The Flag of the United States of America, flying at the Fort Matanzas National Monument, near St. Augustine, Florida.

Many in our family have served in the military.

Lynn’s Grandfather, Harold Christensen was a Navy pilot in the second World War.   As an electrical engineer I enjoyed hearing him talk about working on the top secret team that developed radar for use on aircraft. Lynn’s father, Doug was also in the Navy.  He was stationed in Pensacola after WW II.  Both Lynn’s Grandfather and father been gone for some time.  We miss them.

My Mother’s brother, uncle Jack was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War.  He never said much about his time in the service and passed away a year or two ago.  We miss him too.

My Dad and his brother were both young men during World War II and both were in the Army.  My Dad started high school just as WW II broke out and he enlisted as soon as he could.  After basic training in Florida and some additional training as an intelligence recon scout, he shipped out to Europe.  By that time, the war had ended and he was stationed in Furth, Germany – just outside Nuremberg as part of the occupation.  He was there during the time of the Nuremberg trials.   Dad had several stories he used to tell about his time in the Army.  Most were quite fun, although I never heard him talk about the trials.  I’m not sure if all his experience was happy, but those were the only ones he shared with us.  He passed away quite a while ago, and of course we’ll always remember him.

I didn’t know much about my uncle’s service until we visited him just after Christmas last year and I asked about it.  Msgr. Edward V. Rosack (we called him Fr. Ed) also joined the Army Signal Corps after he graduated from high school during WW II.  He was older than my father and served in the Pacific Theater of Operations for about two years. His tour of duty took him to the Hawaiian Islands, Marshall Islands, (Einewetok, Kwajalein, the Palau Island (Angaur), Mariana Island (Saipan),  Ryukyu Island (Okinawa), Korea (In chon) and Yokohama, Japan. As a member of the 3922nd Signal Service Company of the 3117th Signal Service Battalion, his outfit was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star (Angaur, Palau Islands). Watching Ken Burns “Pacific” mini-series recently brought home what a great sacrifice and profound experience it must have been for him and everyone else in those battles. I can only imagine the hardships and horror that he and others endured.  I wonder if that is at least partly what drove him to become a man of peace for the rest of his life.  Sadly, Fr. Ed passed away in March of this year, not long after we visited him. We’ll always remember him too.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

I started coming down with a cold yesterday and today it’s worse.  I don’t have much energy for photography or anything else.  Lynn did manage to drag me out to lunch with my sister and brother in law who were visiting this weekend.

We stopped by Central Winds Park on the way home and wandered down to the Lake Jessup shoreline.  I was happy that there was a good variety of Florida things to see.  In the ten minutes we spent down there, we saw two wild alligators and several kinds of birds, including a Great Blue Heron, Little Egret, Ibis, and an Osprey flying away with a fish in his claw.

Here’s one photo I made with my Canon S90.

Also under the weather:  Lake Jessup Cyprus Tree and clouds

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

1. Photos and information on a visit to Gatorland, yesterday.
2. An update on this blog after three years of publication
3. A political comment

Feel free to read the portion you’re interested in, or indulge me and look at all three.

1. Gatorland May Day Update

If you haven’t yet visited Gatorland this year, now is still a great time.  Yesterday morning, I decided to drive down there to see how the rookery is progressing through nesting season.  We’ve  had a cold winter in Florida and as a result, the birds are about a month behind the normal schedule. The last time I visited (in March), it was mostly the great egrets building nests, courting, and sitting on eggs. Yesterday the Great Egrets were still very active (many with large chicks), but there are also Cattle Egrets, Tri-Colored Herons, Anhingas, and Cormorants all very actively fulfilling the purpose of life.

By the way, have you looked lately at the Gatorland blog that Mike Godwin writes ?  He’s posted a report on the current nesting activity, with a lot of detail and photos.  There’s also an active Gatorland Flickr group and looking at the photos posted there on any given day can give you a real good idea of what’s going on.

Here’s some of what I saw yesterday:

Pair of Great Egret chicks in nest: You can get an idea of how far along the Great Egrets are by the size of this cute pair.

Cattle Egret: This one was hiding in the brush, but still posing.  The Cattle Egrets seem to be just getting started with a lot of nest building going on.

Mother Cormorant with just hatched chicks:  Not a great photo, but you can see the chicks beside the very protective mother.  Their eyes were not yet open and there was another un-hatched egg in the nest, so they had to be only hours old.

Common Moorhen Chick: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a moorhen chick before, but I have to admit I haven’t been paying that much attention to this species.  They’re very common in the area.

