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Return to Jay B Starkey Wilderness Park - wandering the desert

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Me and Kiki huddling in the shade in the middle of the Jay B Starkey Wilderness Park desert - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/100th self-timer camera on groundSeeking a desert, Kiki and I returned to Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park which has long trails made up of sandy fire roads with little tree cover.  Why seek a desert?  Because yesterday I heard America's "Horse With No Name" and it became the theme for today's outdoors adventure.  There were other reasons for seeking a desert too, but those are more omnipresent and need not be singled out.  Our first visit to this park was back in November of 2009, and based on the lead image of that post and the one below, you can see how my HDR technique has improved in the past three years (no more ghosting!).  

Most of the 3-mile Loop Trail of Jay B Starkey Wilderness Park is desolate - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 3-exposure HDR handheldWandering for 5-miles (including the beginning 1.9 mile loop) in mostly desert trails with the strong Florida sun beating down on you may not sound that appealing, but it is exceptionally good for producing clarity of mind, if not clarity of photographs.  I cannot speak for Kiki, but the desolate trails provided exactly the environment I wished to be in.  We saw not a single human our entire time out there.  If you do not count the countless ants and flying insects, and the two birds' shadows I saw fly by (I did not use the energy to lift my head toward the sun to see them), then the only creature we encountered was a friendly gopher tortoise, who kindly yielded the right-of-way to us.  I am fascinated by the mechanical movement of tortoises and how they can withdraw from the world anywhere they want to.  I did not stop to photograph him, because in the desert you risk forgetting even your own name.  Indeed we took refuge for awhile at the max point out in the desert under a very well placed roofed picnic table (top image).  Kiki dug a hole to cool off in as I took a few photos.  Once she had sufficiently ceased panting, we continued on, though I know shade break or not, we were good for more miles.

I did not touch this tree - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 3-exposure HDR handheldOnce back in the corral area, I chomped on a few crackers and Kiki a dog biscuit, and we both took water.  Just as we arrived back I noticed off to the side a very peculiar tree.  I saw none in such condition anywhere else in the park, not even in the middle of the desert trail where one would think such a tree would be found.  This scary tree was right next to the campground (see blue tent).  I would not want to get the campsite within eyeshot of it.

It was a good visit to Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park and if you do go make sure it is as early as possible to avoid the hot Florida sun, bring lots of water as there is none on site for humans and prepare to cross a desert.

J.B. Starkey Wilderness Park:

  • 10500 Wilderness Park Boulevard
    New Port Richey, FL 34655
  • hours sunrise to sunset
  • dogs ok!
  • camping - car, primitive & backcountry

Banyan Trees on Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg

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The two famous banyan trees on Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR on tripod with cable releaseThere are banyan trees throughout the downtown St. Petersburg area and nearby surrounding areas, but no banyans are as famous or more photographed than the two trees above located right on Beach Drive NE.  As large as they are, they always seem to appear all of a sudden to passersby who often audibly gasp upon seeing them.

I first photographed banyan trees in the St. Petersburg downtown area back in August 2011 when walking back to my car after a meeting I passed by this pair.  

Photographing the famous Beach Drive NE banyan trees is rather challenging.  Their large branches and wide trunks create deep shadows and on one side of them is always a row of parked cars not making for the greatest background.  The angle of composition I chose was the only one I could find that included almost no man-made objects in the shot.  I used my Induro CT214 tripod with all the legs collapsed, shooting from just about a foot of the ground.  I chose to make a 9-exposure HDR image in order to get detail from within the trunk shadows as well as in the bright sky above.

Edward Medard Park and Reservoir Trees HDR & Jumping

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Live Oaks showing their roots in Edward Medard Park - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 7-exposure HDR tripod mountedIt had been too long since a couple of old college friends and I had one of our outdoor adventures together.  That was remedied by a recent visit to the surprisingly amazing Edward Medard Park and Reservoir in Plant City.  They said it had hills, so I was expecting some modest plain grass covered round and soft hills.  I never expected to step into an alien environment where live oaks sat perched upon angry hills of clay-like dirt with all their roots exposed in a display of their might.

A fearless tree climber in Edward Medard Park - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/8 ISO 200 1/40th tripod mountedAfter a few handheld shots with my 80-200mm f/2.8 lens, I quickly relized that was not the setup ideal for photographing this environment and switched to my 17-50mm f/2.8 lens and mounted my Nikon on my Induro carbon fiber tripod the rest of the day.  Without that wide lens I would never been able to capture one friend who is an avid tree climber surprisingly high up in the branches of this long limbed live oak.

uprooted tree in Edward Medard Park - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 7-exposure HDR tripod mountedEdward Medard Park has more traditional looking Florida outdoor areas by the reservoir itself offering shady live oaks, with roots all neatly underground, well, save for one that was uprooted long ago.

Jason performing trademark "Liu Kang" leap - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/2.8 ISO 800 1/800th tripod mountedJust to show you I did not spend the entire time behind the camera, in the above shot you can see yours truly performing my patented "Liu Kang" method air leap over some roots perfectly shaped like hurdles on a tricky downslope.  Some of you who have know me well will already have seen my debut of this move, which was over a much more dangerous gap.  I set up this shot with my Nikon D300 mounted on my tripod with all the settings dialed in.  

photography tip:

As you can see shooting an action shot into the sun required some very unusual settings.  My DSLR photography lesson students should be able to see I used settings I have told them probably never are needed, such as using f/2.8 on a wild angle lens.  In order to expose the subject (me) enough, a long shutter speed is needed especially shooting into the sun like this.  However, to freeze the action, a fast shutter speed is needed.  The solution to this is to go ahead and set the needed shutter speed, 1/800th of a second, then adjust aperture and ISO until there is enough exposure to show me and not worry if the sky gets blown out.  So that is my photography tip for action shots into the sun!

