photoartflightBlue Dasher Dragonflies @ Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on June 24, 2022
On our visit to Davidsons Mill Pond Park the dragonflies were flying far out in the small pond. And almost none were flying by the large Lake. After searching the shorelines I was able to get a few Dragonfly images to post here. For this post I am showing images of a Blue Dasher (male) dragonfly. Some of the dragonflies looked a little worse for wear already in the season with wing damage.
Spangled Skimmer Dragonfly @ Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on June 23, 2022
We were going for a walk at the Davidsons Mill Pond Park so I took a camera with me to look for some dragonflies to photograph. Most of the Dragonflies were far out buzzing around the small pond but I did manage to get a few images there to post. Then we went down to the larger lake and got a few more Dragonflies resting in the bushes by the larger lake. I was traveling light with an Olympus OM D 1 with a 100-300mm lens since I did not think the Dragonflies would be very active at noon. The Olympus m43 camera & lens @ 300mm has the Field of View of a Full Frame Canon camera @ 600mm. For this post I am showing images of a Spangled Skimmer Dragonfly. I usually do not see this type of dragonfly so it was fun to see & photograph!
Common Whitetail Dragonfly At Davidsons Mill Pond
Posted on June 22, 2022
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to take a walk & maybe see if I could get a few Dragonfly images to post here. It was fairly quiet with most of the Dragonflies far out in small pond. Then we went down to the Larger Pond and saw quite a few Dragonflies but again not close by to photograph. But in the end I managed to get a few images to post here. The Featured Image of a Common Whitetail Dragonfly was taken with a Panasonic 100-300mm m43 lens @ 300mm. (Full Frame Camera Equivalent Field of View ~600mm).
Multi-Image Panoramas From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on April 26, 2022
It was a nice day to take a walk at a local park and I decided to travel light with mainly just my iPhone 11 Pro & an old Panasonic LX1 Pocket camera. Sometimes it is fun to see what detail you can “pull” out of the files from the older cameras like the Panasonic LX1 Digital Camera. With Photoshop you can really get some amazing images from the older cameras. The images posted here are all Multi-Image Panoramas (assembled in Photoshop) from the Panasonic LX1 & the iPhone 11 Pro. The Featured Image was a 4 image Panorama taken with the Panasonic LX1, 6.3mm lens
Davidsons Mill Pond Multi-Image Panoramas
Posted on January 3, 2022
It was a nice day on Dec. 31st so we went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to take a nice walk. I thought I would also shoot a series of Multi-image Landscape Panoramas, but I could not decide what Camera & Lens combo to take. So I decided to take a few choices to see which worked better for what I was trying to photograph. I previously had cleaned up & reorganized my camera & lens cabinet and found a charger for an old Panasonic LX-1 Pocket camera that I used to use for wide shots when I was mostly photographing with my larger Canon gear, so I took that along also to see how it stood up to the newer Digital Cameras. I also set the LX-1 to 16×9 format. My iPhones & adjusting the images in Adobe Camera Raw had replaced me using the Panasonic LX-1 Pocket Camera many years ago. It was a nice day to get out and photograph some landscapes with nice cloud formations. After working on my images I was surprised how well the Panasonic LX-1 images did when compared to the newer cameras. Opening the LX-1 images in Adobe Camera Raw did get more detail out of the images. So the following multi-image panorama images are from an Olympus OMD-1 with a 7.5mm fisheye lens (& then DeFished in Photoshop), the iP11 Pro using the 1.5mm lens (full Frame camera FOV equivalent ~13mm) and the Panasonic LX-1 using the lens equivalent to a Field of View to a 28mm lens on a Full Frame Digital camera.
The Featured Image is a handheld 4 Image Panorama taken with 7.5mm Fisheye Lens on an Olympus OMD-1 & De-Fished the Image in PhotoShop using the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter listed under the selections on the top “Filter” selections.
Davidsons Mill Pond Park Panoramas
Posted on October 24, 2021
Another handheld panorama from Davidsons Mill Pond Park. I liked the reflections of the clouds in the pond and on this visit the sky and clouds were great. It seemed to add more “depth” to the water in the foreground. This was a simple 2 horizontal images pano, shot with an Olympus OMD-1 with a 14-140mm lens @ 14mm. The 2 images were loaded into one layered Photoshop file. Then I used Photoshop to Align & then Blend the layers for the final panorama image. I usually keep the layered PSD file also in case I want to tweak something later. Then I flatten the image and rename it for the final Image version. I do not use some of the stand alone specialized Panorama programs since Photoshop does such a good job with panoramas, even Panoramas that are stacked rows of multi-images, such as 8 images wide x 10 images high (80 images). It might take a while for Photoshop to churn it out. But that depends on your computer and how much Ram it has.
Davidsons Mill Pond park Panoramas
Posted on September 15, 2021
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to take a walk and see if there were any interesting photo subjects. I was traveling light & was just using my iPhone 11 Pro and an Olympus OM-D M1 with a 7.5mm Fisheye Lens. The landscape panoramas in this post were all taken with the OM-D with the 7.5mm Fisheye lens. The 7 Artisans 7.5mm Fisheye lens on a m43 camera supposedly has a Field of View of 190 degrees, but on the Olympus m43 I think it is a little less than that. Before assembling my multi-image panoramas in Photoshop, I used Photoshop’s Adaptive Wide Angle Filter to de-fisheye the images used in all the panoramas. The Featured Image is made from 4 Horizontal images of the front view of the Small Pond along the roadway. Because I was using a Fisheye lens I also overlapped the images more than usual to have a better chance of them aligning for the final image.
Female Eastern Forktail Damselflies After A Rainstorm
Posted on July 17, 2021
We had a storm with heavy rain a few days ago so after it stopped raining we went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to look for interesting raindrops to photograph. Here are some raindrops with Female Eastern Forktail Damselflies. I was using an Olympus OMD-1 with a 100-300mm Panasonic lens @ 300mm (Full Frame Camera FOV Equivalant ~600mm).
Redbelly Turtle Panorama From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on May 8, 2021
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park looking for Dragonflies, but I only saw a few off in the distance out in the water on some plants. But by the small pond near the entrance to the park I saw this Redbelly Turtle basking on the edge of the water. It was at the bottom of the incline with tall grasses before & around it. I was using a 300mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter so if I backed up to get the whole turtle in the shot the grasses in front of it would be in the way. So I got very close and shot 15 images, 3 rows of 5 overlapping shots to get the whole Turtle in. Working on the files when I got back I loaded all 15 images into 1 layered Photoshop file. Then I used the Edit >Auto Align, then >Auto Blend to automatically align & blend the 15 images for the final layered image. After that I cropped the image because hand holding the camera I had uneven border edges around the image.
Tree Swallows From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on May 6, 2021
The Eastern Bluebirds and the Tree Swallows were really going at it to secure the nesting boxes that are scattered about the park. Quite a few are along one stretch of the main open area. A lot of activity, but they were all over the place so with the camera & lens I was using I did not get any of the action shots. I was using the Canon R with the 150-600mm Tamron lens with a Sigma 2X Teleconverter for a focal length of 1200mm. Here are a series of images of the Tree Swallows around some of the nesting boxes.
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