Posts in Category: marsh
Wood Stork, Great Egret, White Ibis Populate the Dawn
This is another shot from my Sunday dawn stop on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. As the sun came up the birds came in to feed in the small pools below Stop #2, and the light, coming low over the misty marsh behind them, made for wonderful images. Here we have a Wood Stork (the only one in this mixed flock of birds), one of several Great Egrets, and one of hundreds of White Ibises just entering the frame. I like this image for the light, but also for the dynamic tension between the three birds, and the “caught in action” pose of the Stork. The image would not work, with the Stork walking out of the frame, if not for the strong anchor of the Egret at the bottom center.
Canon SX50HS at about 360mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
River Otter at Viera Revisited
Since it is WildlifeWednesday on Google+, we will drop back a few weeks and revisit the River Otter that a bunch of us found playing on the bank at Viera Wetlands in Florida when I visited in January. As you see from the evidence on his coat, he was rolling in a fresh patch of sand (perhaps an anthill?). By the time I left and moved on, there were at least 20 photographers, with every kind of camera rig imaginable, surrounding the Otter, and I have to say, the Otter did not seem to be bothered by the attention at all. I suspect some phone-camera wielding enthusiast eventually stepped too close and set the Otter back into the water…it certainly was not there on my next loop of the dyke road…but I was not there to see it happen.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. f6,5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Bittern in Morning Sun
I really like seeing Bitterns. For me it is a rare site. I have only ever seen them in New Jersey and Florida. Last year on my Space Coast Birding Festival trip I looked without success for one at Viera Wetlands, but I was delighted to see the same American Bittern twice at Merritt Island NWR, two different days. This year, I saw a Bittern at Viera (this one) and two different Bitterns at Merritt Island. Such wealth!
This specimen moved through the reeds and grasses about 30 feet down the embankment at the edge of the pond for 30 minutes as I watched. All I had to do is wait for the rare occasions when it broke cover.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 1000mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Florida Sky. Viera Wetlands
Viera Wetlands, as I have mentioned before, is a municipal sewage treatment plant that has been converted to attract wildlife and bird watchers. There are many such facilities around the country today, but Viera is a particularly good example of the class. It includes miles of dyke roads…some of which are permanently open…and some of which are closed to vehicles except on special occasions (like the Space Coast Birding Festival). There are two observation towers overlooking ponds. But the general attractiveness comes from it just being Florida. Natural growths of palms and native grasses and reeds make the treatment ponds look like any wet section of Florida. It is very easy to forget where you are.
This is a two frame HDR panorama, using In-camera HDR Mode. I shot two overlapping HDR images from my tiny Fat Gecko carbon fiber tripod and stitched them together in PhotoShop Elements’ PhotoMerge tool. Florida, on days with clouds, has magnificent clouds!
Canon SX50HS. As above. Recorded exif: 24mm equivalent field of view (for each exposure). f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Common Yellowthroat: peek a boo.
This Common Yellowthroat was teasing me all along the WildBirdsUnlimited trail at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge yesterday am. I made an executive decision to forego a sit-down breakfast, and get out for some birdwatching and photography in the few precious hours of daylight I had before the exhibit area opened and duty called at the Space Coast Birding Festival. I was on the refuge when the sun rose, and got in one loop around Black Point Wildlife Drive before I had to head for my booth. It was glorious and changed the nature of the whole day!
My primary purpose was to get more digiscoped shots with the new Sony camera and the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL, but when the Yellowthroat hopped up and hopped along the trail deep in the mangrove bushes, I resorted to the much quicker Canon SX50HS. With a bird this active, and one moving rapidly enough so that you have to follow down the dyke, there is little hope of catching it in the scope field and getting focused before it is gone. As it was, I only got a few good shots with the SX50. I really like this one. It catches the personality (aviality?) of the CYTh about as well as any photograph I have seen. It is not a field guide illustration, but it has the merit of being much more like what you actually see in the field than any “field marks” illustration I have ever seen. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV Exposure Compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Peace is a Great Egret
For some reason I find this image immensely restful…peaceful…calming. It is an almost classic composition for one thing, and the great white bird above the silver-blue water…the solid sculpted mass of the fallen palms, and the strong verticals and diagonals of the standing trunks…it all just seems to hang in balance. My eye caresses it.
Or maybe it is just me. 
Taken at Viera Wetlands in Viera Florida.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent filed of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Green Heron in Green Reeds
Another shot from Viera Wetlands, and another shot digiscoped with the Sony Rx100 behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. Here clearly, I turned off auto-focus on the Sony, and focused manually using the LCD screen. I found that there was menu setting to brighten the screen for sunlight viewing, and it works well. This kind of selective focus is quite easy to achieve using the very fine focus control on the DiaScope.
And I really like the effect. The sharply defended, and beautifully plumaged, Green Heron behind its screen of out of focus bright green reeds (with the two contrasting brown at odd angles). You might call it making art of necessity…but I like it.
Sony Rx100 in Program mode. Manual Focus. 1750mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ ISO 125. f10 effective. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Big Bend on Branch Brook: Winter
This is a slightly mind-bending panorama that you really need to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow. Click on the image to open it in the lightbox on WideEyedInWonder, auto-sized for your display. It is just about a full 180 degrees. You can see two ends of the same straight rail sticking out about 1/6 of the way in from each corner. Though the perspective looks natural when stitched together like this, you would have to relax your vision, or at least your attention, to see this in real life. It could be done if you are one of those people who can process your peripheral vision without falling over. 🙂
It is 4 fames, each frame an In-camera HDR, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 11’s PhotoMerge tool, and then final processed in Lightroom. I shot it off my Fat Gecko walking-about tripod.
Canon SX50HS. Four overlapping 24mm equivalent field of view frames. Recorded exif: f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
Winter Vista: Rachel Carson NWR
There is a small viewing platform around the backside of the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters that, if you only visit in summer, you will certainly ask yourself, “Why there?” There is, in summer, when the leaves are on the trees, nothing to see. There is, in spring, a nice stand of Lady Slipper below the platform, on the slope leading down to the marsh, but that came after the platform, as a result of the added light and space clearing a few of trees provided.
It is only in winter that you see what the trail designers were thinking (or seeing) when they put the platform there. In winter you have a view through the bare trees out across the river and the marsh that is quite attractive…even more attractive for the thin screen of trees between you and the marsh. And in winter, the light on the trees in the foreground is wonderful.
This is another In-camera HDR from the Canon SX50HS, and the Mode, plus some post-processing in Lightroom, produces an image very close to what the eye sees here.
45mm equivalent field of view. Recorded exif: f6.3 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
Marsh Pond at Laudholm Farms
I have photographed this pond in the marsh behind the dunes at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) in all weathers and in all seasons. It is never better than with one of the amazing fall skies of Southern Maine. I watch the weather for fronts coming through from the west, and, if they coincide with a weekend, generally find some landscape to set them off. And, again, there is nothing better to set off a sky like that than a stretch of water to reflect. The pond at Laudholm is perfect.
This is an in-camera HDR, taken with the Canon SX50HS. The Canon has to be very still for the HDR function to work. Unlike some HDR software, the software in the camera has very limited ability to align three imperfectly aligned images. The exposure processing, on the other hand, is spot on! The three images are blended, to my eye, just about perfectly. I took this with the camera propped up on the interpretative sign at the pond. Nice of them to put it there! (I have since invested in an 11 ounce ZipShot tripod that has legs like aluminum tent poles held together with shock cord. It sets up in seconds, is sturdy enough for wide angle to mid-tel shots (with the self-timer), clips to the strap of my camera bag, and is ready for an HDR anywhere.)
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.