photoartflightPainted 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.
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
Colorful Sky At Sunset
Posted on November 9, 2019
We were talking a walk in our community as the sun was going down and the sky had a nice colorful glow. I had a m43 camera with me so I was able to get a few shots as we were walking home. The featured image was shot @ 140mm, f/13, ISO 800.
Meeting House at Sundown, m43 OM-D @ 25mm
Tree & Sky, m43 OM-D @ 22mm
Wider View Tree & Sky, m43 OM-D @ 14mm
Fading Sunset m43 OM-D @ 17mm
Bombay Hook NWR Landscapes
Posted on October 3, 2019
Here are a series of landscape & cloudscape images from a recent visit to Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. The featured image was shot @ 14mm along the Wildlife Drive.
Bombay Hook Landscape along Wildlife Drive – Shearness Pool @ 12mm, Canon R
Bombay Hook Landscape along Wildlife Drive @ 158mm, Canon R, Tamron 150-600mm
Bombay Hook Landscape along Wildlife Drive – Shearness Pool @12mm, 2 img pano, Canon R
Bombay Hook Landscape, Shearness Pool along Wildlife Drive @ 14mm, Olympus OM-D
Raymond Pool – Sun Rising Above Trees
Posted on October 2, 2019
A 3 image Panorama of the Sun rising above the Raymond Pool early in the morning at the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. Shot with a 14mm lens on a m43 Camera and assembled manually in Photoshop. It seems like panoramas with a wide angle m43 lens are more successful if you manually assemble the panoramas in Photoshop. The auto align seems to go to wild extremes.
Raymond Pool @ 14mm, shooting through an opening by a tree
Beaver Lodges At Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on September 26, 2019
A few weeks ago we were at Davidson’s Mill Pond Park and we saw a lot of Beaver activity by the water areas along the trail through the woods. We were there for a walk so I only had a m43 camera with a 14-140mm zoom, which with it’s small sensor has a field of view sort of equivalent to 28-280mm on a full frame camera. There are a lot of fallen trees so we could see they have been very busy. But as were were looking at what we thought was a Beaver Lodge, a beaver actually ran along a fallen tree and submerged to go inside the Lodge. It was fun to watch, but Beavers are mostly busy at night. It was a distant shot so it was not great, but I still documented it. We went back, but during the day they are usually not active, so I was shooting a series of the 2 Lodges we could see and the surrounding landscape. Around the bend we thought we spotted a few more Lodges but could not get clear shots of them. Another Park we enjoy walking in, Plainsboro Preserve & Audobon Facility, has even more Beaver Activity / Damage. But it is hard to get close to the water, and along the trails you see more trees chewed down. So there is even more Beaver activity there.
3 image Panorama of the 2 Lodges
CloseUp Beaver Lodge #1
Beaver Lodge #1 & 2- 7 image Panorama – Tamron 150-600mm @ 150mm – showing surrounding landscape
Beaver Lodges 1 & 2 – 5 img Panorama, Tamron 150-600mm
Closer View Beaver Lodge #1
Turtles on felled tree by Lodge #1
CloseUp Beaver Lodge #2
Beaver Felled Tree – Amazing how they can take down Large Trees
Beaver “Lodge #1” with Otter in forground – 140mm m43, X-Large crop
Camera setup to photograph Lodges in the distance, iPhone 6
Tree Felled by Beavers – Amazing how many there are and how long it must take. but I guess they do not have anything else to do.
Davidsons Mill Pond Park Panorama
Posted on September 2, 2019
We went to a local park for a walk so I only took a lightweight camera setup, the Olympus OM1-Mk1 with a Panasonic 14-140mm lens. It is the perfect walk around camera when you are not going to photograph something very specific and just want something better than your camera in the iphone. Before we got to the trail through the woods, I saw this view I thought was interesting with the clouds. I shot a 3 image series to combine in Photoshop @ 14mm. It is interesting that when doing a panorama @ 14mm with a m43 format, you have some slight touchups to get a nice panorama. Full frame cameras seem to handle panoramas better. It also seems worse if you do even more over-laping frame sections. So I shoot more frames and then just pick a few to use for the final panorama. But this way I have choices of which frames I can select or turn off to get the best results.
2 image panorama @ 14mm, combined in Photoshop
3 Horizontal Images Stacked Vertically @14mm ea.
2 Horizontal Images @ 14mm
2 Horizontal Images @ 14mm
2 Horizontal Images @ 14mm
Bailey Tract – J.N. Ding Darling NWR
Posted on August 2, 2019
Most people that go to J.N. Ding Darling NWR do not know of, or go to the Bailey Tract in Sanibels’ Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. The tract is on Tarpon Bay Rd., not in the main Refuge and Wildlife Drive. The major feature of the Bailey Tract is a series of impoundments and dikes built years ago to attract waterfowl, including ducks, grebes, coots and moorhens. It still does, but as part of the J.N. “Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge it also creates a perfect place for hikers and bikers to see them. It’s a great place to take a peaceful walk or hike on its 100 acre grounds. We just took a leisurely walk though one afternoon when we were in Sanibel. We did not see a lot of Wildlife, but that was probably because it was in the afternoon when things quiet down. It seems like it is not visited much like the main Refuge. So you can feel quite alone here. It was rare to see another person walking the trails as you walk through. Also there are no staff here. I was traveling light with just an Olympus OM1 with a 14 – 140mm lens. We were just enjoying the beautiful day and a nice walk.
Information Signs along the way to help visitors ID or give information for what they might see.
2 image panorama @ 14mm, m43 format
2 image panorama @ 14mm, m43 format (very slight overlapping of images)
3 horizontal images stacked @14mm – m43 Olympus
Single Image @ 41mm
Bailey Landscape – 2 image panorama @14mm
2 image Panorama @ 14mm
Single Image @ 28mm
Lizard @ 140mm
Small Pond with Alligator Submerged @ 48mm
Same as above 14mm view
Landscape w/ hidden Alligator @ 32mm (2 img pano) – above this plant in the water on left
Another Lizard @ 140mm
4 Image Panorama – Flying Brant Ducks with Atlantic City Skyline
Posted on February 28, 2019
As I was photographing these Brant Ducks, I also shot a series of the flying birds for a panorama, to see how it might work out. I was surprised it pretty much just worked out fine with no retouching of overlapping Brants. I was using a m43 camera with a Panasonic 14-140mm lens @48mm. I started on the left and just shot a quick series going to the right. I always shoot the pano of flying birds in the direction they are going. Seems to work better that way. The files adjusted in Adobe Camera Raw and the panorama assembled & blended in Photoshop for the final image.
Flying Brant Ducks with Atlantic City Skyline
Posted on February 26, 2019
As I was photographing clouds along the Wildlife Drive at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Brigantine Division, this group of Brant Ducks took off. I thought it looked interesting as they flew over this little jetty of land in the water’s edge. Then they banked and flew farther to the right and over the Atlantic City Skyline you could see in the distance. The sky was constantly changing depending on which direction you were looking at. The cloud cover went from heavily overcast and ominous looking to blue sky with nice feathery clouds. But it did make for a wide variety of cloudscapes in one outing.
Olympus OMD-1, 14-140mm lens @ 48mm
