It’s February and the birding / nesting season is moving into full swing in Central Florida.  In the last three days I’ve been to four of our local birding hot spots.  If you’re into birding or bird photography it’s time to get your gear out and get out there!  Here’s a short status report on what’s happening at the sites I visited.

(Note:  click on any of the photos below to go to Flickr, where you can see them larger.  You can also read posts I’ve done on each of these places.  Go to the index page to find them.)

Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Friday, mid-morning.

Spoonbills are the main attraction – they were everywhere.  The best place I found was in the pool just behind the parking area near the rest rooms, where several were putting on a show, posing and sweeping their bills through the shallow water.  There were also the usual herons, egrets, etc. and I made one nice photo of an egret eating breakfast.

Spoonbill in flight

St. Augustine Alligator Farm,  Friday, late morning

There’s some construction going on at the Alligator Farm.  They’ve rebuilt part of the boardwalk through the rookery, and when I was there Friday, they had a backhoe going digging out and moving concrete from one area.  I hope that all the noise doesn’t keep the nesting birds away.  I did see one pair of Great Egrets building a nest and several other birds roosting in trees.  The alligators of course, are there and quite happy to pose for photos.  I made this one where you can see me reflected in its eye if you enlarge it to full size.

Self Portrait

Orlando Wetlands Park, Saturday, early morning

Orlando Wetlands closes for the winter and just re-opened in February.  This year, they have many activities planed for each weekend.  Last Saturday the Education Center was open with an exhibit of Orange Audubon Chertok Photo Contest winners, tram and hiking tours as well as videos showings about the park.  As a result, the park was as busy as I’ve ever seen it.  Perhaps all the people are making the birds skittish – I had a hard time getting very close to any.  There is supposed to be a White Faced Ibis at the park and although I did not see it, many people did.  I like this landscape I made which shows how pretty this park can be on a calm morning.

Swamp Landscape

Viera Wetlands, Sunday, early morning

I only discovered Viera Wetlands this year and I continue to be amazed at the quantity and diversity of the birds you can see there.  Today was no exception.  We saw an American Bittern, a Wesley’s Snipe and many other varieties.  The Great Blue Heron’s are nesting and some already have chicks.  One Great Blue Heron couple put on a show for us with the male fetching sticks for inspection and use by his partner.

Great Blue Heron takes stick back to nest

I posted some additional photos on Flickr.  You can browse the set here, or view a slide show at this link.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The Photography Interest Group elected to return to Viera Wetlands this morning. Once again, it was a very nice visit.  The weather was much better than last time. We had clear skies and plenty of light, although the road was chained closed due the recent rains – making it a walking visit only.  Walking is better for us anyway.

One thing I definitely wanted to see was the masked duck that had been reported in the paper recently. Apparently, these are very rare in the area – and I’d never seen one. There are a lot of birders coming from as far as 2 hours away to add this one to their life list.

Masked Duck

Here’s a few other photos from this morning.

Wood Stork in flight – I like the water drops in his wake.

Limpkin in flight

Pair of Mottled Ducks (?) – I really like the lead duck’s head reflected in the water.

I’ve added these and several others to my Viera Wetlands Set on Flickr, where you can view larger versions of them.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Intro / Description

OK, so maybe you don’t look at the top of my blog very often, where it says “Central Florida Photo Ops – What & Where they are, and tips on how to photograph them”.  That’s the main purpose here – to let others know about all the great places to make photographs in the Central Florida area.  So I feel like I owe an apology to all my loyal readers and the wildlife / nature / bird photographers that have visited my blog in the past without finding any mention of the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera, also known as Viera Wetlands.  I’m sorry and I’ll try to do better – but I do have a day job!  And there are so many fabulous places to photograph around here!

Note: you can click on any of these photos to go to my Flickr photo stream and view a larger version (click on the magnifying glass icon at the top). There’s also links at the end of this entry to the my entire set, my slide show version of the photos, and some links to other photos of Viera Wetlands.

