“The Chase” 1^st Place Winner in the Florida’s Avian Wonders category of the Orange Audubon Society’s 2008 (20^th Annual) Kit and Sidney Chertok Nature Photography Contest.

Taken on March 1^st, 2008 with a Canon EOS 40D and Canon 400mm f/5.6 USM L lens @ f/5.6, 1/1250s, ISO 200, Aperture Priority mode, hand held, at the Green Cay Wetlands.

My dad was last year’s first place winner in the birds category, and I have won third place and a couple honorable mentions in the past; but this year I finally won a first place award. Mind you, this was not the image I was expecting to win. I thought that my image of a Snowy Plover with a newly hatched chick would win out over this one, but it seems that the judges thought differently. I am glad that this image won, because it exemplifies everything that I preach about nature photography.

First of all it is an image of a Common Moorhen, which is perhaps one of the most common marsh birds in the world.

Second, it is a behavioral shot that tells you that this bird is fiercely territorial.

Thirdly, it is an image that I had envisioned in my mind for a long time. I had originally wanted to take a similar shot with American Coots, but those attempts never turned out the way that I wanted. However, whenever I saw a few moorhens, gallinules, or coots gathered in one area I always positioned myself at an angle where I could take a shot like the one above. A lot of patience and persistence paid off, and after six months of actively trying, I was able to get a result very close to what I had imagined.

Finally, I took this image with my Canon 40D, and Canon 400mm f/5.6 USM L lens; a very affordable combination for many beginning nature photographers, proving that you can get great images without completely breaking the bank.

Labels: 400mm, 40D, Award, Canon, Green Cay, Orange Audubon, Winner

Labels: WTD

There are several pairs of Snail Kites nesting in and around the Marsh Trail at Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. I’ve decided that this will be my summer project, to document the nest and eventually the fledgling kites, so you will probably see the gallery dominated by this one species. Of course if you’ve been a regular visitor here, you already know that the Snail Kite is one of my favorite species to photograph.

If you are interested in photographing the nesting kites at Loxahatchee, please keep the following in mind.

1. Many of the nests are too far away to see; only one nest is really visible from the Marsh Trail.


2. I recommend a minimum of a 400mm lens to be able to really get these birds large enough in the frame, and most of the time you will need a 500mm lens or more.


3. The visible nest is a morning shoot. The sun is just not in the correct position to be able to yield any good shots in the afternoon.


4. After about 7:30 in the morning the sun is blistering hot, and the gnats will swarm upon you. Wear insect repellant, sunscreen, and bring some water. You can easily become dehydrated out there. Also watch out for ants.


5. Finally, remember to be courteous to the other photographers and birders out there. Do not do anything that will disturb the kites. The Snail Kite is an endangered species in the Florida Everglades and it is illegal to disturb them.

Labels: Apple Snail, Loxahatchee, Snail Kite

Well things don’t always turn out the way you plan them. I’ve been at home sick for most of the month of May. My daughter brought home a cold that only lasted about five days for most people that caught it, but for me it turned into a throat and upper respiratory infection that kept me indoors most of the time. On the upside, I finally got to finish a couple of those X-box games that have been sitting on my shelf. The downside is that the gallery has been sparse lately.

However, another upside to all of this is that I’ve had some time to work on re-launching the Everglades Photographic Society (EPS) website. There are three fantastic articles on the site by fellow EPS members, for you to read and comment on. I will be publishing several articles on photography on the EPS website later in the year, and if things go as planned I will be producing a couple of video tutorials as well. At this time we hope to have regular updates every other month, so look for all new material on the EPS website again in August. Don’t forget to comment on the articles and let us know what you think.

