Wildscape Images – Robert Amoruso » Nature Photography and Photographic Instruction

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Wildscape Images – Robert Amoruso bio picture
  • Welcome to my Blog!

    A photographer for over 30 years with nature and landscape photography
    being my mainstays, I settled in Central Florida in 1999. The
    beauty of the state, its abundance of birds, combined with my interest
    in the newly emerging digital photography led to a total
    immersion into the field of avian photography as well as other wildlife
    subjects using digital SLR cameras and super-telephoto lenses.

    My subjects have ranged from birds to bears, from landscapes
    to beachscapes. My images are known for their dynamic composition,
    technical excellence, and style. I have been honored with awards from
    the North American Nature Photographer's Association, won first place
    out of 20,000 entries in the Bird Category in Nature's Best
    Photography Magazine Wyndham Smith Nature Photography contest, have had
    multiple winning entries, among them first place in the Chertok
    Photography Contest sponsored by the Orange Audubon Society, and more.
    I was also an Orlando Museum of Art's Florida Artist of the Month in
    June of 2009.

    I can be found photographing in Central Florida, as well
    as teaching private and group workshops where I share my skills and
    secrets with photographers from beginners to experts. I moderate
    several forums on www.birdphotographers.net, where I am an associate publisher and co-owner of the site.

2012 Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival

I presented 7 workshops (3 indoor and 4 outdoor) during the 2012 Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival.

From the feedback at the workshops, all participants were pleased and had a great time. As always, I met a lot of great people and had a splendid time teaching them all.

Some of the image I created during the workshop can be seen below. As is usual for me, I do little photographing; preferring to concentrate on teaching.

If you attended and took a workshop with me, I would love to hear from you.

 

The Pan Blurs below were made at MINWR at sunset. We could no longer make sharp images so I got everyone set up for sunset using wide-angle lenses and tripods. I had my 7D with a 100-400mm lens (the second image below) and my 5DII with 17-40mm lens (the first image below) but no tripod. So I did pan blurs and showed those participants remaining. Well everyone was making pan blurs in short order, including my newest friend Lana Duncan.  Great having you along Lana.

The ORIGINAL Gatorland Workshop Dates for 2012

The Photographer’s Photo Pass program (early entry till dusk shooting) is back for 2012 and I have the following workshops scheduled. Economic Stimulus pricing promises these workshops will fill up fast so please book soon. I am preparing full information to post on my Workshop page and will let you all know when it is up, but in the interim these are the days, pricing and details.

Contact:

Robert Amoruso

407-808-7417

wildscapeimages@att.net

Pricing:

Two-day workshops are $450 per person. One-day will be $250 per person.

The three-day workshop is $675. One-day will be $250 and two-days will be $500 per person.

Details:

Two morning and two afternoon outdoor shooting sessions at Gatorland’s native bird rookery. UP CLOSE access to nesting birds from the rookery’s boardwalk. The rookery evolved around the alligator breeding marsh. Perfect safety for us and the birds allows them to nest in close proximety to the gators – the boardwalk around the marsh allows us to be within feet of the nests.

200-400mm lenses are a perfect choice for shooting. Longer lenses allow you up-close portraits of beautiful breeding plumage birds.

Besides our outdoor sessions, I have on-site classroom access where I will present my highly acclaimed “Successful Strategies for Avain Rookery Photography”. Presentation also include “Using Manual Mode with your DSLR” and “The importance of Backgrounds”.

Attendees will also receive a gratuitous copy of my upcoming ebook/site guide “Successful Strategies for Avain Rookery Photography – Gatorland/SAAF SIte Guide”.

All workshop sessions are taught by Robert Amoruso. Workshops limited to 6 persons to allow me to concentrate on everyone personally.

Workshop Dates:

February

  • 25th and 26th

March

  • 24th and 25th

April

  • 28th and 29th

May

  • 18th, 19th and 20th

June

  • 16th and 17th

July

  • 14th and 15th

 

SAAF Roseate Spoonbill Action

Some Roseate Spoonbill action from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm this past weekend during my annual photographic instructional workshop there. A great group of participants learn how to create images at a native bird rookery. Many learned flash use for the very first time and all made some great images. Typical comment I received on the workshop was “I learned a lot and came away with better image making skills then when I arrived”. Thanks to my partner and co-leader in the workshop, Robert O’Toole.

Roseate Spoonbill, St. Augustine Alligator Farm – St. Augustine, FL, 4-17-11
Canon 7D with Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS + 1.4x TCII (98-280mm @ 169mm)
1/1600 sec, f/5.6
Mode: Manual
Metering: Evaluative
ISO: 400
Flash: On, Manual 1:1

April 20, 2011 - 4:43 pm

Myer Bornstein - Robert
As Usual great Images and your students love you. Keith Kennedy and I were together in Costa Rica and be both raved again about your Merritt Island Workshop and we would do it again
Myer

April 20, 2011 - 9:11 pm

admin - Thanks Myer. It was great having you guys on that workshop. I will probably be having another this year. I will keep you posted.

September 25, 2011 - 3:44 pm

Lee England - I love the spoonbill photo. Can I buy one or a print somewhere in St. Augustine, for a gift, this week!.
Thanks, Lee

January 30, 2012 - 10:59 am

Michael Willey - Robert,

Thank you for your instruction at the festival this past week. I learned a different aproach to photographing birds and you made me realize how similar the process of capturing feather texture and highlights are so similar to doing fashion photography. You verbalized the process clearly. Thanks again.

Michael

Tampa Bay Forster’s Tern

This Forster’s Tern image was created while coming back photographing spoonbills with James Shadle, Arthur Morris, Daniel Cadieux, Randy Stout, Denise Ippolito and Roman Kurywczak. I was good meeting many of these people and fellow moderators on BPN for the first time. James, thanks for the good morning.

Though I got some good spoonbill images, this was my favorite. On the way back to the dock, the terns were following the boat going after fish coming up in the prop wash. All you had to do was sit with a medium tele and snap away. Though I got many flight shots I really wanted a dive or the beginning of a dive. This one, the only one I got of a front facing dive is just perfect for my tastes. My rear facing dive got the top of our boat’s Bimini top in it so delete key for that one.

Canon 7D
100-400mm @ 330mm
1/2500 sec, f/5.6
Mode: Manual
Metering: Evaluative
ISO: 400

Exposing for bright, white water and a Roseate Spoonbill.

Here is an image from the 2011 Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival that I created during one of the three field workshops I lead. This is what I call “white water”. It is pre-dawn and you expose this by adding +2 to +3 stops of light to the exposure (+3 here). This places the whites high on the histogram as they should be. In Photoshop you have to normally expand the dynamic range in the shadows and that corrects for the low-contrast look. In RAW, you expose for the highlights and process for the shadows.

Another thing about this image of the Spoonbill; on the workshop I created this most of the participants that I helped create the same image where thrilled to have gotten it saying in the past the images they created looked dark and dingy. They were not adjusting for the fact the camera wants to make this a middle gray image.

Canon 1D Mark III with Canon 600mm f/4 IS + 1.4x TC II
1/80 sec, f/5.6, Mode: Av, Metering: Evaluative, Exp comp: +3
ISO: 800, Flash: Off