The pre friday post

Here in North East FL it's been raining for 4 or 5 days, I've kinda lost track. Today the rain stopped, I went out to shoot some macro stuff at vail point park. I struck out, but I was walking past the owl tree and sure enough, I saw the adult in a large oak, and the adolescent in the nest. The nest is in a hole in  a dead tree. Anyway I'll post that tomorow along with all the stuff i think is interesting. The sun is back for the next few days. So see ya friday.
Lets Go Shoot!

It's the Friday blog

The last few days have been a complete wash for snowy egrets at Washington Oaks, so instead I've been shooting flowers, all you have to do is walk 50 yards from the river (matanzas) to the gardens. I know less about flowers than I do birds, so everything is described by color and other elements inside the image.Of course if i know the name of the thing I use it but today i was processing a flower image, the file name is "orngflwrprplbg" in my shorthand that's orange flower with a purple background. I tried to familiarize myself with flowers years ago while i was living in Texas. Lady bird Johnson was the spearhead for this thing where all the medians and fields alongside the roads in Tx  were planted with wildflowers and it became a tourist event to go see them, much like us folks that live in mostly pine go up north to see leaves. This is especially true in the hill country down around Austin. This area is already an amazing place, so add this major color flush and it's really something. Most of the time that i tried to shoot Tx wildflowers I was standing in a ditch, another one of those location things.I don't have anything left that survives from back then except for a wildflowers of  Tx guide book. Oh yeah , back to Washington oaks, they have all these different types of flowers some are labeled, some aren't, but they are all just popping with color, put some good light in the mix and boom! u have some amazing flower images. Here are two.

At vail point park the great blue herons are loud and proud. They are in the nesting trees and it's mating season so lots of flaring wings and loud noises it's the equivalent of the male going up to the female and saying  "you must be a parking ticket you got fine written all over you"  lol, I heard that on a commercial a while back. Anyway i have a few of those, one looks like a real fight the other is the whole courtship thing. The blue heron nesting tree is next to the tree with the eagles nest, in the background is an adolescent eagle.Another thing going on in vp park is an owls nest. I finally saw the owl, but  this weird fog bank rolled in and zapped my light, so now that area is part of the morning patrol .I noticed a bunch of cardinals running around (ok, flying). They are really quick! I'm usually out in the morning I think these little birds drink more coffee than I do, but i managed to get a couple.

 so thats it for the friday post.
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

Inspiration part 2

I finished this lighting and posing seminar, which is why i didn't get back to the Friday blog post till monday. This thing was an on line, a live streamed seminar. The instructor was Bambi Cantrell she had 7 students and they all got to do setups with a mix of professional models as well as just folks. I had done online lighting seminar taught by Joe Mcnally. He specilizes in using small (hot shoe flashes) lights to get big results. Because Bambi is a wedding, portrait and budoir photographer she uses bigger lights or just available light, in fact the first day was nothing but available light shooting. The real challenge was the posing aspect. Posing so it looks normal and pretty is an art unto itself! Posing and lighting guys is  relatively easy this class was more concerned with posing women and, I might add, posing and using light in such a way that retouching in post production is kept to a minimum. It was an amazing class, inspiring and challenging and that was just sitting in front of my computer taking notes! Since this class was live you could ask questions via an im sorta thing, I found that the questions that i had were asked by other folks. Creative live is a production of Chase Jarvis, a great  commercial photographer (ads and stuff) he has given himself the mission of educating photographers. He sponsors classes, gets the best folks around to teach them and the cool part is, in there live iteration, they are free. So you wanna watch these things and most are 8 hrs a day for at least 2 days, just enroll. If you want that class after it's over they charge for download cheap at 99 bucks for the one i attended, the same clinic would cost about 2000 if you went and hired bambi. Anyway a great time! I have so many notes and so many people to image, so if you cross my path i'm probably going to want to make a portrait.Just say yes!

Ok, so who else inspires me photography wise?. At the top of the list is Ansel Adams, his autobigraphy sits on my desk and i think i'm always in the process of reading it. Joe Mcnally and Moose Peterson, Frans Lanting, Dewitt Jones and David Ziser, Chase Jarvis, the folks over at Kelby media group they produce Dtown tv which is a great 20 to 30 minute show for beginners and folks new to digital photography, They also produce the Grid. The grid is a talk show with guests and such it's also live and comes on at 1230 est and Photoshop user tv, My bro John Sanborn and Savanah Kaszas. Savanah is a wedding and family photographer I think she has been out of photography school for about a year she's the daughter of a friend of mine and SHE ROCKS. Thats about it, I get inspired by other folks as well, sometimes i just pull stuff up on the net and check them out.
And so ends the friday post on monday
here are some links
http://www.chasejarvis.com/

creativelive.com/

kelbytv.com/
the last one is for phtoshop user tv, Dtown tv and The Grid.