Labels: EPS, Photography, Technique

I apologize for the lack of updates to the blog portion of this site recently. I’ve gotten caught up in a number of projects that have been taking up most of my time. I have and will continue to update the galleries with new images as I am able to take and process, but I won’t be updating this blog as often until late summer or early fall of 2008. I will be spending that time doing several things:

First is that we are in the middle of spring cleaning at my house. We just replaced the carpeting on the bottom floor with new wood laminate. Next we’ll have to replace the various window blinds that are no longer functional. Then we’ll be cleaning out the garage just as hurricane season approaches. So lots of home improvement stuff will be going on over the summer.

I’m also going to be pushing hard to launch and get the Everglades Photographic Society (EPS) moving in the right direction. We have a great mission and a wonderful family of photographers; now we just have to get some content up. Please join us on our public flickr group. Post some images, start a discussion, and let us know what type of nature photography tips, tricks, and tutorials you’d like to see. We’d really like to hear from you and hope to make EPS the place where you can learn how to really improve your nature photography skills and learn about the natural environment as well.

Finally I’m going to spend a good 30 percent of my photography time these coming months on portraits and beauty shots of people. Fashion and modeling photography have always fascinated me and over the past year I’ve taken some baby steps into learning how to properly capture those types of images. Thanks to strobist.com, I’ve really learned a lot about off camera lighting and it’s led me to want to pursue other types of photography. Well it’s time that I start putting what I’ve learned into practice; after all it’s the only way we get better at photography.

So don’t fret too much about the lack of updates here for a little while. There will still be plenty of places you can find me. Be sure to check out the gallery from time to time as I will continue to post images there. You can also always e-mail me your questions, which I am all too happy to answer. Find me on flickr and on the EPS flickr group, in fact, please join the EPS group on flickr. So I’m not going anywhere, just spreading the love a bit more.

I’d like to leave you with his little bit of encouraging news I received from fellow photographer Charles Slavens. This e-mail was originally sent by Elinor Williams of the Friends of Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge regarding the recent photo contest held there. This excerpt from the e-mail is the part I found encouraging:

" I think they might have fixed some of the complaints from last year that you forwarded to me from Jay Paredes and that I forwarded to them - they eliminated the Close-Up category, and all photos that were moved from one category to another still made the final judging. Without the confusion of a Close-Up category, the only photos that were moved ended up in Special Techniques, which was judged after the others. The judges acknowledged the difficulty of capturing tiny birds sitting still long enough for a photograph, although they still didn't seem to cut them any slack. There was an attempt to explain the rules a bit better on the application this time. Only one photo was disqualified, and it was a gorgeous one, too, for being on the wrong kind of board and being too long. "

So it looks like all that moaning and groaning I did last year made some difference. Let’s hope that they continue to improve the process to make it easy and fair for all involved and perhaps they’ll get better participation. I for one am curious to see this year’s winners…

Labels: Loxahatchee, Miscellaneous

As many of you know I work at a university and recently I’ve had a preview of a brand new image processing system that threatens to get rid of blurry images forever. Developed by Professor Alfred Raguboboli, Ph.D. from the College of Engineering; newly patented software will be made available as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Extended.

Combining the flexibility of RAW image processing software and 3D rendering technology used for Hollywood special effects, new software can compute the ideal focus for an image. The software starts by examining the EXIF data stored along with a digital photograph and determines the lens, focal length, and distance to where the camera locked focus. Using the RAW image data of the out of focus picture the computer calculates the ideal focused image and exposure and then renders it. This software is so powerful that it can even compensate for motion blur and camera shake.




Professor Raguboboli has been a pioneer in developing computer rendering systems that generate photorealistic simulations of the real world. His software has been used by the motion picture industry to create stunning visual effects for such films as Jurassic Park and King Kong. The idea to extend this technology for use by digital photographers came to him after his son’s fifth birthday party. Professor Raguboboli had taken some pictures of the event with his new Canon EOS 20D, and to his disappointment, many of the images came out blurry. The shutter speeds were just too long for the low light indoor shots. He soon realized that Adobe Photoshop simply lacked the tools necessary for him to recover the images to his satisfaction. That’s when the idea struck him. The rendering software, that he had dedicated much of his time to, used a virtual camera for composition and lens effects to render scenes realistically. The idea was if you could use a virtual camera to render an image, why not the reverse? By using the RAW image data, the computer can calculate the camera’s position and focal point. The computer then determines what new focal point would render the image with the best contrast, and renders the new image based on the original camera RAW data.

