photoartflightDifferent Panoramas
Posted on August 28, 2019
We were photographing at Plainsboro Preserve, looking for Dragonflies and birds a couple of days ago. Plainsboro Preserve includes over 1,000 acres of undisturbed open space with nature trails and 50-acre McCormack Lake. The New Jersey Audubon Society manages the preserve on behalf of Plainsboro and Middlesex County. We did find a few Birds & Dragonflies, but there were quite a few Deer grazing in the fields. This is the first time we saw Male Deer there. I was shooting @ 600mm so closeup images were 2 or 3 image panos. The featured Doe and the images of the fawn, I photographed next to the road on our drive out. For the featured image I shot 3 images @ 600mm because she was so close to the road. The Fawn images were also 2 or 3 multi-image panoramas to get the whole Fawn in. Because they were moving I had to manually blend the panoramas with soft edge masks. Since we were going to a local park, mainly looking for Dragonflies, I only had the one lens with me so I had to make do with what I had.
Fawn, 2 image pano @600mm
Doe, 3 img pano @600mm
Doe, 3 img pano @600mm
Fawn, 2 img pano @600mm (with Practice you can shoot Panoramas of moving subjects)
Fawn, 3 image pano @600mm
Fawn, 3 image pano @ 600mm
Single image @ 600mm
Males- grazing in a distant field
Female Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly
Posted on July 29, 2019
I have not photographed as many Dragonflies this year as I have in other years. Maybe because I have been working on a few personal projects. I found these female Great Blue Skimmers at Plainsboro Preserve which is a Preserve and Nature Center along with an Audubon Center. It is about 1,000 acres, with a 50 acre lake and miles of nature trails. So it is a fun place to wander around and look for photo subjects, especially Dragonflies! On this day we mostly saw Great Blue Skimmers. Lately I use a 300mm f/4 Canon lens with a 1.4X Teleconverter for photographing Dragonflies. It allows me to get close images and seems to work well @ f/11 for getting detail, but still have a somewhat soft background. Sometimes I will go to f/8 for the series if the background is busier and shoot a series with more focus points. I then blend the images in Photoshop, to keep a softer background for my Dragonfly images but still get more of the dragonfly in focus.
Head-On View, 300mm w/ 1.4X Teleconverter
Female Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly – 3/4 view from behind
Female Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly – Side view, Single image
Plainsboro Preserve Fall Color 2 Image 400mm Panorama
Posted on November 4, 2018
We went to Plainsboro Preserve to see what we could find for photo subjects. I had a 400mm lens hoping to find some Wildlife on Lake McCormack. There were lots of Canada Geese and a few ducks. But nothing to get excited about. So I switched to shooting the colorful landscapes and colorful leaves. With the 400mm lens I had to shoot my subjects with multiple images to combine them later for my final images in Photoshop. My multi-image pano images are from 2 images up to 35 images for a very long panorama of Lake McCormack with the colorful trees on the far shore with about 100 Canada Geese in the water. For this post it is a 2 Image pano through the trees looking across the lake on the far end of Lake McCormack.
3 horizontal images @400mm combined for a vertical pano image
First Bluebird Of The Season
Posted on May 5, 2018
We had gone to the Plainsboro Preserve in Cranbury, NJ to see what we could find to photograph and to take a walk. I was using a 150mm macro lens with a 1.4x teleconverter thinking I would look for macro subjects. Plainsboro Preserve is 1,000 acres with 5 miles of trails. Also has McCormack Lake which is 50 acres. So it is a nice location to walk through and see what you can find. We saw lots of Beaver activity, trees chewed at the base & downed trees along the path. We were surprised to see Bluebirds along the paths, but they were high in the trees. I tried quite a few shots but with the lens I had, limited me to what I could get. Plus they did not stay on a branch long and kept moving between the branches. I finally got a few somewhat clear shots, but the Bluebird was not very large in the frame. I have made my own actions in Photoshop for uprezzing files for large prints, but it also works well for extreme cropping of images.
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