ILE After Hurricane Ian

What’s Up?

Thankfully, not much.

Today is Friday 30 September 2022. I will be heading down to the lake early for a walk. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day. This blog post took about 90 minutes to prepare and makes one hundred eighty-nine days in a row with a new one.

Please remember to use the B&H and Amazon links that are found on most blog pages and to use the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout when purchasing your new gear from Bedfords to get 3% back on your credit card and enjoy free second-day air FedEx. Please, also, consider joining a BAA IPT. You will be amazed at how much you will learn!

ILE After Hurricane Ian

We never lost power. There was no damage to my home or my property. We were lucky. With the high winds and historic flooding, the property damage, wreckage, and destruction at Fort Myers Beach, Fort Myers, and points north in Charlotte and Lee Counties and beyond is staggering. Two point six million folks are without electricity.

I drove down to the lake at 4:00pm, and was surprised that there were only a few small puddles along Park Drive. I was astounded as I passed the various canals: the backyard boathouses, docks, and decks were under two feet of water. No homes that I saw were flooded.

iPhone 11 Image Image #1: The ILE pier on Thursday afternoon

The Pier

When I exited my vehicle, the still strong northwest wind slammed the door open. With diminishing rains last week, the lake had been down about two inches. On Thursday afternoon, well after Hurricane Ian had passed, the water levels in Lake Weohyakapka were unprecedented. The water was less than a foot below the deck of the boardwalk. Three to five feet is about normal. Waves were breaking over the “T” at the end of the pier, and most of the deck was wet. Though neither persons nor property were in jeopardy, it was an astounding sight.

iPhone 11 Panorama Image #2: The ILE boat ramp

South on Banyan Drive

I opted to walk south on Banyan Drive along the eastern edge of the South Field so that I could check out the eagle nest tree and the Vulture Trees. About halfway down the block, you walk past the ILE boat ramp. The bass and pontoon boats that launch there into the canal have easy access to the lake and some great largemouth bass fishing. Enlarge the image and check out the dock just to the right of the submerged roadway. Normally, you can step onto the dock from dry land!

The eagle nest tree is hidden in the stand of pines on the right. The green strip in the distance is the South Peninsula.

I made a u-turn and headed south toward the end of the road. As the eagle nest tree came into view, I saw that much of the dead-branch canopy above the nest had been knocked off. While the young eagle had disappeared a month after fledging, the adults have been hanging around and roosting in the nest tree. Recently, I saw one of the adult eagles fly at the Vulture Trees and land in one of the live pine trees. Most of the vultures panicked. The eagle grabbed a small branch, turned upside down, and fell intentionally toward the earth. Its weight ripped the branch free from the limb. The bird flapped hard, righted itself, turned left, and headed back to the nest tree with its prize. If the Bald Eagle pair nests again this winter, photographic opportunities, especially for incoming flight, will be spectacular.

At the Vulture Trees, the Candelabra Tree was intact. The wind, however, had ripped many branches from the other dead pine. If the birds continue to roost at this site, photography should be improved with the cleaner playing field.

Neat iPhone Trick

I learned that by doing a horizontal panning pano at the wide angle setting, 1/2X, the resulting image will be just a bit wider than three by two, even when your pan approaches 180 degrees. When creating iPhone panos at 1X or 2x, the images are many times wider than they are tall.

The iPhone Photography e-Guide To order your copy of the The iPhone Photography e-Guide please click here. The PDF is sent link by e-mail for downloading: the file is relatively huge at 216 MB.

Hard to Believe

Yes, Cliff has a great eye and wonderfully creative vision. Yet it is still hard for me to believe that he can make so many great images with “just“ an i-phone. Almost more amazingly Cliff captures with his iPhone and does all of his post-processing on the phone! In this great new e-Guide written for BIRDS AS ART you will learn to set up your iPhone quickly and efficiently and how to to use it. In addition, there are dozens and dozens of tips on Cliff’s favorite apps and his favorite gear. Scroll down to the bottom to see the Table of Contents.

The iPhone Photography e-Guide: $20.00.

To order your copy of the The iPhone Photography e-Guide please click here.

Dr. Cliff Oliver

Dr. Cliff Oliver is an award-winning photographer, former photography instructor for the San Diego Natural History Museum, cutting-edge integrative health care professional, and international workshop leader. He created and taught the first 5-day immersion iPhone photography workshop at Hollyhock, Canada’s premier Leadership Learning Center. He teaches quarterly iPhone photography classes at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library School of the Arts (these include Art on the iPhone, iPhoneography, Portraits and Selfies, and Practicing in the Field). His images have been on the cover of WildBird magazine, on display at Scripps Oceanography Institute, and been honored with multiple first-place finishes in the International Exhibition of Photography Del Mar. The San Diego Natural History Museum’s, “Birds of the World” centennial exhibit featured several of his images. One of his iPhone images received an honorable mention in the Athenaeum 23rd annual juried exhibition. He has displayed images at Art Speaks: Expressions of Hope and Healing and has produced a series of books, called Zen I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII that feature original images that promote inner peace. The last 4 books feature only images taken on the iPhone. He teaches individuals and groups the skills of capturing iPhone/mobile photographs and then how to create personalized works of art.

Learn more about Cliff and what he does on his Center for Balance website here. And don’t forget, if I had never met Cliff I would be pushing up daisies somewhere. To request my Health Basics File that contains the whole story, please shoot me an e-mail by clicking here..

You can learn how I got interested in iPhone photography and see some of Cliff’s great iPhone images in the 2018 blog post here.

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.