Wood Storks and chicks on nests: Mike Godwin is a great host at Gatorland.  He made sure we knew where these nests were so we could photograph them.  There were two right next to each other and they were very crowded and active.

You can click on any of the photos above to view them on Flickr.  You can also take a look at my Gatorland set on Flickr for some other photos from yesterday (the last nine in the set) as well as from previous visits.

2. Happy Birthday, Blog!

My first post was on the 4th of May, 2007, so it will be three years old on Tuesday.  Not a long time in absolute terms, but more than a lifetime for some in “internet years”.

The blog has morphed a little bit since then.  Originally it was just a place to share my photos, photo experiences, and talk about photo related ideas. I still do that, but I’ve added a theme around all of this:  I try to find interesting places around here to make photographs and then post blog entries including links to information about the places as well as some hints on what’s there and how to photograph it.  My hope is that this will be interesting to photo enthusiasts visiting the area as well as people who live here.  I know I’ve looked for similar blogs when I travel.

With this one, there are a total of 89 posts so far which is an average of about two per month, although lately I’ve been doing pretty well keeping up with my goal of one post each week.  Of these, 45 are tagged “CFL Photo ops”, about photo opportunities in the area.

As near as I can tell from my server logs (and disregarding spam and robots), I seem to modestly successful – at least some people are reading what I write. If I’m interpreting the CyStats log correctly, I have over 100 RSS subscribers, and about 10 – 30 visitors on average each day. They are from multiple countries, which is really nice.  The most visitors I’ve had in a single day was close to 200 early this year after Jim Goldstein posted his “best photos of 2009″ entry on his blog.  Thanks, Jim!  The most viewed page is the main page, with the My Favorite Photos of 2009 post coming in second.

The most used browser, by a slim margin is Internet Explorer (~51%), followed by Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.  Many people still use IE version 6.0.  If that’s you – update!  Modern browsers are much more capable and secure.

Recent, frequent external search terms include things like: “focus bracketing”, “gatorland photographers”, “central florida photos”, “orlando bird photography”, “alligator farm orlando”, “orlando photo ops”, “photographing birds in central flordia”, “good area to photograph fl”, “central florida places to photo”, “wildflower photography in florida”, “photographing birds in central florida”, “photographing wildlife in central florida”, and “ed rosack”.  I’m pleased that people are finding my blog with those search terms.

Of course, I’m my most loyal reader. I’ve enjoy writing it, but I also really enjoy going back and reading it and looking at the photos. I guess it really is a blog in the sense of a personal journal.

And what’s up with all the weird spam comments?  Do they really think I’ll let those through?  Would anybody?  Why do they keep sending them?

I don’t really have any plans to change the blog going forward.  However, I’d really like to figure out how to encourage more genuine comment and interaction.  And, I’m always open to your ideas and suggestions.  Especially for places around here to visit!

3. Warning – Politics Ahead

Caution – I apologize, but this paragraph is political.  It does relate to photography and nature in general.  Read at your own risk.

As I wrote down the words in topic one above about witnessing nature in all its glory, I couldn’t help but think a great deal about the gulf coast shoreline and what is beginning to happen there to countless birds, their chicks, and other wildlife from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  The impact on people who are continuing to recover from hurricane Katrina will be an additional nightmare still to come.  And the news this morning reports that it will eventually reach the east coast of Florida too as the Gulf Stream current spreads the spill.

The scope of this disaster is unprecedented – and it was a remote possibility.  We can’t jump to conclusions yet, but complacency and the bottom line during the design of this oil drilling rig sure do seem to be causing great damage.  I wonder how many of the decisions that were made in the design were probably financial in nature and not based on the worst case outcome, which by the way is occurring?  The platform was either not designed or not built to preclude or handle it.

I also wonder if there are engineering memos or PowerPoint slides somewhere warning of this type of consequence if the design went forward as planned?  I wonder how many fail safes in the well shut off valve didn’t fail safe and instead just failed due to shoddy workmanship or poor design?  I wonder how the engineers that designed, built, and tested the equipment on that well feel today?  I wonder how their management can sleep at night?  I wonder how long British Petroleum will take to bring the well leak under control?  And I wonder how they will ever undo the damage they’ve done.

