A Busy Year to Come

Well folks, many of you know by now that the lack of updates is due to my busier schedule these days.

First, EPS and the Friends of the Loxahatchee Refuge are hard at work putting together the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge 26th Annual Photography Contest. Details for how to enter the contest are now available at the EPS web site. Yes, this is the very same photo contest that I criticized back in February of 2007. So, now I’m putting my foot in my mouth, as coordinating a photography contest is difficult work. Still, we’ve made some changes to avoid some of the more confusing aspects of the contest; and to help improve the contest now and in the future, we’re very interested in hearing your feedback.

Amy and I are also expecting our second daughter in February. Having a pregnant wife and a three year old has made this second time around a bit more challenging, but the rewards of having a family are worth sacrificing those very early mornings in the field. Still, I do miss those sunrises so I’ll be out and about for a few days during my two week holiday break.

About a week ago, one of my Western Digital My Book external hard disk drives, containing all of my RAW image files since 2003, failed. I had a backup on a second hard disk that I store at work, and so I was able to recover the images. It just reminds me that every digital photographer should have a good backup plan in place. You can lose those precious memories in an instant due to a hard disk failure. Although I already had a good backup plan in place, as an extra security measure I’ve now added a Drobo Firewire 800 to my list of backup devices. It should be set up in a week and will add that much more peace and security to my collection of over 600 GB worth of RAW files.

Finally, if you’re a PC gamer, I don’t have to explain the time suck that is World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King. It’s my escape from my escape. For a while photography became my escape from everyday life, but since I’ve become more active with groups like EPS, the Friends of the Loxahatchee Refuge, as well as photographing events for the College of Science at FAU; I sometimes need an escape from my hobby. Therein lays the problem of incorporating your hobby with your work, because soon your hobby turns into work. But it’s all good, as long as you can set aside some time to yourself.

Happy Holidays!

Least Grebes

First posted on the Tropical Audubon Society’s Bird Board last week, a pair of Least Grebes has recently been located at the Yamato Scrub Natural Area in Boca Raton, Florida. The pair had a nest with two eggs, and the first chick hatched on the morning of September 29, 2008. The second hatched the following morning on September 30th. This is the first documented nest of a Least Grebe in Florida. The Least Grebe is a resident of the Caribbean and is only occasionally sighted in Florida. The last confirmed sighting was in Key Deer National Wildlife refuge in 1988. So it is a thrill for many birders to be able to see this bird in South Florida, let alone to find it breeding here.

On October 2nd the grebes abandoned their original nest and built a new nest in an area of denser vegetation. The grebes are wary of people, but don’t seem disturbed by all the attention they are getting. The nest was probably moved due to threats from predators such as raccoons. These grebes also defend the nest vigorously. They are constantly chasing away Common Moorhens and Mottled Ducks from the areas surrounding their nest. The adults have been taking turns caring for the two chicks, which often ride on an adult’s back.

Take an Educational Walk

An image from the June Gallery of the Snail Kites nesting at Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge has recently been published in a book for young readers called “Take A Wetlands Walk” by Jane Kirkland. The book is a great introduction to wetland habitats, animals, and plants. It is part of a series of Take a Walk Books, and can be purchased on Amazon.com. The Snail Kite picture appears on the bottom of page 23.

Back in July of 2007, I wrote about a boating trip with Sisbro Studios for an educational book and DVD that they were working on. Well it’s about to be released soon and you can see the trailer for “The Riddle in a Bottle” at the Sisbro Studios web site.

Finally, on October 18th and 25th, I and other members of the Everglades Photographic Society will be participating in the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation’s Student Photography Project. If you are a photographer who would like to volunteer for this project, please contact Susanna Laurenti.

Beyond the Technical

I read a fair amount of books, blogs, and listen to several podcasts on photography. A common thread these days seem to be a thirst by many readers and listeners for formulaic “how to” information. As if photography was a “one size fits all” activity. It’s not. Photography is creativity, and you can’t put a formula on creativity. Photography is art, and again, you can’t put a formula on art. But like, art, there is a technical side to photography. In order to paint you need to learn how to mix colors, and handle a paintbrush, and take advantage of the type of media you are painting on. Similarly photography has shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, and depth-of-field that photographers must master to excel in their craft.

