photoartflightA Walk At Plainsboro Preserve
Posted on March 24, 2022
It was a nice sunny day yesterday so we ventured out to take a walk at the Audubon Plainsboro Preserve near us. It is 1,000 acres with with diverse habitats and wildlife & one of the largest lakes in the area, Lake McCormack. We concentrated walking on the White Trail straightaway because of the nest building of Canada Geese further down the path. We heard & saw the Canada Geese attacking walkers getting too close to their nesting areas. The Featured Image of Lake McCormack is a 12 image Panorama taken @ 14mm with an Olympus OMD & blended together in Photoshop.
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.
Raindrops after the storm
Posted on September 24, 2020
After a rainstorm it is fun to go out and see what interesting raindrop images you can find. These raindrops were on webs which added some interest and patterns to the raindrops. All images here were taken with an Olympus OM-D E-M1 with an old Canon FD manual focus 200mm macro lens. With adapters you can fit a wide variety of old lenses to m43 cameras. FOV (Field Of View) to full frame Cameras is equal to 400mm.
Walk In The Fields At Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on August 21, 2020
We were walking around the fields at Davidsons Mill Pond Park looking for interesting images besides Dragonflies. Most of the gardens are still closed, but we could shoot through the fencing here & there. Davidsons Mill Pond is a County Park comprising over 417 acres that features grassland meadows, upland forests, open water, streams and wetlands, in addition to cultivated fields used by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension office. Their Butterfly House was not used this year because of the Covid closing most things. These are a series of images of subjects I thought were interesting as we were walking through the fields. Again, I was using an Olympus OM-D E-M1 with a Panasonic 100-300mm zoom lens. Which gives me a Full Frame Camera Field of View equivalent of 200mm – 600mm in a very lightweight camera to walk around with. I was mostly shooting aperture priority @ f/8, giving me enough depth of field on my subjects, but still have a smoother background.
Image @ 228mm, f/8, m43 format
Image @ 300mm, f/8, m43 format
Image @ 300mm, f/8, m43 format
Image @ 300mm, f/8, m43 format
Image @ 300mm, f/8, m43 format
Hornet On Plant, 300mm, f/8, m43 format
Eastern Pondhawks
Posted on August 20, 2020
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to take a walk and look for photo subjects. I was looking mostly for dragonflies, but found a few other photo subjects also in their fields of wildflowers and gardens. The gardens were locked because of Covid 19, but you could photograph through their fencing. Here are images I photographed of a male & female Eastern Pondhawk. I was using an Olympus OMD-1 with a Panasonic 100-300mm lens because I did not want to lug around my usual heavier gear. All the images here were photographed @ 300mm. 
Straw Flowers @ Davidsons Mill Pond
Posted on August 19, 2020
When we were photographing dragonflies at Davidsons Mill Pond Park, I also photographed some flowers & plants in their fields & gardens that looked interesting. Because of Covid restrictions the main gardens were locked, but there were lots of flowers and plants in the fields. We mostly went to take a walk, so I was traveling light with an m43 Olympus OM-D mk1 Camera with a Panasonic 100-300mm lens. The featured image is 4 images @214mm and blended in Photoshop for the final image panorama.
Straw Flower, 300mm, m43 Olympus
Painted Lady Butterflies
Posted on June 23, 2020
Here is a Correction on the ID of the Butterflies. Sorry about that! Thanks to those who brought it to my attention!! More Butterfly images. I am using the same post processing as some previous posts for smoother backgrounds. Again all these are shot with an Olympus m43 Camera with a Panasonic 14-140mm lens @ 140mm. This (sort of) gives you the field of view of 280mm on a full frame camera. Many times when we are just going for a walk, I take an m43 Olympus or Panasonic camera instead of my standard larger Canons. A lot easier to carry for a walk. They do seem to have more noise than the Canons, but easy to remove.
More Focus Stacked Raindrop Images
Posted on May 11, 2020
I am still going through images from past shoots. This is another series of closeup raindrops, focus stacked from front drops to further back in the bush they were on. I was using an Olympus m43 body with an old 200mm Canon FD manual focus macro lens with a m43 adapter. This gives me a FOV (field of view) equivalent to 400mm on a Full Frame Digital Camera. I usually start from the front in focus and then do a series of focus points going back to where I want to end. The featured image is 11 images @ f/8. I load all into layers in Photoshop, then let Photoshop blend all the sharpest areas into one file.
Closer up -7 Image Focus stack- concentrating on center area drops. 200mm Canon FD lens adapted to Olympus OM D camera
Spring Clouds Panorama
Posted on May 2, 2020
A cloud panorama taken last year in the Spring at a local park. I liked the stacked clouds floating above the bare trees in the landscape and the small pop of red on the building in the background. I wanted the main center higher clouds to be in the center of the image. For this image, because of the area I wanted to capture, I would usually only need 2 rows of 2 images each if I was using a full frame camera. But because I was using a m43 camera with a smaller sensor, I used a 5th shot for the center area of the handheld panorama. I have found that if I shoot the 4 corners than 1 image for the center, the images align easier & looks better in the final panorama when using the m43 format cameras. Images taken @ 14mm with a Panasonic 14-140mm lens on a m43 Olympus Camera. I put each image in a layered Photoshop file & auto aligned the images in the layered Photoshop file. Then let Photoshop blend those layers for final image. I saw on the town web site notification that this park will be open again today! But only allowing ~ 10 cars in at a time and must use social distancing guidelines. Seems strange since it is a huge area and if one car leaves does that mean 1 car can go in?
Eastern Racer Snake Panorama
Posted on December 7, 2019
We were walking back through a local park to go home when we saw this Eastern Racer snake slithering by us. This was a few months ago so I am trying to catch up on some older files I had not gotten to. I was only carrying a m43 Olympus Camera with a 14-140mm lens. So I zoomed out to 14mm to get the whole snake but the Racer seemed very small in the frame with a lot of grass around it. So I changed my strategy and zoomed in and shot a 3 image series @ 140mm to assemble into a panorama to make the Racer Snake more prominent in the final image and still show the whole Racer snake. Then I got closer as it was going by to get a Portrait @ 140mm of the Racer’s head.
Eastern Racer Snake Portrait @ 140mm, m43 Camera
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