So far there are no answers, only questions.  And thousands of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico every hour of every day.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

This morning, I revisited some photos I made in September of 2006.  Before Sara and Mike took Lynn and I to Wisconsin’s Door county, I’d never seen (or heard of, or even thought about) goats on a roof.  But on N Bay Shore Dr in Sister Bay, you’ll come across a small herd of goats on the roof of  Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant.  Not only that, but a Google search will reveal other goats on other roofs.  And – a search on Flickr returned 143 images this morning (actually this is a surprisingly small number) of goats on roofs.  I wonder if this is a trend?  You really do need to pay attention to keep up.

Door county is a beautiful place.  And it has goats on a roof too.  I don’t think I captured them in a unique way, but they’re certainly worth sharing with others.  What unique or unusual things have you seen and shared lately?

Goats on a Roof – 1

Goats on a Roof – 3

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

For a few weeks last year, I regularly saw one family on my way home from work – they were often in a field next to the entrance ramp where I get on the toll road .  It was interesting to watch the young bird grow and eventually leave the parents.  I’ve also seen them in parking lots and even crossing major roads (on foot!).

According to Wikipedia, The Florida Sandhill Crane subspecies is estimated to have some 5,000 individuals remaining and is protected in our state.  Sad fact:  Sandhill Cranes are hunted in several western states and Canada.  Fun fact:  Ten million year old fossils of the Sandhill crane have been found which makes it the oldest known bird species still surviving.

Sandhill Cranes and nest – Nikon D90, ISO 200, f/8, 1/640 sec, Sigma 150-500mm @ 500mm, 60 meters distance

I didn’t realize that Sandhill Cranes nest on the ground.  I saw a nest for the first time yesterday at Vierra Wetlands and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  How has this species survived for ten million years using this strategy?  Can you imagine how difficult it must be to protect a nest from all of the predators in the middle of a marsh?  I saw large alligators not far from this nest and I’m certain that there must be raccoons, snakes and other things that would love to eat eggs or small birds close by.

Alligator on bank at Vierra Wetlands - Nikon D90, ISO 200, f/8, 1/640 sec, Sigma 150-500mm @ 500mm

iBird says that both parents incubate the eggs during the day, but only the female does so at night.  It doesn’t say what the male bird does at night, but it must have to help defend the female.  I can only conclude that these birds have to be very fierce defenders.  Alligators and other predatory animals must learn to leave them alone – after all,  modern alligators have been around for about eighty million years!

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

A photographer should notice and share.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

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.

I hope that this season finds all of you healthy and happy and able to spend time with your families.  I wish you well and only the best for now and throughout the coming new year.

The following Christmas greeting translations are provided by wikipedia.  (Please see the original site for more entries and proper characters.)