The popularity of this “how to” information clearly shows that photographers are eager for information about the basics. However, many never really move beyond the basics because they become overly concerned with the technicalities of taking a picture. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO, depth-of-field; how do they all relate to one another? How do I know which variable to change to get the image I want to create? This is where the majority of hobbyists get stuck, in the details. So books and the Internet have tried to fill this gap with information and tutorials. Magic formulas for given situations. Many do a great job of teaching you how to take a shot under given set of conditions, but few venture on to explain why. Therein lays the problem. It is easy to explain “how”, but a lot more difficult to explain the “why”, because “how” is technical but “why” is purely creative. It is in understanding the “why” that lets a photographer move beyond the basics.

A famous artist can teach you how to create a brush stroke, he may not be able to impart to you the creativity needed to take full advantage of using that painting technique. It’s much easier for him to simply have you create a similar image along side of him so that you can experience the same circumstances and learn when he uses that particular brush stroke. Through having shared experiences he hopes that you will pick up on his creativity. In photography you can’t always share the experience with an expert. There are many who offer workshops, but often they have equipment that is different from yours. Also, is a one, two, three, or five day workshop enough to move you beyond the basics? It’s probably not, at least not enough to overcome old habits.

So what’s a struggling digital photographer to do? We’ll here’s the secret to moving beyond those basics, practice. That’s it. Forget about creativity for a while. Forget about trying to get images similar to those of a photographer whom you admire. Spend a few weeks, just practicing the basics. Start with one variable at a time. Lock in the rest, and go shoot. Spend a day changing only the shutter speed. See its effects. Do the same for aperture, then ISO, etc. In this way you are creating your own experiences, and learning each variable on its own. By seeing what each of these items do on their own, you will get a feel for how they each affect the final image. Soon you’ll find that your creative side will take over, and it will combine all of these variables and start creating images the way you intended them to be.

You see, too much is made of the interrelation of shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and depth-of-field. Many people have trouble with these concepts because they are trying to understand it from a technical point of view, when it’s not. The individual pieces (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, depth-of-field) are technical. So you need to understand what each does individually. However, how they relate to one another and how to use them together is purely creative.

Assiduous August

Hello everyone. I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates to this site recently. It’s been an incredibly busy couple of months. The searing heat, high humidity, and summer thunderstorms have kept me from photographing for most of August.

I’ve also been very busy with work relating to several initiatives that the Everglades Photographic Society (EPS) have undertaken. EPS will have a booth at this year’s birding festival in Titusville, Florida and I hope to have some additional great news in the very near future. If you haven’t been to the EPS site lately, please stop by. There are some terrific articles on the site and many more are on the way.

I have also been incredibly busy at work, preparing for the fall semester at FAU. August 23rd was the official day that classes started, but Monday, August 25th is when all of that hard work on the computer systems over the summer actually starts to pay off, or not.

I’ve also recently done a few more photo shoots of people; a couple of aspiring models and also an aspiring musician. Those images take much longer to process as they often involve hours of work in Photoshop. Not that the images are overly manipulated, but it’s about striking that balance between making the subject look their best, yet keeping the retouching as subtle as possible. It takes a lot of work to achieve that balance. Whereas in nature photography I’m usually trying to simply keep the images exactly as I saw it, with people you’re trying to make the image as close to how the client envisioned it. A lot of work, and so far I’ve been doing it for free, but probably not for too much longer.

Amy and I are also expecting our next child in February. Our daughter Arwen just recently turned 3 years old and she’s been a bundle of energy. From morning to midnight we get no rest from her and so coupled with the pregnancy we’re busier than ever at home too.

As you can see things are going well, so thank you to those that have written me with concerns about my well being. I’m still here, just busier than ever. In the computer industry there’s a saying that the personal web page of the best web designers are always in need of updating, because they’re too busy working on other people’s web sites. That’s not unlike many situations I always find myself in.

There is a disturbing trend that I am seeing regarding the feeding of juvenile Purple Gallinules at Wakodahatchee and Green Cay. Visitors are removing the flowering stalks of the Fire Flag and using them to try to lure the juvenile gallinules to feed from their hands. When you do this, you are destroying the Fire Flag blooms causing them to decay more rapidly and thus reducing the amount of available food for the gallinules that feed on them. Not only that, but you are endangering the health and well being of the gallinules by making them look towards humans as a food source. This type of behavior by visitors would not be tolerated at a National Park or Wildlife Refuge, and I’m pretty sure it’s not legal. So please do not feed the juvenile gallinules and if you see anyone doing so, please ask them to stop. Remember that these places are there to help protect wildlife populations in the area.