Viera Wetlands

Our Phototgraphy Interest Group traveled to Viera Wetlands yesterday.  Located at the west end of Wickham Road, in Melbourne, Florida (behind the water treatment plant), the Viera Wetlands offers birders and photographers a close encounter with many species from the comfort of their automobiles.  Since cars are such a good blind to photograph from, you can often get quite close to the wildlife without disturbing them.  I’ve only been there one time (so far!), but if my visit with the Photography Interest Group yesterday was any indication, this is a very nice place to watch and photograph birds.  I should have checked it out ages ago.

Un-cropped photo of Great Blue Heron.  I did get out of the car for this one!

Info for Photographers

Photo hints:  You can get photos of many of the species right from your car.  The dirt roads are fairly narrow – so if you do exit your vehicle to get a “down low” perspective, or whenever you stop to get a shot – be courteous and make sure you pull over as far as possible to one side.

The roads are one way.  The perimeter road runs counter clockwise and so most of the photo ops will be on the driver’s side, although the roads through the center of the Wetlands do have some scenery and birds out of the passenger side.

The Viera Wetlands official site has a visitor’s checklist brochure you can download that lists all the species that have been sighted in the area, along with a map and some other information.  The brochure is here:  http://www.brevardcounty.us/environmental_management/documents/VieraWetlandsChecklistV3WEB.pdf.  It’s well worth looking at before you go and gives you an indication of how common each species is in the Wetlands.

An American Coot (the bird – not the author)

A Crested Caracara in flight. (Photo by Kevin McKinney)

Tripod/Monopod :  Definitely allowed – you can bring all the gear that will fit in your car.  You may also want to bring a bean bag so you can rest your camera on your car’s window sill.

Lenses:  Some of the birds get quite close to the side of the road.  I probably don’t have to tell you that for birds, longer lenses are better. But you can get by with a not so long lens here. I used my 70 – 300 on my D90 (1.5 crop factor = 450mm equivalent).  I also got some good frames with my 70 – 200 on the full frame D700.

Best time to visit : Now is a great time.  There’s lots of activity and the weather is what Florida is famous for.  Many of the birds are getting their breeding plumage.  In general, early February through June (nesting season) should continue to be a good time to go.  Go early in the day when the light is good and the animals are active.

Breeding colors are starting to show in this Glossy Ibis.

Other : Normal hours are Monday through Sunday, Sunrise to Sunset. The dirt roads through the wetlands are sometimes closed due to heavy rains.  If this is the case, you can still walk in.  You can also call ahead to make sure the roads are open (see below).

Summary

The photos I’ve posted here are just a few of the ones we made on Saturday, and this was just some of what there is to see.  This is a place worth going to multiple times.  Check out the links below for more images of different species.  You could also visit the Photography Interest Group on Flickr to see the photos that the others made yesterday.

Also, there’s a group on Flickr that appears to be pretty active and has many photos and discussions about Viera Wetlands.  If you’re interested, you may want to visit there to learn more and even join.  Here’s the link: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1224030@N24/

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Intro / Description

Great Blue Heron portrait

Note: you can click on any of these photos to go to my Flickr photo stream and view a larger version (click on the magnifying glass icon at the top). There’s also links at the end of this entry to the entire set and a slide show version of the photos.

In a “ToDo” post last year, I promised to visit and report on Gatorland and also to compare it to the St. Augustine Alligator farm for you. I was finally able to go and this post is the basic review. I’ll follow up with a comparison to the Alligator Farm shortly. Gatorland is a vintage, Florida, roadside attraction (started in 1949) and has grown into a 110-acre, photographer friendly theme park featuring some great shows with many kinds of animals on display. Although there are a lot of things to do in the park, the two that may attract nature and wildlife photographers more than others are:

• The Bird Rookery: Created in 1991 as a natural breeding area for the gators, the 10 acre Breeding Marsh contains over 100 adult alligators and is a completely natural environment. It attracts wild birds,which tend to nest above the alligators, since they provide protection against some of the bird predators such as raccoons and snakes.

The bird rookery and breeding marsh

• The Swamp Walk: This is located at the southern end of the park and is a self guided tour on a raised wooden walkway through a Cypress Swamp and affords visitors a rare look back into what much of Central Florida looked like before development.

There is also quite a bit for the non-photo family members to do, including shows, a small water park, a petting zoo, and displays of other captive animals.