Thanks for reading!! Lets go shoot!! 

Inspiration part 1

Today, I'm attending a Lighting and Posing seminar live on line at chasejarvis live.com. so the normal friday blog will be late today. This is very cool goes for 3 days 8 hours a day. So i'll be late with the rest of the blog. This starts at 1300 est 

The lions have returned to the Bridge of Lions in the nations oldest

Here in St. Augustine fl, we have all kinds of landmarks. The two stand outs for me have always been the Castillo de San Marcos, known to us locals as the fort, and the Bridge of Lions. The bridge opened in 1927 and at the foot of the bridge were two large marble lions. The bridge was replaced, and the lions sent off to be restored in 2005 and came back today at 2am. 2 am is a bit early for me, but i went out there at 630 shot around the news crews and got a couple images. I did one in HDR the other i did straight. The restorers, a local company here in St.Augustine did a great job. so regardless of what we think about the new bridge,. THE LIONS ARE BACK!!

 Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

Washington Oaks on Saturday and an eagle lesson on Monday

Saturday I went running around Washington oaks, the snowy egrets are back and the camellias are rocking.

Monday I went to the park with the eagles nest, ran into the guy that audits the nest once a week. His reports go thru channels ultimately to florida fish and game and i got to hang out and ask questions. I have two fun facts.
The great horned owl is actually capable of taking the nest from a bald eagle.
The parents feed these kids once an hour.
and a bonus fact, eagles don't defecate in the nest.
This conversation also gave me some specific information about this nest so I know when to go back.
Ok so here are 2 images from saturday.
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

The Friday post part 2. Crescent beach and the Matanzas National Monument

 Moving north on A1A from Washington Oaks about 5 miles is crescent beach and the area around the Matanzas National Monument. The beach here is really cool because of a layer of crushed shell and sand that's mostly orange. The water comes in and takes the gray sand away and leaves this orange color in places, so you  get this nice contrast of gray and orange, the orange sand is really rocking at sunrise. This is my favorite place to capture pelicans, terns, skimmers, sandpipers and something called a willet, there are also osprey and eagles around. recently I've been trying to give the little birds some attention so in this post I'll be putting up a mocking bird and what i think is something called a yellow rumped warbler.

  A few words about the Matanzas National Monument, it's a masonry fort and was sort of the early warning site for the Castillo de San Marcos. This is a national park, ride the boat over from the visitors center to the fort. the Rangers and the volunteers are great and they tell you about the place

Thats the end of the friday post, Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

The friday blog part one

Someone asked me what I.C.M stood for and at the same time, pointed out that it could be shorthand for I see them. I hadn't really thought about it, but i thought that was pretty cool. I.C.M. stands for Invisible Copper Mine.  Last year I went to hang out with some friends up in Alaska (shout out to john and jean) and shoot the heck outta the place, while i was up there we spent a day at Denali, which was just way to cool!  Mere mortals can't just drive into the place you have to take one of the many buses in, they have some that you  get on and when you see someplace you want to roam around in they stop and let you off. Another is the 13 hour 90 mile bus, kind of an overview sort of thing. They stop about every 2 hours, hit the facilities and get a stretch, then off you go,  they also stop for wildlife you can't get off the bus, so the windows come down and for us shooters we just shot thru the window. I got some pretty cool stuff, here's the thing, however, only 25 percent of visitors to Denali ever get to see Mt Mckinley and that, my friends  is due to weather. I can tell you that i was not one of the 25 percent. The only reason i know it's there is because of pictures taken by reliable sources, otherwise i would certainly think it's just a model, something they did for the tourists. The bus driver said things like "Mt. Mckinley is off to your left in the fog and clouds, trust me it's there." so i just went along with her, she was driving afterall. On this particular day the bus driver needed something to talk about so she would point out the location of copper mines, her comment would be ," across the valley folks, there is an old copper mine, you cant see it because of the fog and clouds" then we'd travel what i thought was 100 feet and she would point out yet another invisible copper mine so there ya go.This sounds bad but it's not, a visit to Denali is something everybody ought to do, the weather can be trash for a while but it clears, if you go, ask the bus driver to point out those copper mines. Don't go away the friday blog continues.      

