Posts in Category: Florida
2/13/2012: American Bittern Revisited
While still in Florida, I posted a series of images from my first encounter with this Bittern. Or at least I assume it is the same Bittern. I found it a second time several hundred yards down the same ditch, same time of day, and in the area where it was consistently reported during the week of the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival. If it is the same bird, and I suspect it is, there are now almost certainly more images of this American Bittern in existence than of any other of its species, anywhere, ever :). It had the habit all that week of working along the water channel that parallels Black Point Wildlife Drive…the most heavily traveled and birded stretch of road at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge…most of the time in easy view of the road. And hundreds of photographers took thousands of photos of this bird during the week, with everything from the 3x zoom on their Point and Shoot, to 600mm Canon Image Stabilized lenses with 2x extenders, to, as in my case, a Point and Shoot behind the eyepiece of a spotting scope.
On this outing I had the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on my DiaScope, and with this combination and my Canon SD100HS’s native 3.8x zoom, in good air and good light, I can reach ridiculous equivalent focal lengths, for amazing close ups. The top image is at something like 3500mm equivalent, and the next one is at about 5700mm! For comparison, here is the bird at 840mm equivalent taken with the Canon SX40HS from the same spot.
And I can’t resist posting one more in this series (all taken before the bird began to move down the channel). This one is at something like 2200mm equivalent. I think he saw me.
Camera as above. The long shots are at 1/80th @ ISO 100 and 1/100th @ ISO 250. The SX40HS shot is at f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. The intermediate shot is at 1/200th @ ISO 100. All in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed, and cropped where cropped, in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Color balanced by eye to match the series.
2/12/2012: Pelicans and Terns against Sunset Clouds: Happy Sunday!
This is another shot from the same Sunday evening, a few weeks ago, that was featured in last Sunday’s Pic 4 Today. Last Sunday it was the Skimmers crossing below the setting sun. This one was taken facing exactly the opposite way, away from the sunset, with the birds (White Pelicans and Terns) framed against the few clouds over the Indian River and Merritt Island which caught and reflected the reddening light. Perhaps because I know it was one of the last images taken that day, it has a going home…going to rest…feeling about it: but perhaps the feeling is actually part of the image, for anyone who knows the rhythms of the natural world.
Canon SX40HS at about 335mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/125th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom to bring up the color, and for intensity, vibrancy, and sharpness. Cropped from the top for composition.
And for the Sunday thought: Going home. Going to rest. Part of the natural rhythm of the world. I had a little heart attack scare this week…an unplanned trip to the ER in an ambulance, oxygen, ekgs, x-rays…the whole thing. Turns out it was a strange combination of symptoms caused by indigestion and incipient bronchitis…with maybe a touch of pneumonia. Better safe than sorry.
And I find that I am not really troubled by the event. A thing like that might well bring thoughts and fears centered on mortality, but I am pretty much okay with it. Better safe than sorry. I am safe.
Of course I have no idea how I would have responded if the results of the test had gone the other way. I would like to think that, like the birds against the sunset, I would have seen it as all part of the natural rhythm of life. The birds are going to their night home…to their night roost…and they have no doubt in their minds that dawn will follow the darkness, and they will wake refreshed for another day.
Of course, as far as we know, they have no hope either. Hope is a human…thought? emotion? feeling? concept?…I am not sure there is a word in English to describe what hope is in the human mind and heart. But I do know that hope is a decision…it is a verb…it is something we decide to do, based on all the evidence available to us. We go home, we go to our rest, with (or without) hope in our hearts. It is up to us.
I chose hope. My faith demands it…my faith authorizes it…and, I believe, my faith justifies it. Come night, come dawn, I will wake refreshed for another day. All part of the rhythm. All part of the life of faith.
As true when lying on a gurney in ER sucking down oxygen, as it is on a beach in Florida watching the Pelicans and Terns head for roost against clouds reflecting the setting sun.
2/11/2012: The Pond in HDR, Merritt Island NWR Visitor Center
Taking a Saturday break from birds, birds, birds. This is the pond behind the Visitor Center at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. In HDR. It is, maybe, a bit painterly. It is also a single jpeg tone-mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR for maximum drama…well…actually I took it into Lightroom after DPHDR and toned the drama down a bit. Still.
The pure Lightroom version on the left looks a little flat by comparison…but without the comparison it is still an interesting photo.
I always have mixed feelings about HDR. I certainly has immediate impact, but, honestly, the world is just not like that…or not often at least. I heard an interview with Trey Ratcliff, currently one of the super-star proponents of HDR and high drama photography (over 1 million followers on Google+), in which he said, in effect: more and more this becomes the world we see. Interesting. And, I suppose, true. I know that when I used to do a lot of HDR, I did consciously imagine every scene as it would look after treatment as an HDR.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f6.3 ! 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Metered off the clouds. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed as above in Dynamic Photo HDR and Lightroom.
2/10/2012: Intimate Great Blue Heron, Merritt Island NWR
Intimate portraits of Great Blue Herons are not difficult at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in January. Great Blues are abundant along Black Point Wildlife Drive, and they are used to people stopping to photograph them. They simply go on about their business (which sometimes seems to be exclusively posing for photographers) and ignore the audience. This bird was perched in the top of a mangrove, perhaps 40 feet from shore, ideally placed against a semi-distant back ground for good bokeh in close-ups.
I have, honestly, a LOT of images of Great Blue Herons already, but who could resist this poser?
All three shots are with the Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) 2565mm equivalent field of view, 1/200th @ ISO 100. f6.9 effective. 2) 855mm equivalent, 1/640th @ ISO 100. f2.8 effective. 3) 1900mm equivalent, 1/500th @ ISO 160. f5 effective. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
This is actually a very good demonstration of range of a good Point and Shoot behind the eyepiece of a scope. I had to crop out the dark corners (vignetting) on the 855mm equivalent shot, but that I could get that low an equivalent from a 30x eyepiece is pretty good okay any day. And then the other two framings are from the same spot, just by twiddling the zoom on the camera. Not bad!
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped as needed for composition.
2/9/2012: One Snowy Egret: Merritt Island NWR
I took a lot of shots of Snowy Egrets at Viera Wetlands and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge while in Florida on this last trip. Who could resist? I like this shot, not in spite of the encroaching reeds and grass, but because the encroaching reeds and grass give the bird an interesting context. That, combined with the effective bokeh of the water provides a setting for the bird, and emphasizes its elegant lines and delicate plumes.
Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope for something in the range of a 1600mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100. f4.3 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. My digisocping camera was just off center for this shot, giving an uneven exposure across the field. I used a Graduated Filter effect from the left to more or less balance it.
2/8/2112: Tale of a Snail and a Limpkin, Viera Wetlands FL
Limpkins are highly adapted feeders. They live almost exclusively on Apple Snails, which they find in muddy bottoms by feel of beak or feet, then carry to shallow water or the shore to eat. Adult Limpkins use the specially adapted scissor or tweezer-like end of the beak to cut the Apple Snail out of it shell, often in several bits, picking the inside of the shell clean. You find the clean, empty shells on shore wherever Limpkins have been feeding. They also eat a few other kinds of less abundant snails, some seeds, and the occasional small frog…but Apple Snails are what they are made to eat.
This Limpkin, at Viera Wetlans in Melbourne FL, was totally oblivious to me, standing maybe 15 feet up on the dyke, as it dispatched the Apple Snail…not a big Apple Snail by Florida standards. It took it about 5 minutes to get the snail out of its shell, and then it was gone in one glup (see the snippet of video). And then the Limpkin headed back toward deeper water and more snails.
All shots with the Canon SX40HS at 650mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Video processed in Sony Vegas.
2/7/2012: Roseate Spoonbills Feeding, Merritt Island NWR
This is another feeding action shot using the Canon SX40HS and its built in digital tel-extender for 1000mm equivalent hand held. Roseate Spoonbills at Merritt Island in January are not quite in breeding plumage, but they coming in, and they are always highly colored due to the abundant shrimp diet. The warm afternoon winter sun of Florida helps too. This gentleman was making the most of the shrimp, as you can see from the fountaining water. Can you see the out of focus reed that extends from the lower left corner up across the bird?
The second shot shows just how rapidly they move while feeding. Note the bow wave.
And finally a shot just for fun, taken from further away, on another day, in another pond, with the Canon SD100HS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope spotting scope, for something like 2200mm equivalent.
Cameras as above. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. 2) f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. 3) 1/500th @ ISO 200. f5.9 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. 2) cropped for composition.
2/6/2012: White Ibis Feeding, Merritt Island NWR, FL
Looking through my images from the Space Coast Birding Festival, I don’t have many shots of White Ibis. In fact, in retrospect, I didn’t see a lot of White Ibis: maybe a half a dozen birds total, scattered widely in the ponds at Black Point Drive. Other years they have been more abundant…but they are never present in the numbers of say, the Great and Snowy Egrets.
This mostly backlit shot is a good example of how implicitly I have come to rely on the exposure systems and dynamic range (enhanced as it often is, an is here, by special in-camera processing) in today’s digital cameras…cuppled, of course, with the post processing available in programs like PhotoShop and Lightroom. Not so long ago, and certainly back in the days of slide film, this would have been a very tricky exposure, especially with the birds in constant motion. Today I just frame and shoot. To me that is the essence of the Point and Shoot method. Let the camera do what it is good at…exposure…focus…white-balance…and stay concentrated on the behavior of the subject, or the changing light on the landscape, and make full use of the zoom framing tools today’s cameras provide.
The other thing that pops out here it the forgiving depth of field of today’s superzoom cameras. We have here the framing of a 1240mm lens on a full frame DSLR (840mm optical zoom, plus the Canon’s unique 1.5x digital tel-extender), yet the depth of field of 150mm lens. The extended depth of field of a superzoom can be a problem with macro and close up shots…but at the telephoto end it is a real blessing. To achieve this effect with a conventional DSLR and a long lens, you would probably need focus stacking…multiple images taken with different focus points and digitally combined for greater depth of field…which of course would be pretty difficulty with subjects moving rapidly across the field, like the Ibi.
Canon SX40HS as above. f5.8 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast (for the dynamic range enhancement I was talking about) and –1/3EV exposure compensation (my standard setting for this camera).
Processed for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, with some fill light to further open shadows, in Lightroom.
2/5/2012: Sunset Skimmers, Merritt Island FL, Happy Sunday!
Last Sunday, after tearing down and packing up the ZEISS booth at Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival, I drove out to Merritt Island for one last turn around Black Point Wildlife Drive in the light of the low afternoon sun. You might say it was my church for the day, or at least my act of worship. I got back to the bridge to the mainland, and the fishing area there on the Indian River, just as the sun was actually setting, pulled in quickly, and took a series of shots of birds in flight in the fading light and against the sunset…as well as of the sunset itself.
These are Black Skimmers. They rose up over the highway and then swooped down sharply to skim the water at the shore. I tried several times, with different flocks, to catch them against the sunset, shooting off a burst beginning before they crossed the shoreline and continuing to follow them out over the river. This is the best of the lot.
Canon SX40HS at 212mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 400. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I also used dueling Graduated Filter effects, darkening from the top, and lightening from the bottom, to balance the exposure to approximate what I saw.
And for the Sunday thought: “act of worship”? Yes, but…
I certainly do not worship nature, or photography, for that matter. But as I have said before, photographing the natural world, which I take to be the world created by a God who loves, is, for me, an act of worship…as natural as singing songs of praise…and, in fact, very similar to singing. Instead of attempting to surrender my voice to the congregation’s praise, to the beauty and awe of addressing the creator, I attempt to surrender my vision (and whatever skills I have with the camera) to the sense of beauty and awe I find in the experiencing the creation. Unlike corporate praise, the actual act of photography is a solitary endeavor, but then there comes the sharing. No image is really taken or created until it is shared…for it is in the sharing, is it not, that the image takes on life and, shall we say, sings it song. It is my hope always, that the images I share here will at least strike a note of beauty or awe in those who see them.
So, yes, my last loop around Black Point Drive, on a Sunday afternoon, just at sunset, was, and is, an act of worship. Happy Sunday.
2/4/2012: Big Red (Reddish Egret, Merritt Island NWR)
One of the advantages of my Point and Shoot for Wildlife method, which involves two digital point and shoots and a spotting scope, is that almost any bird is fair game. This Reddish Egret at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge started out far enough out so that I was using my digiscoping rig…the Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece of my ZEISS DiaScope spotting scope…but in the course of its hectic feeding, it worked its way in close enough so that I switched to the long (840mm equivalent) end of the zoom on my Canon SX40HS, which is always hanging over my shoulder when I am digiscoping. While I might have gotten this shot with the digiscoping rig at the lowest zoom setting on the camera, with hyperactive birds like feeding Reddish Egrets, it is much easier to follow the action with a hand-held camera.
The second shot, on the other hand is definitely digiscoping territory. Unless working from a blind, this kind of intimate close up of wild birds is very difficult to achieve with conventional equipment.
Not that it is easy with a camera behind the eyepiece of a scope. I took a lot of shots at longer equivalent focal lengths (2900mm) to get this one, and even here there is just a bit of motion blur.
Finally we have a matched pair…the one on the left, or first one, is digiscoped at about 1200mm equivalent field of view, and the one right, or second one, is taken at 840mm equivalent on the Canon SX40HS from a slightly closer range.
All shots in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. 2) 1/320th @ ISO 400, f7.8 effective, 3) 1/320th @ ISO 100, f5.6 effective, 4) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.