Since I’m such a glutton for creating more work for myself, please remember that you can always e-mail me your nature photography related questions, or better yet post those questions on the EPS flickr group. Thanks, and I’ll see you out there, whenever I get around to going out again…

The Chase

“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.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattening

Snail Kites

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.

A new beginning… The Everglades Photographic Society.

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.

We’ll be right back after these messages…

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…

You say you want a revolution…

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.

Going digital, the death of creativity.

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

Limpkin Park

There’s a whole new rock band over at Green Cay. Four Limpkin chicks (Aramus guarauna) have been keeping visitors and photographers busy with their antics. I was told that five chicks originally hatched about a week ago, but now there are only four. Unfortunately that’s how nature works by weeding out the weaker ones, so the stronger ones survive to perpetuate the species. I was surprised at how aggressive the little chicks are toward each other. Although they huddle close for comfort and protection, when the parents are around the little ones really push, peck, and tug at each other.



The Limpkin is usually placed in its own family group, and although it looks somewhat like an Ibis it is much more closely related to rails and cranes. Easily recognized by its loud echoing call; Limpkins in Florida were almost hunted to extinction for food. Like the Snail Kite, Limpkins feed primarily on the Apple Snail (Pomacea spp.) and has benefitted from the introduction of South American Apple Snails into the South Florida ecosystem from the aquarium trade. In fact almost all the Apple Snails in Green Cay are of the nonnative South American variety.

Speaking of which, one of the earliest birds to return from South America, is North America’s largest Swallow, the Purple Martin. The nest boxes at Green Cay are starting to fill up with Purple Martins which usually arrive in late January and early February. At the moment these birds are battling the European Starlings which compete with the Martins for their nest boxes. Here is a species that has come to rely on man for its survival. The colonies found in Eastern North America now rely almost exclusively on birdhouses built for them to nest. Unlike their Western counterparts, the Eastern Purple Martin population could be seriously threatened if their nest boxes were removed.

With their fairly predictable flight pattern and their close proximity to the Green Cay and Wakodahatchee boardwalks, the Martins make great subject to practice advanced flight shot photography. You have a relatively small and fast bird, so you’ll have to lead your target well. Because of how dark the Martins are you’ll have to dial in a +1 to +1.5 stop exposure compensation for their color to come out, especially against a clear blue sky. However, when these birds fly low enough to allow for a green background, then your shutter speed is going to plummet if you are in aperture priority (Av) mode, so it’s better to use Manual exposure (M).

Canon Digital Rebel XSi (450D)

At the PMA (Photo Marketing Association Annual Show), going on now at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Canon recently announced the new Digital Rebel XSi. You can get the full specifications and press release over at dpreview.com.

I know that there are many of you that have purchased previous versions of the Canon Digital Rebel series, and continue to purchase updated models in the Rebel series as features are added. The Rebel series has some excellent cameras in the lineup, often coming very close in feature sets found in Canon’s prosumer line of cameras, the xxD series (i.e. 20D, 30D, 40D).

So if you’ve been sticking to Canon’s Digital Rebel line of digital cameras, upgrading year after year, Canon has a message for you in the new XSi. Stop, and upgrade to the xxD series. Two feature changes in the XSi signal this message to me. The first is that Canon has once again, changed the battery type; and second they have changed the media type from compact flash (CF) to secure digital (SD). This will be a frustrating upgrade for current Digital Rebel users, since it would involve buying new spare batteries, a new battery grip, and new memory cards. All of that adds up quickly. Compare this to the more stable xxD line where the battery grip has changed little through three models (20D, 30D, and 40D) and the batteries and compact flash cards have remained the same since at least the 10D. So current Digital Rebel users this is probably not the camera upgrade for you.

Many people have always thought of the Digital Rebel line as the lite version of the xxD line. But the XSi’s new features put it more along the lines of a step up for those who have point and shoot digital cameras that want to upgrade to a digital SLR. Now the XSi will accept the same memory cards that your point and shoot digital camera uses. This was a smart move that will probably continue to drive more point and shoot users over to a digital SLR.

