Bok Tower Flower Photography

There are a lot of attractions in Central Florida that get thousands of visitors every single day and everyone is familiar with them. Just mention Disney World, Sea World, Universal Studios and you get instant recognition.

But one of the oldest area attractions is not nearly as well-known, although it is a favorite for those who love nature - Bok Tower. According to Wikipedia, "The gardens began in 1921 when a Dutch immigrant, Edward W. Bok, editor of the popular women's magazine Ladies Home Journal and his wife, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who would found the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1924, were spending the winter beside Florida's Lake Wales Ridge and decided to create a bird sanctuary on its highest hill (298 feet above sea level, 91 meters)."

Eventually the "singing tower" that features carillon music was built, and now the surrounding gardens is a great place for both bird and flower photography. In fact, my wife and I have an annual pass to the gardens which also allows us to visit several other wildlife and nature attractions in Florida for free or at reduced rates due to reciprocal agreements with those other places. It's a great deal for those interested in nature and wildlife photography.

We just visited Bok Tower again this last week and although the azaleas were beyond their peak, there was plenty of other floral subjects to keep my camera busy. Here is a few samples from our visit:

Blue Iris

Pink and Purple Azaleas

Pink Camelia

White Orchid

If you live in the Central Florida area or if you plan to visit and are a photography hobbyist, this is a great place to visit, especially in the springtime!

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See my latest nature and wildlife images at:
www.duanelipham.com
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Full-Frame Or Crop Sensor Camera?

One of the options that photographers have when choosing a camera to use in their work is whether the camera will have a full-frame or crop sensor. And what does this mean anyway?

It's probably easiest to think of the sensor in a digital camera as the strip of film that we used in our old film cameras (if you are old enough to remember that ... :-) ). The strip of film passed along the back of the camera while it was closed and had individual frames that corresponded to each picture that we took. The lens focused an image on each frame when we pressed the shutter and a negative was produced that was used to make each print. We can consider a single frame in the film strip to be similar to the sensor in our digital cameras because that is what actually records the image that we take when we press the shutter in digital cameras.

In film cameras the larger the size of the film, the more detail is recorded and therefore larger prints could be made from the film negatives without showing flaws. The same is true of digital sensors in general. The larger the sensor, the greater possibility for detail to be recorded, and even greater enlarged prints to be made from each image.

So what should you choose? As is the case with almost everything in the world of digital cameras, the answer is "it depends". It depends on what? Mainly on what you intend to photograph. For instance, if you are a professional landscape photographer, full-frame sensors make a lot of sense because you can record the most detail possible in each scene which is usually the goal in landscape photography. And full-frame sensors correspond most closely with the size of each frame in 35mm film.

However, if you are a wildlife or sports photographer, it can make a lot of sense to use a crop sensor camera. Why? Because a crop sensor is smaller than a full-frame sensor, which means that when the lens focuses the same image on the back of the camera, a smaller amount of that scene is recorded on the sensor, essentially equaling the results you might get by zooming into the scene with a lens that has a longer focal length. For photographers that use crop sensor cameras, this means that the focal length of a lens used on a full-frame camera can be much longer on a crop sensor. In other words, it makes every telephoto lens in their bag even longer in reach. By how much? In most cases about 1.5 times.

Obviously, for those that crave long focal lengths like wildlife and sports/action photographers, this is a real boon. They get longer reach with their telephoto lenses without having to buy more lenses.

Of course, there are trade-offs. And some of those trade-offs are higher noise sensitivity, and less detail.

So what is best for you? Understanding the differences in each sensor size can help you make the choice that is best for you and the kind of photography that you like to produce, keeping in mind that full-frame cameras also tend to be much more expensive than crop sensor cameras.

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See my latest nature and wildlife images at:
www.duanelipham.com
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Tips For Making Great Flower Photos

One of the most popular subjects for photographers is the wide array of flowers all around us. It's hard to resist the beauty, symmetry, and outstanding colors that can be found in the flower world.

But some flower images just don't look very professional. They look like someone just went out in their garden, pointed a camera at a bunch of flowers and pressed the shutter without much thought about the image beforehand. And you know what? That is what often does happen, producing flower photos that are static and boring. Ugh!

Since flowers are some of my favorite subjects, I'll list some of my best tips to help make sure that you get the best flower images possible. Here they are -

• As is the case with most other subjects, get in close with flowers. Often it's best to just include one flower at a time, and really get in tight to be able to view the flower without other distractions. Sometimes it's not even necessary to include the whole flower in the frame. Maybe just a part of the flower will do the job, and cropping tight often provides a fresh viewpoint of the flower you are photographing.
• Speaking of distractions, make sure that you remove anything from the image that does not contribute to the beauty of the main flower you are highlighting in your shot. Of course, letting other objects appear in the frame with your flower is fine as long as they don't dominate the scene or take away from your main subject.
• Pay lots of attention to the background. It's often a good idea to keep the background as uncluttered as possible to focus the majority of the viewer's attention on the flower itself. I like single color backgrounds, or at least colors that do not necessarily compete with the flower for attention. Dark backgrounds will often make the flower's colors really pop.
• Pay attention to depth of field. What is in focus and how sharp it is, matters a lot in macro photography, so experiment around with various apertures to see what effect you get throughout the image with each one.