Reformed location snob.

Yesterday I went to a county park in my neighborhood, mostly just to walk around, but of course I took a camera with me. In this park is an eagles nest sitting on a creek, this creek is my favorite place to paddle. Ive been shooting at these eagles for 5 years or so with mediocre results, sometimes not even reaching the lofty goal of mediocrity staying at the level of "that's a great picture of tail feathers". On this particular day, however, everything lined up and I got the best eagle picture I've ever shot. This picture wasn't shot from my kayak where i had to paddle a distance, fight current, (actually tidal flow) which can be moving as fast as 3 miles per hour and all sorts of things that factor into stability issues. No, I shot this on a dock with a cup of coffee sitting on the rail. The challenge was pulling the picture off and nothing else. I started thinking, I have skipped shooting in places just because i thought it was to easy, here in the nations oldest we have the alligator farm, it's an amazing place and it's also a rookery, birds all over the place, but i've never wanted to go there with a camera because of the absolute lack of suffering involved. The same thinking has influenced the way I  look at this park. To  make this image i drove a quarter mile, walked 150 yards on Paved trailes (the park is wheel chair acesable) and stood on the dock sipping coffee and staring at the tree where the eagles nest is. The tree next to the eagle tree has blue heron nests in it, so i was looking at them when the adult eagle came in with a food delivery for the ugly babies.  At the range that happened there wasn't a picture there. 15 minutes later the adult launched and flew right past me. Ok so here is my point, this nature stuff or photography in general can happen anywhere, and me, well i'm now a reformed location snob, didn't even take 12 steps, just one eagle, flying at high speed.
I have a post tommorow as well, so expect to see that. The eagle photo is below.
Thanks for reading. Lets go shoot!

 

Wahington Oaks State Park

Washington Oaks (flagler county fl) is one of my favorite places for shooting in general, the park is split by A1A. On one side, the formal gardens and nature trails and on the other, the beach with an outcropping of coquina. On the garden side I've captured images of owls, snowy egrets during mating season, and squirrels playing with oranges (that's funny stuff) as well as a full range of  flowers and plants. Across  A1A on the beach side we get ospreys fishing, pellicans, sandpipers, and the rocks. The coquina rocks are a great background or a subject all to themselves, at sunrise or sunset they almost glow yellow and there are some pretty cool formations made by erosion. If you're ever in this part of the world, head to washington oaks.

 
The osprey here is a story all by itself. Ospreys are all over the place you see them on bridges and telephone poles, but I wanted my osprey out of the urban environment. The problem is that on the way to wash oaks there is a small bbq joint called smokin d's, so i would stop for a brisket sandwich and take it with me. Once I got to the beach I'd sit down and eat. Usually, just about the time i'd get really into this sandwich, I'd hear the osprey calling and then in a matter of seconds he'd be overflying me no less than mach 2! It's surprisingly difficult to take a picture (yeah yeah make an image) with a brisket sandwich. The bird would then pull a 3g turn and i wouldn't see him for the rest of the day. I did this for about a week till i finally decided to eat later.Two reasons it took so long for me to figure that out: smokin d's is that good, and I'm apparently a little slow, Anyway the bird came in, I was lookin at him lookin at me this time, I think you can actually see a little surprise in the birds eye.
here are the links to my on line portfolios.
http://www.photoshopuser.com/members/portfolios/view/main/1226823      
www.wix.com/nrasnick/neil-rasnick
here is a link to a friends alaska portfolio he's really good, check it out
johnsanborn.photoshelter.com/gallery-list
Thats it for today, thanks for reading! lets go shoot! 

first post

Recently, or maybe not, my favorite cousin started a blog. I've been after her to blog more and then it occured to me that maybe I needed to put up or shut up.This will be a nature photography blog, with some wedding stuff thrown in when I get that part going.  So I'll post as i get things to talk about, feel free to come back and see whats going on.

A little about me, I'm almost 50 I've been shooting for 27 years. I started this as a hobby when the U.S. Air Force sent me to Holland. My mom wanted pictures, so i got some advice from a friend and picked up my first slr (pentax k1000) Ive been hooked ever since. I went back to school in 2007 for commercial art, leaning heavily in the direction of printing. I listen to Jazz and Classic Rock (Miles Davis and Carlos Santana), I'm a flat water kayaker and I can become one with the couch when the weather gets bad, and now I'm a blogger.