The disappointment regarding the XSi was that current Digital Rebel owners really wanted a lower priced 40D in the form of the XSi. The XSi did inherit some features from the 40D, but none that would really threaten 40D sales. Instead, it’s clear that Canon has targeted the Digital Rebel series as a step up from a digital point and shoot.

Here are my thoughts on some of the XSi’s features:

12.2 Megapixel CMOS sensor - Canon is playing the megapixel catch-up race here. They have not increased the sensor size, just added more pixels. The result is going to be more noise in the image.

3.5 frames per second - Good enough if you’re upgrading form a point and shoot, but misses the mark if you’ve been using a digital SLR for a while now. Canon has all of that 20D and 30D technology sitting around that they should be able to recycle at a lower cost. This camera should have had at least 4.5 to 5 frames per second.

9-point wide-area AF system with f/2.8 cross-type centre point - This is the AF system that was on the 20D, 5D, and 30D, It is not the one from the 40D.

DIGIC III image processor - The DIGIC III, has been found in nearly every camera model Canon has made over the past year, including point-and-shoots. The Digital Rebel seems to be the last model to get this feature. The Xti should have had it years ago. You do get 14-bit which is good for recovering shadows and HDR. The other stuff like highlight-tone-priority are really JPEG only features that can be replicated with any good RAW processing software.

Fully compatible with all Canon EF and EF-S lenses and EX-series Speedlites - Oddly, Nikon can't claim the same thing about their system. The low end D40 isn't compatible with all Nikon lenses.

There are two features that Canon should have added to the Rebel that would have made it a real competitor to the other entry level DSLRs. The first should have been a high resolution LCD. The larger LCDs that Canon uses have the same pixel counts as the old smaller LCDs. The larger LCDs only make the images look fuzzier and doesn't help you see if you've taken a blurred shot or not. The second should have been an HDMI port so that you can view your images on a High-Definition TV.

Where to purchase:

Canon Rebel XSi 12MP Digital SLR Camera
Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera

Space Coast Birding Festival, Day 3

Our third and final day of attending the Space Coast Birding Festival started off on the wrong foot. Cloudy and overcast along with some wind gusts made the prospect of photographing any wildlife seem bleak. We had made plans to go find the Florida Scrub Jays again, but the uncooperative weather changed our minds; and we headed straight to the Viera Wetlands instead. We were hoping that Viera, being a little further south, would get clear skies faster than the Titusville area. That didn’t happen and we were once again taking photographs under gloomy skies. Surprisingly we still found some very good opportunities despite the weather.



Crested Caracara  Caracara cheriway
I hope that you’ve enjoyed the picture previews I’ve posted over the past few days. These and the rest of the images from our trip will be processed and posted in the January gallery over the next week or so.

Space Coast Birding Festival, Day 2

Florida Cottonmouth  Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti
It was overcast in Titusville today, with very few periods where the sun was visible in the sky. Photography was challenging, but when you’re out with friends, you still have a lot of fun. I borrowed the idea for the image above from Michael Wolf, and used my wide angle lens very close to this Florida Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti). Because of the cool weather and even cooler water temperature, this venomous snake was rather lethargic and didn’t mind all of the attention. Still you only really attempt pictures like this if you are familiar with an animal’s habits. Having spent a large part of my youth catching snakes in the wild has given me a lot of experience with this particular species. This was no comfort to Chuck Hersh, who was experiencing some anxiety about how close I had gotten to the snake.

In the afternoon we attended a very well put together slide show presentation by Joanne Williams about Madagascar, Africa, The Pantanal, and the Everglades. Tomorrow we’re going to try to stop by the Viera Wetlands before heading back to South Florida.

Space Coast Birding Festival, Day 1

Canon just recently announced the new Rebel XSi. I will be writing my thoughts on this new model in a future posting, but for now you can head over to dpreview.com for a good run down of the new features.

I am still at the 11th Annual Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Tutusville, Florida. We had a good afternoon shooting and I just wanted to share one of the images with you.



