Posts in Category: Florida
2/15/2011: Red-shouldered Hawk (im)
It is often windy at Merritt Island NWR, and that can make digiscoping, with its particularly high effective magnifications, very difficult. This shot from late afternoon when the wind was well up, and the bird was 150 yards across a water channel, shows the effects. Being in tree that caught the wind and bounded around even more did not help. Even though the shutter speed was a 500th of a second, The shot is not critically sharp, and required extra processing for sharpness and clarity to approach acceptable. Still, it is a nice bird: an immature Red-shouldered hawk of the light Florida variety.
Increasing magnification only makes matters worse:
In this shot you can see a clear indication of the problem in the eye-light: notice that it is a vertical line, not a dot. That means that the bird was in motion when the shutter opened…or in this case that the whole tree was in motion.
Still…it is a nice bird.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) 2700mm equivalent field of view, 1/500th @ ISO 125, 2) 4000mm equivalent field of view, 1/320th @ ISO 125.
My standard processing in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness, but then both were selectively sharpened, clarified, and contrast boosted around the head and eye using the selective brush tool. The whole image got Fill-light, Blackpoint adjustment, and Contrast boost…and then I backed off the Vibrance slightly to tame the yellow highlights. And still…it is a nice bird is about all I can say.
2/14/2011: Snowy! Happy Valentines Day
Okay, so this shot of a Snowy Egret taken at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge has nothing at all to do with Valentines Day…except maybe the very beginnings of breeding plumage in the bird…but that is a real stretch. Still, Happy Valentines Day!
This was taken at the same pool by the restrooms on Blackpoint drive that yielded the Anhinga, the Green Heron, and the Alligator. Not bad for a pool only about seven car lengths long and maybe one and half wide.
As always, the trick with a Snowy Egret in the sun is to get the exposure right. I have played with Exposure Compensation often enough to know that, on a shot like this, where the bird fills a good deal of the frame, you are often better off just letting the auto exposure do it’s thing. A touch of Recovery in Lightroom might be needed for the highlights, but then at least the background does not go way dark.
I worked this bird for 15 minutes or so, as it moved around the pool. Here is alternative shot framed against the water, and cropped from the top for composition.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. About 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1) 1/600 @ ISO 125. 2) 1/800th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
2/11/2011: Big and easy, GBH
A fellow wildlife photographer posted a Great Blue Heron on his Facebook page yesterday with a comment to the effect that “sometimes you have to take the easy shots.”
Always! Always you have to take the easy shots. I don’t believe in a vindictive fate, like “if you don’t shoot the easy shots when they are offered, then you won’t get anymore!”, but I do believe in embracing the gift when it is right there in front of you. It would be ungrateful to ignore such generosity.
So here is yet another Great Blue Heron shot. (And GBHs do figure in a surprising number of the gift shots…go figure 🙂 …big and easy bird that it is…always seemingly posing.) In this shot, of course, it is the light and reflections on the water behind the bird, and the play of light across the bird, the molding, and the light caught in the eye, as much as the bird itself, that holds interest…that makes the shot.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56 Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of about a 2800mm lens, 1/200th @ ISO 125, effective aperture of f7.5.
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
And the more pulled back, contextual bonus shot at something closer to 1000mm equivalent field of view.
2/10/2011: Still-life with malice
I know…it is totally unreasonable to attribute malice to the alligator simply because of the way he looks (and sometimes acts)…especially this big fellow (girl) peacefully sunning on a mangrove bank at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, but, honestly, how can we help ourselves? And surely the still-life part is obvious, or would be if you have ever seen an alligator sunning.
Canon SD4000IS at about 2000mm equivalent field of view, 1/320th @ ISO 125, effective aperture of f11. Programmed Auto. Processed in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness.
This is the context shot, taken with the my regular non-digiscoping camera at about 40mm equivalent from the same spot. From this angle you can see that this is only a medium sized gator, still with a lot of years of growing to do.
And finally the almost abstract close up view at something close to 4000mm equivalent field of view, with an emphasis on the eye.
2/8/2011: Green Heron in a Bush, Merritt Island NWR
This Green Heron is pretty regular (in my limited experience) in the pool by the restrooms at Merritt Island NWR. I have photographed a Green Heron in this spot several times, several different years…so either it, or another of its kind, frequents the pool and the water channel behind the pool on a predictable bases. I look for it now.