The gator jumparoo show

Photo hints: There is a $100 year round photo pass available that gets you into the park earlier and out later than the public during nesting season. It allows entry at 7:30 am and the ability to stay past closing time until dusk.

Tripod/Monopod : Gatorland is a photographer friendly place. You can bring all of your equipment, including a tripod or monopod and there is ample room to use them as long as you are courteous.

Lenses: Of course, long lenses are a must for most bird photography and they will certainly help you at Gatorland. But since many of the birds are so used to people you can get very close to some of them, so very good shots with not so long lenses are possible.

Wood Stork and Alligator bokeh

Best time to visit : Early February through June (nesting season) where the weather is also not as hot.

Other : Normal hours are 9:00am – 6:00pm. The photographer early entry program for photo pass holders normally begins in February and runs through June. Check with the park before you go to make sure it is in effect. Be sure to ask about Senior Citizen and Florida Resident discounts.

Summary

Families will find lots to interest them at Gatorland.  It’s a good value in today’s overpriced theme park environment. And photographers will enjoy visiting this park multiple times.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

First, I want to wish all readers of this humble photo blog a very

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Second, this year your devoted author has decided to join the growing tradition where photo blogs post a collection of their favorite photos from the year.

To accomplish this, I’ve gone through the photos I made in 2009 and used Lightroom to rate them from 0 through 5 stars. The rating system I’ve adopted is as follows:

• 1 star – The photo is interesting
• 2 stars – The photo is worth showing to others
• 3 stars – The photo is the best of (or one of the best of ) a given shoot
• 4 stars – My favorite photo of a year
• 5 stars – My favorite photo (ever)

Photos without stars are seconds or not so good versions of other photos. I’ll keep them, but they probably won’t get any more attention.  Since adopting this rating system, I’ve tried to use it consistently.  Before this I would rate images, but the meaning of the ratings would vary.  As far as what they mean now, it’s all subjective and my opinion only.  Feel free to disagree, but I hope you’ll enjoy looking at the ones I’ve chosen.

I was really blessed in 2009 with a huge number of photo opportunities.  On my hard drive in my 2009 folder, I have about 16,000 images, taking up 164GB of space (I shoot mostly in RAW).  Of these:

• 3804 of the images have been cataloged in Lightroom.  Many of the remainder are source images for multi-shot panoramas or HDRs, or high rate bursts that I selected from.
• 1084 are rated 1 star or higher
• 692 are 2 star or higher
• 75 are 3 star or higher
• 1 is 4 star, and
• None are 5 star (I’m not done taking photos yet!)

Of the 692 that are 2 star or higher, I’ve selected 44 (mostly 3 star) images to include in a gallery of my favorite 2009 photos.  You’ve seen many of these photos in this blog, already.  But where it made sense, I re-processed them to try and improve them.  Here are the top ten. You can click on each of these to go to Flickr, where you can see a larger version.

My #10 favorite photo is:  Great Blue Heron in flight.  This heron didn’t like me aiming my camera at it.  It’s making a lot of noise as it leaves the area.  I was able to pan with its motion to get a sharp shot.

My #9 favorite photo is: Ketchikan harbor.  The trawler Isis, a house in the background, and the parked float plane are very representative of Alaska.

My #8 favorite photo is: Black Point Sunrise. This reminds me of a boundary of a set of points in a complex plane (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set)

My #7 favorite photo is: Glacier Bay Sunrise, A dawn panorama heading in to Glacier Bay National Park.

My #6 favorite photo is: Black-bellied Whistling-Duck in flight.  We saw this unusual and photogenic duck at Orlando Wetlands Park.

My #5 favorite photo is: Lake Lily Park tree and bird at dawn.  Sometimes you go out specifically to photograph.  Other times you go out just  carrying your camera.  It’s exciting to me when I find a photo like this one while I’m just out carrying my camera.  The light on this Cyprus tree caught my eye as we walked around the Lily Lake  one Saturday morning looking at their flea market.  The bird in the middle distance was a bonus.

