Posts in Category: Florida
4/23/2010
Chicks (Snowy Egret)
The St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park is one of the premiere bird photography spots in the US (if not the world). When they built a “native swamp” habitat, stocked it with their overflow of alligators, and built a boardwalk right through the middle of it, they inadvertently created one of the most productive, and certainly one of the most accessible, rookeries of wading birds in the world. Wood Storks; Tri-colored Herons, Green, and Little Blue Herons; Great Egrets and Snowy; Roseate Spoonbills, White and Glossy Ibis are all colonial nesters, and they all moved in to the trees and mangroves over the alligator infested waters…where, strangely enough, they feel safe. The alligators act as really viscous watch dogs and keep the real predators at bay.
The Alligator Farm itself is not your typical roadside alligator attraction. They have the only complete collection of alligators and crocodiles in the world, are members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and have a full time staff of trained professionals who care for the animals and the enclosures in a truly impressive way.
And in spring the rookery is in full swing. It is impossible to describe and even this picture does not do it justice. You will note that the density of photographers is just under that of the birds!
The shot of the Snowy Egret mom feeding chicks was taken at about 20 feet with the 560mm equivalent zoom on the Canon SX20IS. The bird had nested just below boardwalk level, where the boardwalk curves back out over the water between the big trees and mangroves. Ideal.
F5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto. –1.3EV exposure compensation.
In Lightroom, just your basic added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen landscape preset.
And, for interest sake here is some video shot from the same spot. You can watch it in HD if you want.
4/22/2010
Palamedes Swallowtail
These beauties were all over the Guana River Reserve on Tuesday when we spent a morning hiking there. They did not sit much so we learned to watch for the thistle.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and macro. F5.7 @ 1/320 @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, just very basic added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped slightly for composition.
And, as a special treat, some video from the SX20IS. To view in HD, press the expand button to pop it out to full screen. Press play, and then select the 720 option where its says 320. On my laptop I have to pause it to let it completely download or it will keep pausing during play.
4/21/2010
Coquina at Washington Oaks
According to the Wiki on the subject, Coquina is a relatively rare rock made up of masses of ancient shells and shell fragments loosely cemented together, some still largely intact. It is found in isolated outcrops along the Atlantic coast, from St. Augustine to Palm Beach, FL, and in one spot in North Carolina. There is also an outcrop in New Zealand. It is soft, so soft that it can only be used for building after air drying or curing for up to 3 years. The Fort in St. Augustine is built from it…which was a considerable advantage, since the soft walls absorbed (literally) canon ball fire better than harder stone would have.
It is the softness that, in large part, also gives Coquina its photographic interest. The waves shape it into an incredible variety of forms as they wash over it. Close in, the structure of the stone itself is of interest, as a study in shape and texture; especially as the density of the surface and its structure, as well as the color, varies greatly from stone to stone.
All with the Canon SX20IS. 1) 28mm @ F4.0 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80, 2) 28mm @ F4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80, 3) 250mm macro @ F5.0 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80, 4) 200mm macro @ F5.0 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 80.
The first two got my standard landscape treatment in Lightroom. Recovery for the sky, a touch of Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. The close ups received similar treatment but with very little Recovery and less Fill Light. Less of everything actually, except sharpen.
2/5/2010
Tricolored Heron
My last day at the Space Coast Birding Festival in Titusville, FL turned dark, dreary, damp, cold, and windy. Oh well, you get those days, even in Florida, in winter. I pushed the ISO setting on the PhotoScope to 200 and hoped for the best.
Cooperative birds make PhotoScoping, or any long-lens bird photography, easy…or easier anyway, and the herons are without doubt the most cooperative photographic subjects (who are not working for pay). As noted in a previous post on Great Blues, they pose.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at about 40x, or 1600mm equivalent field of view. 1/40th @ ISO 200. Metered at about f5.6.
Added Clarity and Vibrance in Lightroom. Blackpoint just slightly right. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Space Coast Birding.
And a bonus shot.
10/23/2009
Anhinga: Green Cay Wetlands
There were several birds in this tree. A Red-shouldered Hawk at the top. White Ibis lower, and this Anhinga in the lowest branches. And it is such a great tree! You can see from the abundance of white-wash that the birds really really like it. The tree and the background are as important in the image, for me, as the bird itself.
The challenge of the Anhinga is the range of contrast between the silvery white of the wing patterns, through jet black, to the gold of the throat. The fur-like feathers on the upper breast and throat provide a real test for the resolution of your system.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 40x (field of view of a 1600mm lens on a full frame DSLR). 1/380th @ ISO 100. Metered at about f5.0.
Just my basic added Clarity and the Sharpen landscapes preset in Lightroom. Only a touch of Vibrance.
From Green Cay, FL.
