It’s another hybridcast – part podcast, part slideshow, part video, which means ignore the blank periods because they’re supposed to be there. But there were enough photos in this batch, accompanied by explanations, that typing it all up would have made a tremendously long page (yeah, much longer than this one,) plus we’re in the video age anyway so I’m catering more to the Short Attention Span Theater crowd, even though my better nature tells me that I shouldn’t. Time and effort-wise, it also would have been much easier to type it out, so I’m doing this for you and you’d better appreciate it (on an entirely unrelated note, there’s that tip jar thing over to the right.)
Technical notes: The on-site audio was recorded on a smutphone with a lapel mic, and didn’t do a bad job at that – I’m impressed. Then during photo editing, I discovered one of the simple functions that I took for granted in Photoshop doesn’t exist at all in GIMP, which is doing a line with an arrow. Numerous webbernet sources told me to download a plugin from the GIMP registry, but said registry was completely inoperative, so I finally drew my own damn arrow and pasted it as needed onto the images. Meanwhile, OpenShot (the Linux video editor that I’m using) rendered the first version of the video in an entirely unusable manner, huge amounts of still image jitter and bad rendering of the overlaid text, while the higher-quality version was better than three times my upload limit in Vimeo – seriously, 1.8 goddamn gigabytes for a seventeen minute video? However, I found a Linux converter which took that one down to a very efficient size with no bad effects at all, so we’re good. I’m still working out the quirks and refinements of video.
Links:
A previous post on Jekyll and the sea turtle center; note the photo of the green sea turtle in there, with an identical injury. Same patient? I can’t say for sure – that was two years ago, but I recall them saying something this time around about how long ago the injury occurred, so, maybe?
Voice recorder for Android – App coders need to learn how to name their programs distinctly, because finding this can be tedious; you usually have to look for the exact same icon. Try it for giggles – you’ll see how many variations there are. Some might be much better than this one, but it works for me and I’ll save you the time trying them out.
The players:
Wood stork (Mycteria americana)
Great egret (Ardea alba)
Loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta)
Gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus)
Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) – not a painted turtle as I stupidly said in the audio
Broad-headed skink (Plestiodon laticeps)
Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas)
Narrator and videographer: Photographus chauvanim vulgaris
Second unit photography: Ad amicam
But while a video gives me the chance to show a bunch of photos in a small footprint, as it were, the detail takes a hit, so a few of the images reappear below in higher resolution.
Did you notice that the above image in the video was subtly changing, because I included a sequence of the gulls passing? Now you have to go back and look at it again, don’t you? That’ll teach you to be more sharp-eyed.
See the smoke? There’s the faintest hint of another industrial complex visible between the roots, and the causeway bridge is hidden behind the trees to the left. A wide-angle lens helps minimize such distractions of course, but positioning counts for a lot.
The boats really do pass pretty close to the end of the island.
Comparison image here (third frame,) but don’t ask me which tree is which – it’s possible one of them got swept away by last year’s storm.
No, it wasn’t starving – most turtles look this desperate when eating…
Wood stork (Mycteria americana.) There must be a reason…
What a pair of naturals…
The inset was the full frame (at 210mm focal length – I looked it up,) while the main photo is full resolution. Yes, I lightened it a little for detail of the flounder. I wouldn’t make a print of it this size, but considering the distance and the movement of the players, I can’t complain.
This wasn’t in the video, so it’s a bonus frame. Jekyll Island is also a great place for Spanish moss, but then again, most of Georgia is.
If you check the video, one of the frames shows what the entire sky looked like, so you can now see what selectivity in framing accomplishes.
And one last image back from sunrise; the gulls were usually staying quite far away, so they had to be in specific regions of the frame to be even noticeable, much less distinct elements. Timing was part of it, but luck was a major factor because wing position is important. I have a lot of frames, and many of them will be discarded during the big sort coming up.
That’s all for now – I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I suppose I can always do another post.