog a very

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Second, this year your devoted author has decided to join the growing tradition where photo blogs post a collection of their favorite photos from the year.

To accomplish this, I’ve gone through the photos I made in 2009 and used Lightroom to rate them from 0 through 5 stars. The rating system I’ve adopted is as follows:

1 star – The photo is interesting
2 stars – The photo is worth showing to others
3 stars – The photo is the best of (or one of the best of ) a given shoot
4 stars – My favorite photo of a year
5 stars – My favorite photo (ever)

Photos without stars are seconds or not so good versions of other photos. I’ll keep them, but they probably won’t get any more attention. Since adopting this rating system, I’ve tried to use it consistently. Before this I would rate images, but the meaning of the ratings would vary. As far as what they mean now, it’s all subjective and my opinion only. Feel free to disagree, but I hope you’ll enjoy looking at the ones I’ve chosen.

I was really blessed in 2009 with a huge number of photo opportunities. On my hard drive in my 2009 folder, I have about 16,000 images, taking up 164GB of space (I shoot mostly in RAW). Of these:

3804 of the images have been cataloged in Lightroom. Many of the remainder are source images for multi-shot panoramas or HDRs, or high rate bursts that I selected from.
1084 are rated 1 star or higher
692 are 2 star or higher
75 are 3 star or higher
1 is 4 star, and
None are 5 star (I’m not done taking photos yet!)

Of the 692 that are 2 star or higher, I’ve selected 44 (mostly 3 star) images to include in a gallery of my favorite 2009 photos. You’ve seen many of these photos in this blog, already. But where it made sense, I re-processed them to try and improve them. Here are the top ten. You can click on each of these to go to Flickr, where you can see a larger version.

My #10 favorite photo is: Great Blue Heron in flight. This heron didn’t like me aiming my camera at it. It’s making a lot of noise as it leaves the area. I was able to pan with its motion to get a sharp shot.

My #9 favorite photo is: Ketchikan harbor. The trawler Isis, a house in the background, and the parked float plane are very representative of Alaska.

My #8 favorite photo is: Black Point Sunrise. This reminds me of a boundary of a set of points in a complex plane (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set)

My #7 favorite photo is: Glacier Bay Sunrise, A dawn panorama heading in to Glacier Bay National Park.

My #6 favorite photo is: Black-bellied Whistling-Duck in flight. We saw this unusual and photogenic duck at Orlando Wetlands Park.

My #5 favorite photo is: Lake Lily Park tree and bird at dawn. Sometimes you go out specifically to photograph. Other times you go out just carrying your camera. It’s exciting to me when I find a photo like this one while I’m just out carrying my camera. The light on this Cyprus tree caught my eye as we walked around the Lily Lake one Saturday morning looking at their flea market. The bird in the middle distance was a bonus.

My #4 favorite photo is: Black Point Wildlife Drive: Wide angle, winter dawn. On this particular morning, it was hard coming up with any good photo inspiration for the sunrise. There were no clouds, not much color in the sky, not a lot of interesting landscape detail, no cooperating wildlife, the wind was blowing pretty hard, etc. This palm tree had an interesting vine growing in it that was pointing back toward the road, so I made it the subject of the picture and violated all the composition rules by putting it way off too one side. To me, the road leading past the tree could represent the last part of the long journey of exploration and learning that led to being able to make this photo in this place at this time. The road is empty because each person’s journey is unique. Oh, and BPWD just happens to be a one way road – toward the photographer. The somewhat surreal colors come from a program called “Photomatix” that will “tone map” multiple, bracketed exposures. Anyway, I liked it too.

My #3 favorite photo is: Gorilla watching people, Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, Disney’s Wild Kingdom.

My #2 favorite photo is: Breaching humpback, off shore from Juneau, Alaska. In the full res version, the two white dots in tree to the upper left behind the whale are bald eagles.

And … my #1 favorite photo of the year is: Ship, water, glacier, rock. A multiple shot panorama showing Johns Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park from the cruise ship MS Westerdam. The full res version of this photo is 7747 x 4716 pixels = 36.5 megapixels.

I’ve posted a gallery of all 44 images on my website at www.edrosack.com/BO09. I’ve also uploaded them to this Flickr set, and you can click this link to watch a slide show at Flickr. When you watch the show, you might want to click the “show info” link.

Thanks for looking.

Black-Bellied Whistling-Ducks at Orlando Wetlands Park

July 4, 2009INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando WetlandsAlligator, birds, Flowers, Spider, Whistling Duck, wildlifeEd Rosack

Happy Independence Day !

I was at Orlando Wetlands Park again this morning with a few friends and saw a bird that I hadn’t seen before, there or anywhere else that I remember. Here’s a photograph:

Black-Bellied Whistling-Duck in flight

These birds were different from other ducks I’ve seen in that when we first saw them they were perched in trees. Fortunately, I have a copy of iBird Plus loaded on my iPhone. iBird is an interactive field guide to the birds of North America. It has a search function and by entering the location (Florida), the shape (Duck-like) and the Color Primary (Brown) iBird presented me with a list of 16 possible birds out of the 914 birds in its North American Database that match these criteria.

Scrolling through the list, I read descriptions, and looked at drawings and three photos of the Black-Bellied Whistling-Duck that pretty much clinched the ID for me. There’s also other info like range, similar birds, and links to Birdpedia. If you are interested in birds or bird photography, you should take a look at this app. I enjoy using it.

Here’s a few more photos from this morning. First we had the bird, now here’s the bee:

Bee on flower

A spiderweb:

Spiderweb

And of course, what would Orlando Wetlands Park be without a gator photo:

Calm water gator

Central Florida Photo Ops

What and where they are and how to photograph them.