10/21/2009
Crick in the Neck: Great Egret
The Great Egret gets its neck into some of the most strange and wonderful convolutions imaginable…or unimaginable…as the case may be. It makes my neck hurt just looking. This fellow was actively feeding below the boardwalk at Green Cay Wetlands in Palm Co. Florida. I got a few shots pulled back to the wide end of the zoom on the Zeiss PhotoScope, and then zoomed in on the head and neck for a series of close-ups. The eye itself is captivating.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 40x (field of view to match a 1600mm lens on a full frame DSLR). 1/210th @ ISO 10o. Metered at approximately f5.6. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, only my basic added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen landscape preset.
And, for comparison: The big picture.
The Big Picture: Great Egret Feeding
From the Green Cay, FL gallery on WideEyedInWonder.
10/19/2009
Black-bellied Whistling Duck Family
At a place like Green Cay Wetlands in Palm County FL, when you see a group of photographers gathered in one spot, you are well advised to join them. They are working something. On this day the draw was this family of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. It was hard to count, since they were actively feeding and never still, but it looked to be 9 or 10 chicks, clearly of a single hatching, since they were identical in size.
The Zeiss PhotoScope I am testing has a zoom range that provides the same field of view as a 600mm-1800mm zoom on a full frame DSLR. For this shot I was at the wide end of the range.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 600mm equivalent. 1/180th @ ISO 100. Effectively metered at f4.5. (f2.4 physical at the true 93mm focal length).
Cropped from the bottom in Lightroom to improve composition. Added Clarity and just at tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
For comparison here is an image of a single chick taken at the 1800mm end of the zoom on the PhotoScope. I attempted a lot of these…but most were blurred by the rapid motion of the chicks.
Black-bellied Whistling Duck Chick
1/130th at ISO 100. Effective metered f-stop f6.0 (f3.4 physical at the 293mm true focal length of the PhotoScope).
10/18/2009
Alligator Among the Coulds and Duckweed
Happy Sunday!
So, we are walking the boardwalk at Green Cay Wetlands last Monday, focused on the birds, and this lady says as we pass, “There’s an Alligator right here.” We look down over the rail, and…she’s right. Right there, obviously hoping one of those Moorehens is a lot stupider than it looks. Oh yes. We are in Florida now. I take pictures. Of the Alligator.
Only when reviewing the pictures for processing do I see the amazing cloud reflections, the patterns of duckweed on the water, the way the reeds and mud frame the shot and turn it into a graphic mirror. I forget, until I enlarge the image for development, that there is an Alligator there at all. I think maybe I just took it for the patterns. Now, when I look at it, I see the Alligator floating in the clouds and duckweed, kind of a metaphor for beauty. And I like it.
Sony DCS H50 at about 35mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped in Lightroom to remove some distracting vegetation along one edge. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. A touch of Recovery to emphasize the cloud reflections. Sharpen landscape preset.
And here is the alternative view, at 60mm equivalent, where the the Alligator is more prominent…though the floating in clouds effect is still there.
More Alligator, Less Clouds
From Green Cay, FL.
10/15/2009
The Wing!
Great Egret preening. The stretch of that amazing wing, and the birds head reaching under, is what the shot is all about.
Not an easy shot: timing had to be right…but so did exposure. My first shot was correctly exposed for the whole scene, but that left the bird’s white plumage totally blown. I was able to quickly dial down the Exposure Compensation using the PhotoScope’s on screen access to common menu functions, and have time for a second shot. This one is correctly exposed for the bird…catching the full range of whites. Even a tiny bit more exposure and the whites along the back would go to hot, but it left the background, in the original, too dark. It took some work in Lightroom with Fill Light and Exposure curves to achieve an acceptable balance…not ideal background yet, but getting there. Unfortunately the noise in the dark areas of the image made it impossible to bring the background up more. I could selectively reduce noise, but it would take considerable work in this complex shot with masking tools in Photoshop. [actually, see ps. below…]
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at about 1200mm. 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed auto with -1EV exposure compensation. Approximate effective aperture of f5.0.
Besides the work in Lightroom with Fill Light and Curves mentioned above, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen landscape. Cropped slightly from the left to improve composition.
From Green Cay, FL.
ps.
Last night I decided to take the image into Photoshop Elements 7.0 and see what more I could do. PE7 has an auto masking tool called magic extractor, designed to cut a foreground object out of its background. Essentially you draw on the background with one color and on the foreground object with another, and the software does an amazingly accurate job of cutting out the background.
If you make a new layer and apply the magic extractor to isolate a foreground object…a bird, as in the image above…you can do anything you want to the base layer, and background, without affecting the bird. In this case I brightened the base layer, applied heavy noise reduction, and then used the smart blur filter on it to smooth the tones even more. Because the bird is safe on a layer above the base layer, none of these changes changed it.
I did select the layer with the bird, and brightened that just slightly.
I then flattened the image (combined layers) and save the resulting image as a new file. This is the edited image. What do you think?
Edited Egret
5/3/2009
Short Story without Words
Sony DSC N1 through the eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 85FL. Minimal processing beyond crop and assembly.
From St. Augustine FL.