My #4 favorite photo is: Blackpoint Wildlife Drive: Wide angle, winter dawn. On this particular morning, it was hard coming up with any good photo inspiration for the sunrise.  There were no clouds, not much color in the sky, not a lot of interesting landscape detail, no cooperating wildlife, the wind was blowing pretty hard, etc.  This palm tree had an interesting vine growing in it that was pointing back toward the road, so I  made it the subject of the picture and violated all the composition rules by putting it way off too one side.  To me, the road leading past the tree could represent the last part of the long journey of exploration and learning that led to being able to make this photo in this place at this time. The road is empty because each person’s journey is unique. Oh, and BPWD just happens to be a one way road – toward the photographer. The somewhat surreal colors come from a program called “Photomatix” that will “tone map” multiple, bracketed exposures.  Anyway, I liked it too.

My #3 favorite photo is: Gorilla watching people, Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, Disney’s Wild Kingdom.

My #2 favorite photo is: Breaching humpback, off shore from Juneau, Alaska.  In the full res version, the two white dots in tree to the upper left behind the whale are bald eagles.

And … my #1 favorite photo of the year is: Ship, water, glacier, rock.  A multiple shot panorama showing Johns Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park from the cruise ship MS Westerdam.  The full res version of this photo is 7747 x 4716 pixels = 36.5 megapixels.

I’ve posted a gallery of all 44 images on my website at www.ed.rosack.com/BO09.  I’ve also uploaded them to this Flickr set, and you can click this link to watch a slide show at Flickr.  When you watch the show, you might want to click the “show info” link.

Thanks for looking.

All content ©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

We had a family reunion of sorts in Denver last week for Thanksgiving.  Mary, Mike and Sara met Lynn and I at my mother’s place and we were able to see most of the Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and in-laws.  We had a great time and the Thanksgiving dinner was especially good, with 25 relatives at my sister’s house to consume two turkeys along with various gourmet attractions including sweet potato stuffed oranges.

We also had a chance to visit some Denver area photo attractions:  Buffalo Bill’s grave and museum at Lookout Mountain in Golden, The city of Denver’s bison herd, Garden of the Gods, and Pikes Peak.  We also got in a few minutes of browsing at the antique store along I-70.

Here are some of the photos from our visit – I’ve only posted a few of them here on my blog.  Click on any of them to go to Flickr, where you can look at a higher res version. You can also see the rest of this set on Flickr at this link.

We drove up to Lookout Mountain last Monday to visit the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave site, which is only about an hour from my Mom’s place.  The museum is nice, with a lot of information about Buffalo Bill and the wild west.  We especially liked the dress up area, where you can don chaps and a cowboy hat, climb up on the legless horse and rope a plastic calf. There’s also some very scenic overlooks from the parking area.

A little further up the road (I-70, exit 254), the city and county of Denver has a herd of bison that you can stop and see.

On Thanksgiving morning, Lynn and I got up very early and drove down to the Garden of the Gods before sunrise.  You might remember my earlier post about this place.  Let me just say that it’s even more beautiful at sunrise and well worth the early trip.

Saturday, we drove down to Pikes Peak and rode the cog railway to the top and back.  The visibility was much better this time than it was the only previous time we did this.  That time we had heavy fog and weren’t able to see much of the landscape.  This time, in spite of clouds – it looked like we could see forever.

It was a wonderful trip, we really enjoyed ourselves, and we’ll cherish the time we spent visiting these places with our family forever.

Today was our annual pilgrimage to Seaworld, courtesy of United Way.  It’s always enjoyable to stroll around the park.  There are a lot of images waiting to be made.  I posted the ones I made on my Flickr photo stream in the Seaworld November 2009 set.  Here’s one sample.  This fellow is watching me very intently, and I think he’s starting to realize my D700 isn’t a fish.

Nikon D700 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70-300 @ 270mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec, cropped

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The Photography Interest Group visited Orlando Wetlands Park yesterday and had another nice trip. There was lots to see and the weather was  pleasant.  We came across this very pretty bird with iridescent feathers and we’re wondering whether it’s a Glossy Ibis or a White-faced Ibis. My vote is that it’s a Glossy because of the dark eyes. A White-faced Ibis should have some red in the eyes. Does anybody reading this know for sure?

Nikon D90 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70 – 300 @ 300mm, f/11, 1/160 sec., cropped

We also saw a Wood Stork:

Nikon D90 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70 – 300 @ 300mm, f/11, 1/400 sec., cropped

And lots of flowers and a butterfly or two:

Nikon D90 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70 – 300 @ 300mm, f/8, 1/160 sec., cropped

You can see other photos we made yesterday in my set on Flickr and in the Photography Interest Group photo pool.

By the way, if you want to go out and explore Orlando Wetlands Park yourself, you’ll have to wait until next year.  The park closes on November 15 and reopens on February 1.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Today, I had some time and a new computer I wanted to try out, so I went looking for a photo to reprocess. Take a close look at the two images below. The differences aren’t as obvious in these smaller versions, so if you click on them, you can go to Flickr and look at large resolution versions of each so you can see the changes in detail.

Nikon D80 @ ISO 100, Nikon 70 – 300 lens @ 260mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec.

I made this photo back in April of 2007 in the bird rookery at the St. Augustine Alligator farm. The version above is “straight out of the camera (converted to JPG with Lightroom 2.5). It has potential, but the blown sky is bad and the levels and sharpening need work.

The version below was processed in CaptureNX2 for levels and curves. I also created a version that was sharpened, and a third version that adjusted the sky. I then opened all three in Photoshop and used layer masks to choose the portions of each that I wanted in the final photo. After saving the result, I imported it into Lightroom, tweaked clarity and vibrance, and cropped it slightly before once again exporting this JPG.

Same, photo: re-processed and slightly cropped.

I guess you can tell I’m not a straight out of the camera, photo journalist type photographer. I like the second version much better than the original. Do you?

The interesting thing to me is that almost 3 years after I made the photograph, I can go back and reprocess it with better software and better techniques. Since I captured it in RAW, I have much more flexibility in what I can change. Processing RAW is like having the original light and framing fixed, but being able to tweak the camera settings. Do I need Photoshop, CaptureNX2, and Lightroom? No, but each has strengths and I believe that if you want the best image you can get, you need to have SW and understand how to use it.

Or at least shoot in RAW so that when you do get the software and techniques, you can go back and have another go at things.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

I was out this morning with a couple of people from the Photography Interest Group.  We planned to explore a part of Orlando Wetlands Park that we’d never been to.  If you look on a Google map of the park, you can see a finger of land that sticks out into the lake on the east side.

On the map, you can also see two paths that lead there.  Our plan was to work our way over and along the finger into the lake to make some photographs from the new location.  Here’s a photo I made from the fork in the path at the beginning of our explorations.

You can’t tell where a path ends from the beginning – Nikon D700, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 @ 24mm, f/8.0, five exposures: 1/15 sec – 1/250 sec, Photomatix. Edited with the Topaz Adjust filter to bring out more detail in the clouds and to make the foreground slightly brighter.

We walked down this open and inviting path for a while until we were suddenly blocked by a solid mass of bushes and underbrush.  I really wonder why this is here if it leads nowhere.  Maybe it has been open in the past.

We trudged back out the way we came, and went up our normal route a little farther to the next path leading east.  This time, we managed to follow it for quite a ways – before it suddenly went under water.  So, we then backtracked again and circled around the lake clockwise for while, but we just couldn’t find anything interesting to photograph.  At this point, we were hot, tired and getting frustrated at our inability to get to where we wanted to go and the lack of photographic targets.  We started heading back to the car.  And that’s when we began to notice interesting things.  Here’s a photo of a butterfly hiding in the damp grass:

Butterfly, flowers, dew – Nikon D90 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70 – 300 @ 300mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec. Processed in Photoshop and Lightroom.

And here’s a photo I made of a hunting Little Blue Heron.

A Little Blue Heron catches a worm. (Is that an alligator to the left?) – Nikon D90, ISO 200, Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 @ 300mm, f/8.0, 1/250.

So, even though our explorations this morning didn’t succeed, we did end up getting some nice photos.  And we didn’t get them until we forgot about exploring and headed back toward the car.  The moral of this story is the title of the post.

Have you had a similar experience?  Post a comment about it.

These and a few more photos from this outing are on my Flickr page here.  As a special treat to my loyal readers (especially you, Mary!), I’ve uploaded this photo set as full resolution jpeg files and changed the license to an “Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license“. Click on any of the photos, then click on the “all sizes” icon and choose a size to download.

Oh, and Happy Halloween.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.