Florida Scrub Jay  Aphelocoma coerulescens

4 Years, 3 Cameras, and 500 Gigabytes Later

I just finished archiving all the photos I have taken since I’ve owned a digital SLR camera. It filled an entire 500 GB hard disk for all the files from November 2003 to December 2007. Three separate digital SLRs were used to create those files, the Canon EOS Digital Rebel (300D), Canon EOS 20D, and the Canon EOS 40D. What a long way we’ve come in just a short amount of time.

I have all of my images stored on two Western Digital 500 GB My Book drives. Each drive contains the identical information as the other, and I will be moving one drive to an off-site location. I think that’s a pretty good backup strategy. Before archiving the files were stored in two locations as well. Older files are stored on a 250 GB Buffalo LinkStation, and newer files are stored on an internal 250 GB hard disk. The files stored on both of these drives are backed up to an external Western Digital 500 GB My Book drive. This helps keep the files safe from a single point of failure and also provides extra security from accidental deletions or overwrites when I am editing them. The downside to all of this is all the extra storage I need to keep the duplicate copies of each file. Still, I’m looking forward to filling up the next 500 GB, which I’m sure I’ll reach sooner than 4 years.

My dad just purchased the Dot Line DL-DRF14/C Macro Ringlight Flash for Canon E-TTL II. It has a guide number of 46 feet / 14 meters at 50mm, which is similar to the Sigma EM-140 DG Macro Ringlight that I use. In practice the unit is less powerful than the Sigma, has no manual controls, no high-speed sync, and no master/slave capabilities. However at 1/3rd the cost it’s not a bad alternative and for most macro shots you wouldn’t miss those features. The flash has a ring diameter of 52mm, and it comes with step down rings for lenses up to 67mm. You could probably get a step down ring for larger lenses, say 72mm and 77mm, but you’ll start to notice some viginetting. The build quality is also not as good as the Sigma, but did I mention it was less than 1/3rd the cost? He’s been using it very effectively with his Tamron 90mm Macro lens.

The next few days I’ll be at the 11th Annual Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Titusville, Florida. If you’re attending I hope to see you there…

A Brand New Year!

Happy New Year! I recently sent out a quick newsletter with a couple of HDR shots to celebrate the New Year. If you are signed up and did not receive one, please let me know. I’ve had to recently revamp the distribution list and remove or update a lot of e-mail addresses.

Some of you have already written to me with some good questions, and I’ve tried to answer as many as I could. I’ll be posting these e-mail Q&A’s every few months, if I get enough of them, so please keep those questions coming. A few of you have also sent me links to your websites; and I have to say that your photography has really improved. I hope that this site has been and continues to be a good resource for you in learning techniques for photographing the wild.

Nature Photography must be taking off, because there are now a myriad of web sites and forums crowding the Internet. To name just a few of the major ones: NaturePhotographers.net, NatureScapes.net, PhotoMigrations.com, WildPhotographers.com, and the new BirdPhotographers.net. So if you want your photos critiqued by experts, you now have many choices. What’s interesting to see is the same picture posted by the same photographer on each of the different sites; and to see how each site critiques the same image differently. Some sites are very gentle, while others may seem to attack you for posting the image in the first place; and every site seems to be guilty of doing a little of both. It just goes to show how subjective and competitive nature, and particularly bird, photography has become. A bit of advice if you do post or decide to post on these image critique sites is to keep an open mind. Each person has their own unique style and way of doing things, and some will try to tell you how you should have taken that picture based on what they would have done. Learn from the critique, but don’t let it cramp your particular style, or convince you into doing something you’re not comfortable with.

The digital SLR revolution has really made this hobby affordable to many people. It used to cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase the equipment needed to take great pictures, but today you can get started for around two thousand dollars (Canon EOS 400D / Digital Rebel XTi with Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens). It is still an expensive hobby, but becoming more and more affordable. It shows in the number of you that I see on the boardwalks of Wakodahatchee and Green Cay each week. Talking to many of you, the number one concern is really cost, and there are few web sites that cater to the cost conscious nature photographer. That’s my new goal for 2008, to give photography advice for nature photographers who want to keep your costs down.

Your second concern is how to make use of all that fancy equipment. Hopefully this site will be able to help you there as well.

The January 2008 gallery just opened and I’ll be adding pictures throughout the month, as always. Don’t forget to check out the Osceola / Brevard county images from our end of the year trip to Central Florida in the December gallery.