outdoor photography

Trees at Lake Jesup Park Canon Powershot S100, Joby Gorillapod It's well known that Central Florida is so flat that it's hard to find picturesque landscapes to photograph.  There are some genuine hills along the central spine of the state, but that's about it.  It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that, within an hour's drive of my house, the tallest things that stick out of the ground are trees and landfills.  Last year, I decided to try to take more landscape and nature photos that do not include wildlife (basically that means photographing trees).  I rarely did that, though, largely because I didn't want to change lenses all the time or carry two cameras.  My solution this year is to use the Canon PowerShot S100.  So far, the solution has worked pretty well, as I'm taking many more landscapes than I did last year. Canon Powershot S100, Joby Gorillapod This is how I set up to take the first image above But there is a challenge I'm st...

Red Bug Lake Park Canon PowerShot S100 The other day I dropped by Red Bug Lake Park, and I decided to pull out my point and shoot to photograph the lake shore.  It was fun to test how my new camera performs when shooting landscapes. It was about 11am when I took these photos, not the optimal time for landscapes, but I was still pretty happy with the photos. Red Bug Lake Park Canon PowerShot S100 In Camera HDR jpeg file I also decided to try out the HDR feature in the camera.  If you're not aware, HDR stands for high dynamic range.  We use the term to refer a relatively new way of dealing with high contrast scenes (like a sunrise) in the computer.  In the "old" days of film photography, when shooting high contrast scenes you needed to use things like split neutral density filters to darken the bright sky so that both land and sky would be properly exposed on film.  But now with computers and digital photography, you can simply take multiple images a...

Geneva Wilderness Area Chapel I drove out to Geneva Wilderness Area this morning before work.  I was hoping to try out my Christmas present that came in the mail yesterday: a Canon Powershot S100.  This is an advanced, compact point and shoot camera.  It has a number of features that I like: GPS tagging, a sharp, moderate wide-angle zoom lens (5x), a large sensor with relatively low noise (for a p&s camera), and the capability to shoot RAW images. I've been thinking it would be good to take scenic shots while photographing birds, and I didn't want to be slowed down by carrying two cameras or, worse, constantly switching lenses. I was really hoping to give the camera a work out this morning, but it was so dreary, cloudy, and drizzly that I didn't use it much.  I'm including one image above just because it seems like I should have something to show for my efforts.  What I find interesting in the above image is not the beauty of the photo (I don't like it t...