Here is a flower I took just recently. In fact, it's one that my wife brought home for our front yard. I loved the colors so I knew that it would command attention. I placed a black cardboard background behind it to make the color really shine, and then experimented with several aperture settings while using natural daylight for lighting. I took several shots from different angles which produced different objects in the background whenever I changed my view. This is my favorite image from the group of photos I took:

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Bird Photography - Keep An Eye On The Eyes

Bird photography is a lot of fun. But it's also very challenging, not the least of which is because birds in general are always on the move, especially smaller ones.

And it takes a lot of patience to be a good bird photographer because they almost never do what you want them to do while you are ready to get the shot. So you wait through seemingly endless rituals of feather cleaning and preening to get the shot that you have in mind. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it never happens. That's ok because there is always another opportunity for a great bird shot just around the corner.

Their constant motion, of course, means that you are going to need a relatively fast shutter speed to make sure that you freeze the action. But fast shutter speeds usually spells either really high ISO choices, and the resultant extra noise in the image, or wide apertures. If you opt for a wide open aperture on your lens, this means that the depth of field, or everything that will be in sharp focus in the shot, is often amazingly small.

So what do you focus on to make sure that it's a great shot? It's the eyes man! More than any other body part, just make sure that the bird's eyes are razor sharp, and in most cases you will have a good shot.

How do you do that? Well for me, I use spot focusing and I constantly put the focus sensor on the bird's eye and then recompose in the viewfinder to get the best composition. I may do this several times in a minute when the bird is moving around, but I want to make sure that I get those eyes in sharp focus!

Here is an example of getting the eye tack sharp:

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See my latest nature and wildlife images at:
www.duanelipham.com
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Baby Egrets In The Nest

It's springtime, and for bird photographers it is a very special time of year. Birds start sporting bright breeding colors that really "pop" in the right light without using any color enhancement in post processing.

But another great thing about spring is it's also the time when many birds will be having their young and nesting. So wildlife photographers will, of course, be looking for opportunities to capture some images of the young birds enjoying their nest, without interfering or creating unnecessary stress for the parents or their babies.

One place that makes both birds and photographers happy is Gatorland in Kissimmee, FL. Don't let the name fool you. There is plenty more to see here other than just alligators.

In fact, the entire back of the park is a massive bird rookery that has a boardwalk and observation towers that allow you to get an up-close and personal view of the nesting taking place. This is especially good for photographers because we want to get fairly close to our subject and make the background go out of focus using a low f-stop so that the bird itself is highlighted in the image as much as possible.

In my last visit to the rookery just a couple of weeks ago, I came upon a nest that was really close by the boardwalk, and as it happened, was also backlit by the sun. The combination made for some interesting images, and here they are:

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See my latest nature and wildlife images at:
www.duanelipham.com
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Gatorland Flamingos

Gatorland in Kissimmee FL is well known for its alligators and for its bird rookery in the back of the park that is a great resource of beautiful images for photographers interested in bird photography.

But one of the not so well-known features of the park is its collection of flamingos. There are other attractions and zoos that may have more flamingos, but Gatorland puts them right within arms reach, and this makes for some really great photo opportunities if you are quick and your camera and lens combination focuses rapidly. Because their feathers are so bright, it helps to try to get a dark or contrasting background to really makes the colors stand out. Fortunately, at Gatorland this is not too hard to do, especially in late afternoon.

The only bad thing about flamingos is that they seem to be forever in motion. Not only do they move around a lot, but their head is also moving at the end of that long neck. This means that you have to be very fast with your camera and patient as well. It may take quite a while to get the kind of shots that you want, but eventually persistence is rewarded.

Here are a few flamingo shots I took a couple of weeks ago at Gatorland:

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See my latest nature and wildlife images at:
www.duanelipham.com
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Barred Owls At Circle B Bar Reserve

Just as I was heading back to my car after a couple of hours at the Circle B Bar Reserve, I noticed a group of photographers pointing their cameras up in the trees at the start of the Herons Hideout trail.

Of course, when you see that kind of behavior taking place, you know that something good is usually going on that is worthy of a photograph. And sure enough, there was a pair of barred owls in the oak trees hooting loudly back and forth to one another.

On occasions like this you are very happy to have as much focal length as you can on your camera because anything short of about 300mm just isn't going to cut it unless you plan on doing some really radical cropping in post-processing.

One of the features I like about the Sony A57 camera that I just added to my arsenal is that it has a digital zoom built into the camera that can extend the optical zoom focal length of your lens and give you just a little more reach for situations like this, without losing too much image quality. I am not a fan of many of the digital zooms out there, but this one has been given very high marks by many knowledgeable photographers and after using it in the field, I agree with their assessment.

Here are some of the barred owl shots I took last Friday using the additional focal length provided by the digital zoom:

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See my latest nature and wildlife images at:
www.duanelipham.com
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