All of the information necessary to recreate the correctly focused image is right there in the RAW file. There is only one exact situation that could have created the blurry image. The software simply computes the correct scene that would have created the out of focus image and then renders the correct one.

The software is so revolutionary that pretty much everyone wants to license it. There have been requests from Adobe, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and a lot more. NASA and the FBI would also like to use the software. “If we had thought of this earlier, expensive repairs to the mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope might not have been necessary” exclaims Professor Raguboboli.

Despite all the offers for an exclusive license to this software, Professor Raguboboli is actually a firm believer in the open source community and will release a public beta test for the whole world to try it out for themselves on April 1st, 2008. You can download the software here.

Labels: 20D, Photography, Photoshop, Workflow

There is something about the analog process of shooting on film and making your own prints that made those photographers a lot more creative. I think it was the smaller margin of error that working with film afforded that made these photographers more creative. Limitations inspire creativity. When there’s room to make mistakes, people will make mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes turn out to be wonderful surprises. Did you forget to process your film correctly? Maybe you pushed it one stop, but forgot to process it that way. Maybe you left the photo paper in the chemicals for too long. More often than not, these mistakes led to disasters, but occasionally they might produce something extraordinary that might lead you to try new styles and techniques. It inspired experimentation and creativity.

The lack of instant feedback also inspired creativity. You never knew if you got the shot or not, so you’d take the same picture over and over again with different exposures, different lighting, and different film; hoping that one of the shots would turn out. If you were lucky, you’d have many versions to choose from afterwards.

Unfortunately, I’m finding a lot of that type of creativity has gone missing in today’s digital world. You would think that the instant feedback, lower processing cost, and unlimited post processing possibilities would lead to unheard amounts of creativity. Instead digital seems to have narrowed the vision of many of today’s photographers. The lack of limitations creates paralysis. Everything from EXIF data to Photoshop settings are studied and duplicated from one person to the next. It has become a game of precision, rather than creativity.

Before, photographers would talk about their stories of how a particular picture was taken. How one waited for the right moment, said something silly to get the right expression, or how the light reacted in an unforeseen way. Those stories are far fewer these days. Instead it’s all about the lens, camera body, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exact time of day, or light placement. The subject becomes secondary to the technicality of taking the picture. Everyone wants a formula that says if you do x, then you will always get y. Photography doesn’t always work that way.

I suppose this type of formulaic precision was bound to make its way into photography, once digital became popular. Over 15 years of working with computers has taught me that. Working for corporations that wanted their business plans to be as simple as a formula that could be predicted by a computer. Our strategy is x and the computer predicts that the result will be y. To assume that the computer must always be right has been the downfall of many business strategists. It isn’t. For one thing the computer can only make the calculation based on what it knows, and it cannot know everything. It lacks information relating to experience, trends, and most of all it lacks imagination.

So the next time you pick up your camera, think a little differently. Try not to worry so much about what your settings are. Experiment, play, and be creative.



Photographing the Total Lunar Eclipse on February 20th was challenging. After reading several tutorials on the web about how to do it, rapidly changing conditions due to cloud cover and winds made any planning I had done go straight out of the window. So I winged it.

This image is available for download as a desktop wallpaper in several resolutions:

Widescreen 960 x 600 Full Screen 1024 x 768
Widescreen 1280 x 800 Full Screen 1280 x 1024
Widescreen 1440 x 900 Full Screen 1600 x 1200
Widescreen 1680 x 1050 Widescreen 1920 x 1200

Labels: creativity, eclipse, Technique, wallpaper