* Gëzuar Krishtlindjen dhe Vitin e Ri – Albanian, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”
* Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand Eastern Armenian
* “Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Soorp Dzuhnoont” Western Armenian
* Zorionak eta Urte Berri On! Basque for Merry Christmas
* Nedeleg laouen na bloavezh mat in Breton
* Tchestito Rojdestvo Hristovo in Bulgarian
* Bon Nadal i un Bon Any Nou! in Catalan
* Bon Nadal – Catalan for Happy Christmas
* Nadelik looan na looan blethen noweth Happy Christmas and Happy New Year in Cornish
* Sretan Boži? – Croatian for Happy Christmas
* Veselé Vánoce a š?astný nový rok – Czech language, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”
* Glædelig jul – Danish
* God jul – Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, lit. “Good Yule”
* Gleðilig Jól og gott Nýggjár – Faroese – Merry Christmas and happy New Year
* Vrolijk Kerstfeest or Zalig Kerstfeest with en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar – Dutch, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”
* Gajan Kristnaskon “Merry Christmas” in Esperanto
* Häid jõule – Estonian
* Maligayang Pasko – Filipino word, a Common Christmas Greeting in the Philippines which was Merry Christmas in English Translation.
* Hyvää joulua – Finnish
* Joyeux Noël – French for “Happy Christmas” used in France, French Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Louisiana, Switzerland, the Lebanon and Francophone Africa
* Noflike Krystdagen en in protte Lok en Seine yn it Nije Jier! in Frisian
* Frohe Weihnachten/Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein glückliches/gutes Neues Jahr – German for Merry Christmas/Merry Christmas and a Happy/Good New Year
* (Kala Christougenna) – Greek for Merry Christmas, also used in non-Greek many Eastern Orthodox nations, as the first Christian masses were celebrated in Greek.
* Mele Kalikimaka – Hawaiian
* Boldog karácsonyt/Kellemes karácsonyi ünnepeket : Merry Christmas/Pleasant Christmas Holidays in Hungarian
* Selamat Natal: “Christmas best wishes” Indonesian
* Idah Saidan Wa Sanah Jadidah in Iraq
* Nollaig Shona Duit – Ireland, (Irish Language), Gaeilge, lit. “You have a happy Christmas”.
* Buon Natale – Italian for Happy Christmas
* Natale hilare et Annum Faustum! in Latin
* Linksm? Šv. Kal?d? ir Laiming? Nauj?j? Met? – Lithuanian “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”
* Schèine Chreschtdaag an e gudde Rutsch in Luxembourg dialect
* (Sre?en Boži?) – Macedonian for Happy Christmas
* Il-Milied u s-Sena t-Tajba – Malta – “Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year”
* Nollick ghennal as blein vie noa in Manx Gallic
* Meri Kirihimete in Maori
* Weso?ych ?wi?t Bo?ego Narodzenia in Polish
* Feliz Natal in Portuguese
* Cr?ciun Fericit! Romanian for Merry Christmas
* S’Rozhdestvóm Khristóvym! or, more commonly, simply (S Rozhdestvóm!) for the informal Christmas greeting, while the traditional religious greeting is Khristós rozhdáyetsya!, meaning “Christ is born!” and the traditional response is Slávite!, meaning “Let us glorify him!”;  (S Nóvym gódom!) – Happy New Year! in Russian.
* Heughliche Winachten un ‘n moi Nijaar in Low Saxon
* Nollaig chridheil huibh in Scottish Gaelic
* “Sre?an Boži?” (Serbian) “Merry Christmas” also Hristos se rodi.
* Veselé Vianoce a Š?astný Nový rok – Slovak language, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”
* Vesele Boži?ne Pražnike Sre?no Novo Leto or Vesel Boži? in sre?no Novo leto in Slovene
* Feliz Navidad y próspero Año Nuevo – Spanish lit. “Happy Nativity and prosperous New Year”
* God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt År in Sweden
* Sawadee Pee Mai or Souksan wan Christmas in Thai
* Mutlu Noeller – Turkish – “Happy Christmas”
* (Z Rizdvom Khrystovym) or, when meeting in person, (“Khrystos narodyvsya! – Slavimo yoho!”, lit. “Christ was born! – Praise be with Him!”) in Ukrainian.
* Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda – Wales (by Welsh speakers), “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”
* Boldog karácsonyt! in Hungary
* (Shèngdànjié kuàilè) – Merry Christmas!,  (X?nnián kuàilè) – Happy New Year! in Chinese
* (Meri Kurisumasu) – Merry Christmas!,  (Yoi o-toshi-o) (before),  (after) – Happy New Year! in Japanese

All original content ©2002 and 2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

You chose to answer the call.  Your commitment to freedom and your courage and sacrifices have brought the blessings of liberty to the people of the United States of America.  Most of the world will never know liberty and freedom like we know it.

It may not be possible for our gratitude to match the enormity of your gifts to us.  We are grateful that you stand between us and those who would do us harm.  We appreciate you giving our children a hopeful future.  And we pay tribute to those who offered their lives in defense of our freedom.

A view of San Francisco National Cemetery located in the Presidio, on Christmas Day, 2005 in the rain.  Minolta Dimage 7Hi @ ISO 100, 28mm eq., f/4.5, 1/45 sec.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

She has also written several articles in various other magazines that I’ve done the photos for, so I’ve had my photos published with her words several times before.

Recently, she was interviewed by Melody Amsel-Areili for the monthly magazine, Collectors News and the article appears as the July 2009 cover story.  You can download a PDF of the article from their site.  Lynn provided 8 of my photos for them to use with the article.  They used three, and I was very pleasantly surprised yesterday when she showed me her copy of the magazine with one more of my photos used as the cover image!

This particular photo is one that I took in February of 2003 with a Minolta DiMAGE 7H i camera.  In looking at it again after more than 6 years, I’m impressed by the quality of the output.  It does have quite a bit more noise than my modern cameras, but it’s easily handled in Lightroom.  I remember the 7Hi  very fondly: 5MP, with very SLR like controls, including a manual zoom ring and even raw output.  I tried using the raw files but the work flow tools were still pretty primitive back then, so I shot in jpg format.  I still have the camera, although I haven’t used it in quite a while.  This particular photo was of one of the walls in our home where Lynn had displayed a number of her trivets and stands.  We made it to include in her first book, but ended up using a different version that showed a larger portion of the wall.   I’m really glad this one eventually found such a nice use!

Here’s the photo used for the cover: