Posts in Category: Florida
1/25/2009
Wood Stork
Wood Storks are, in my considered opinion, the ugliest birds in the world…and one of the most beautiful. There is the undeniable beauty of their white plumage. In flight, with black wing-tips and their unique stretched out position, they are quite elegant. It is only the head, really where the ugly comes out, and it is the kind of super-ugly, over the top ugly, that crosses over, and has a beauty of its own.
This bird was in difficult light, strong low side-light, almost back-light, and I waited a while and wasted some exposures before catching him turned just enough to light the face. The water acted as the perfect reflector to open what otherwise would have been dense shadow on the left side (I helped it along with some Fill Light in Lightroom in post processing, but, once more, I knew I would be able to do that, and held the exposure down to capture detail in the highlights).
The bird is placed in the frame right on the intersecting lines of the Rule of Thirds, looking into the frame. A classic portrait.
Sony DSC N1 behind the eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 85FL. Equiv. focal length 1500mm. F4.0 @ 1/800 @ ISO 64. Programed Auto. No EV bias.
In Lightroom I did use Fill Light to open the shadows, and a bit of Recovery to bring out detail in the highlighted face. Clarity and Vibrance, and Portrait sharpen preset.
From the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/24/2009
Tricolor
Tricolored Herons are everywhere at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge this year. This bird posed nicely for me quite close to Blackpoint Wildlife Drive.
This is another digiscoped shot, using the Zeiss Diascope 85FL and the Sony DSC N1 camera. (see yesterday’s post). The effective zoom on the Sony behind the scope gives me the option of full frame shots of a bird like this at this distance, or of head and shoulder portraits like this one.
Perfect light to pick out every detail. Cooperative bird. Right distance. No wind to vibrate the tripod at high magnification. A digiscoper’s (or any long range photographer’s) dream.
Sony DSC N1 at full zoom (about 100mm equiv.). F5.4 @ 1/250 @ ISO 64. Programed Auto, Selective spot focus (focus on the eye of the bird) and matrix metering.
Minimal processing in Lightroom. Sharpen portraits preset, some Clarity and Vibrance added.
From the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/23/2009
Kingfisher Lady
Kingfishers are my favorite birds. We have three species in North America. The Belted is the most common, occurring pretty much everywhere, while the other two are restricted to the extreme south, mostly right along the Mexican boarder. I have been privileged to photograph all three, and every encounter is special.
I have seen Belted Kingfisher on every trip to Merritt Island NWR. They are pretty dense there, on the wires along the highways as they pass through the ponds, and more occasionally, out in the mangroves of Black Point Wildlife Drive. Of course, there are very likely more out on Black Point Drive than along the roads, but they are much harder to see when they aren’t perched up on a phone wire.
I don’t like photographing them on wires. There is the danger of stopping and setting up a tripod along a busy highway, of course, but more than that, it is simply not aesthetically pleasing to me to image the bird on an ugly wire.
This bird was ahead of me as I drove along Blackpoint drive. I saw it twice before it found this fishing perch on the far side of a channel 40 feet wide. I stopped and took a few shots with my Sony H50 out the window of the car, debating the wisdom of getting out and setting up my spotting scope and digiscoping rig for some close up shots. With Kingfishers it almost never worth the effort as they invariably fly off before you get the tripod set up.
This bird, however, stayed put, too busy fishing to give me more than the occasional glance. I watched and photographed for more than 40 minutes, taking 100s of exposures at all powers, moving along the road to get better angles, etc. etc…until I finely packed up and moved on. She was still fishing when I left.
Digiscoping is the art of taking an image by placing a digital camera behind the eyepiece of a spotting scope. A small compact digital, or even a DSLR with a 40-50mm lens, will focus through the scope and capture amazingly detailed images of birds and other wildlife. For this shot I used a Zeiss Diascope 85FL (a very high quality spotting scope with special glass for extreme color correction), a fixed power 30x eyepiece, a Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod and light weight video head, a special Zeiss bracket to hold the camera steady behind the eyepiece, and a Sony DSC N1 pocket sized digital camera with touch screen and movable spot focus. (For more on this see: P&S for Wildlife on Point and Shoot Landscape.)
One of the hardest things about any high power, long distance photography is selecting the focus point, especially with auto focus. The movable spot on the Sony N1, along with the touch screen, make it easy to place the spot on the bird’s eye, where you want it.
Because the field of view of the camera is so small and concentrated through the scope, exposure accuracy is excellent with most small Point and Shoot digitals, as it is here.
Zeiss Diascope 85FL, Sony DSC N1 (8 mp), at a camera zoom equiv. of 100mm and a total equivalent focal length of about 3000mm. Camera at F5.4 @ 1/125th @ ISO 200. Programed Auto. Selective spot focus.
Digiscoped images generally only required minimal processing. Sharpening (Portrait preset in Lightroom), and some Clarity and Vibrance for effect.
From the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/22/2009
Alone
The odd pose of the bird as it hunts…the odd lighting in the shadowed channel and the late sun, the reflections beyond the bird, and patterning in the water in the foreground, all combine for me into something more than the sum of their parts. Not a picture of a bird, though the bird is important to the picture, but a picture of a moment in time, a quirky moment, when the lone hunter is most alone. The distance keeps us distant, but so do the harmonies of the composition…the pattern of light and dark, color and the silver of the water. Not your typical bird portrait.
Sony DSC H50 at almost full telephoto (400mm equiv.). F4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I used some Recovery to bring up detail in the foreground water, Clarity and Vibrance for overall effect, and the Sharpen landscapes preset. Once more, the image required some Fill Light to open shadows.
From the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/21/2009
Mangrove Marsh
Taken from the platform in yesterday’s Pic of the Day. The elevated position, 12 feet off the waterline, provides an interesting perspective for this traditionally composed landscape. Traditional because the horizon at the upper Rule of Thirds horizon line. The strong diagonal of the mangroves along the dike at the left, and the gentler, less geometric land mass at the right, lead the eye toward the horizon. Weedy growth in the foreground adds interest, without masking the cloud reflections, which add a feeling of just how big the landscape is. And the clouds themselves recede to the true horizon beyond the mangroves making the landscape huge!
Now, if you think I thought all that while taking the pic, then you give me credit for a level of cognition that I just don’t possess. I was conscious enough to place the horizon where I wanted it, and I suppose I must have seen the bold diagonal on the left…other than that I just knew I liked what I was seeing in the viewfinder.
But I like the image more than its content might warrant, so I have to think about why…and that first paragraph is me analyzing why.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equiv.) F5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, the image required some Recovery for the sky to recapture cloud detail, a bit of Vibrance and Clarity for overall effect, and the Sharpen Landscape preset. The image really came alive though when I applied a bit of Fill Light to open the shadows under the mangrove hedge on the left and to pick up the intensity of the dark green mangrove leaves on the right.
A word on the Sharpen landscape preset. I use it all the time, not because I am lazy, but because it works really well, and because it is a combination of the Sharpen sliders (Amount, Radius, Detail, and Masking) that I would never have hit on if left to my own devices. (And maybe I am a tad lazy. When it works I don’t feel the need to fix it.)
The image is from the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/20/2009
Blind
Fresh from Florida and not orange juice. This is a blind (or hide as our British friends call it) at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I was attracted to the color of the wood, the geometry of the structure, and the contrast with the amazing vista behind it. The wide angle end of the Sony’s zoom framed the corner nicely and by the second shot, I was seeing well enough to carefully place the horizon in the viewing ports.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide angle (31mm equiv.). F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I applied a bit of recovery for the texture in the wood and to darken the sky from its exposed value. I moved the black point up a bit for contrast. Added Clarity and Vibrance, and used the Landscape sharpen preset. Since the stark geometric shapes of the wood are set off against the background, I blew up the image and checked for Chromatic Aberration and Purple Fringing (two common artifacts in digital cameras. The first a lens flaw, and the second a sensor flaw). There was no CA, but there was some Purple Fringing in the corners of the image. Lightroom’s CA sliders took it out.
The image is from the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/19/2009
Pelican Sunset
I am in Florida, and will be out and about taking pics over the next few days, so here is a transition shot from a trip to Destin FL last winter.
A friend had a tip from a local about this harbor at sunset, so we left our convention and drove down to see what was to be seen. The pelicans against the sunset offered lots of opportunities. This shot also catches a boat moving in the harbor behind the outer dunes. Composition is critical here, with the pelican carefully placed…even though “he” is facing the wrong way in the frame. Swinging him to the other side would caught hotels on the outer dunes. Still, I think it works.
Exposure was another issue. I exposed for the clouds and sunset, which left the pelican too much of a silhouette. To me silhouettes too often look unnatural…dramatic, yes…but in nature there is almost never a true silhouette. We see some detail even against the sun, or the sunset in this case. I knew while taking the image, just home much “fill light” I could apply in post-processing to bring up at least some detail in the pelican.
Sony DSC H9 at appoximately a 100mm equiv. F4.0 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Processed in Lightroom. Moderate Recovery, Clarity, and Vibrance to bring up the sky color, then a good deal of Fill Light for the pelican. Standard sharpening.
The image is in the Emerald Coast Gallery.
1/15/2009
Red Light
Walking back and forth to the SHOT Show in Orlando Florida where I am for a week working, I keep my eyes open and my finger on the shutter release, of course.
This mass of Begonias was planted in front of a hotel…and I was struck by the light and shadows, by the textures, and by the range of reds. I tried both wide and more close-up shots and liked this moderate tele shot the best.
Sony DSC H50 at about 80mm equiv. F4.0 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
The image is from (actually the only image in, so far) the Orlando and Titusville Gallery
1/10/2009
Triple
The birds are the excuse of this image, but it is, of course, the light that makes it. The reflections in the water are magical.
Reddish Egret posing. Semipalmated Plover in the foreground. Pied-billed Grebe in the background. I took 4 or 5 exposures here and eventually the caught the birds in approximately the right positions.
Cropped to place the birds more prominently in the frame.
Sony DSC H50 at full tele (465mm equiv). F5.6 @ 1/640 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. -1EV.
The image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.
1/9/2009
Cypress Head
The tram tour to the Shark Valley observation tower is a wonderful introduction to the Everglades. We stopped here because 6 of the 7 habitat types represented in the Everglades could be seen from this spot. This image takes in several, but predominant feature is cypress head (grove) right in the foreground. Balanced by an amazing sky, it makes a classic landscape.
The point of view is interesting, as the tam was raised much higher than standing eye-level.
Sony DSC H50 at wide angle (31mm equiv.) F5.6 @ 1/800 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto
This image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.