Using the tripod all day did not slow me down, but rather freed me much more to make the photographs I wanted to and still enjoy all the action with my friends.  Shooting on a tripod is not physically demanding and the setup is pretty easy to carry, so I did not get tired from having a camera hanging off me all day.  Plus, since I did not have to constantly keep taking a camera strap on and off, but rather just let the tripod stand up on its own, it was really easy for me to switch from photographer to adventurer.  I just had to leave the camera standing where it was on the tripod then explore the area as I liked.  

As you can see Edward Medard Park, despite the unfortunate name, is a great place for photography and adventure!

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    • Banyan Trees of Cape Coral Florida Rotary Park

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    Banyan trees in Rotary Park Cape Coral Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/160th

    This year I have started to look for and photograph banyan trees on purpose.  The trees above are not from my current home of St. Petersburg, Florida, but from my distant past home of Cape Coral.  I chose this unusual composition and framing purposefully by positioning myself so that the background tree would be clean (not overlapping the foreground tree).  I wanted to exaggerate the distance between the trees as well to create in my mind a duality.  To me, the foreground tree is how one sees a tree in actuality, while the background tree is how one sees a tree in one's mind.

    Double Headed Cabbage Palm of Cape Coral Florida State Tree

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    A rare double headed cabbage palm in Cape Coral Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/320thI would say that this double headed cabbage palm is the most famous object in all of Cape Coral, Florida.  I cannot even think what the second most would be.  The cabbage palm itself, in normal single head form, is the Florida state tree.  Personally, I think the cabbage palm is perhaps the least good looking of all palm trees in Florida.

    While visiting Cape Coral a few years ago someone tipped me off to the existence of this most unusual tree.  I was able to find it, but I cannot recall the reason why I did not photograph it at that time.  This time I sought it out prepared to shoot it. 

    It does not hold any hallowed ground, living its life in a very humble bit of land that serves as the median of a suburban road in a little traveled part of Cape Coral.  

    If you would like to visit the most famous denizen of Cape Coral, you can find it here:


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    The advantage of using HDR processing in photography

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    Over the past few years HDR processing has becoming very popular.  A term has even been coined for photographers who first discover HDR then basically only ever make HDR images from then on, "falling into the HDR hole."  It took me a long time to come around to realizing the benefit of HDR because, frankly, all the HDR images I saw online I thought were horrid, and I still personally do not care for a majority of HDR images I see.  This is of course a heated topic in the photography community.  However, for this photography tip, I just want to demonstrate the power HDR has to produce very detailed & dynamic images.

     

     

    Many times, using aperture priority mode will result in a very good looking image.  The top photo is the result of setting my Nikon D300 to f/11 in aperture priority mode (A - Nikon, Av - Canon).  Aperture priority produced an ok looking image.  I set my focus point on the middle elbow of the lowest branch using matrix metering mode.  Thus, the priority for the sensor was exposing the tree well.  You can see pretty good detail in all the tree branches, the grass and even the leaves.  However, there is virtually no detail in the sky at all.  Using a single exposure, one has to choose whether to expose for highlights or shadows, and if the highlights are much brighter than the shadows, one of them will have to be sacrificed to a certain degree.  In this case, the sky was sacrificed in order to expose the tree better.

    HDR processing overcomes this by using a series of bracketed shots, some overexposed and some underexposed along with the base image (what aperture priority thinks is best).  For this Gumbo-limbo tree shot, I took 7-bracketed images, of which you can see the brightest (+3 exposure) and the darkest (-3 exposure).  I ommitted the other two exposures for blog post space reasons, but those would just be a little less bright and a little less dark.

    Using Photomatix Pro 3 to combine all seven of those photographs, taking the best exposed parts from each, the final HDR image is able to show the tree in even more detail than the single aperture priority exposure shot and also detail and color in the sky as well.  Therefore, when trying to photography a scene that has a high dynamic range (HDR), taking a bracketed series of shots and combining them into one final HDR image can produce results that no single exposure can.  This is the advantage of HDR processing.

    Gumbo-limbo tree of De Soto National Memorial Park Bradenton Florida

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    Gumbo-limbo tree largest in North America in De Soto National Memorial Bradenton Florida - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm lens @ f/8 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseAlmost by accident visitng De Soto National Memorial on Labor Day has become an annual tradition.  When I first visited the park last year, it was an accident also as I left the house planning to visit only one park.  When that park turned out to be rather non-descript, I quickly checked the map and was blown away by how great De Soto was, as it only appears to be a very small peninsula.  Of the many impressive features of the park, perhaps the most is the Gumbo-limbo tree near the entrance, which is the largest of its kind in North America.  I intended upon my return to the park two days ago to photograph the tree properly, which required the proper gear:  tripod, cable release, wide angle lens.

    The above shot was made using my Induro CT214 tripod at its shortest leg length.  I wanted to get to near eye-level of the lowest branches of the Gumbo-limbo and to show just how far the lower branches extend horizontally.  They seem to grow impossibly parallel to the ground.

    Gumbo-limbo tree horizontal branches in De Soto National Memorial Bradenton Florida - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm lens @ f/8 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseI used the exact same setup to try and create a 3D looking shot of the longest and lowest of the branches.  I do not think anyone coud actully limbo under these, and I certainly did not try!  

    Gumbo-limbo tree vertical branches in De Soto National Memorial Bradenton Florida - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm lens @ f/8 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseThe thing about the Gumbo-limbo tree is, not only does it have very long horizontal branches, but its vertical branches extend straight up high into the sky as well.  It really is an amazing tree and the crown jewel of the hidden gem that is De Soto National Memorial park.

    These Gumbo-limbo photographs are available for as fine art prints, inquire today!