This bird was tucked back under a bush about 40 feet down the water channel from the road. I caught it as I turned the corner, only because I was looking for it, and parked and walked back. I really like the play of light under the mangrove foliage, especially behind the bird, and the way the sun catches in the yellow eye.
Canon SD4000IS at about 1800mm equivalent field of view, 1/400th @ ISO 160. Effective aperture, f5.
Processed lightly in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness.
And here is the shot zoomed in a bit, to about 4500mm equivalent field of view.
2/7/2011: Great Egret, intimate
Sometimes, at Merritt Island and other prime Florida locations, the birds are so close and so cooperative that, with a digiscoping rig, it is possible to achieve really intimate portraits. For this shot I used the zoom on both camera and scope to frame the bird’s head against the dark background, using –2/3EV exposure compensation to hold detail in the plumage and send the background really dark. The effect is striking. Of course the curves are all the Egret’s doing 🙂
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for something in the 3000mm range, 1/320th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto with EV.
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lighroom.
2/4/2011: Anhinga, round two, Merritt Is NWR
The little pond by the restrooms at the head of the Cruikshank trail off Black Point Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is always worth a good long look. I almost always find something to photograph there…over the years: lizards, alligators, Green Heron, Snowy Egret, or, in this case, an elegant Anhinga in the final stages of his sun bath. There are very few birds that have the feather texture of the Anhinga, and these shots show it off to good advantage.
This bird was so close that to get anything like a full body shot, I had to zoom all the way out so the bird just filled a round circle in the middle of a black lcd screen…and then crop. And then I could not fit the full tail in.
And these are full frame views, showing off the stuff the neck gets up to and the feathering on the head…
All with the Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. Working at the 600 to 1200mm field of view range. Processed very lightly in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness.
2/3/2011: Wood Storks, Merritt Island NWR
Wood Storks are both beautiful and ugly. The plumage is elegant, and in flight they are majestic, but that head!
Of course even in the head there is a kind of grotesque beauty…kind of beautiful ugliness. Yes I know, contradictions…but that is Wood Stork for you.
By the way, with these storks we move from Viera Wetlands to Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Merritt Island is another favorite birding and digiscoping place in my yearly round of festivals. I always try to do the Blackpoint loop at least twice, at two different times of day, on every visit to Titusville, and I am rarely disappointed. Even if the birds are less abundant than usual (as was the case with ducks this year), there is generally at least one really cooperative bird that sits for a series of really satisfying images…and generally several.
Canons SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for equivalent fields of view between 1000mm and 2500mm. 1) 1/500th @ ISO 125, 2) 1/640th @ ISO 125, and 3) 1/800th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
Lightly processed in Lightroom for Recovery (highlight control), and image clarity and sharpness.
2/2/2011: Anhingas, Viera Wetlands
Wings on Wednesday. And such wings…though this male Anhinga evidently just got out to dry as the feathers are still in somewhat of a disarray. There is so much to look at in an Anhinga’s wings, so many different patterns. I don’t think I have ever noticed the horizontal banding on the innermost long wing feather.
And a close up of the head (different bird).
And finally, a female striking a different pose.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of 1) an 850mm lens, 1/1250th @ ISO 160, effective aperture f4, 2) 2000mm, 1/500th @ ISO 125, effective aperture f5.7, 3) 3000mm, 1/1000 @ ISO 200, effective aperture f8. Programmed auto.
Lightly processed in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness.
1/2/2011: GBH on a palm, viera Wetlands
I could not resist this Great Blue Heron on the palm top, among the fronds of neighboring palms…even though I knew it would be a soft image at best…the wind was blowing so hard and the magnification needed to fill the frame was so high that despite my best efforts there was going to be some softening due to camera motion. It was just such a classic composition. You can see what I was dealing with in the video below. I had to put the video through the heaviest level of image stabilization in Sony Vegas at that.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of a 4700mm lens, 1/1000th sec. @ ISO 125. Effective aperture f13.
Here it is pulled back to about a 3000mm equivalent.
And here is the video. I left the sound in, just for effect. 🙂