Tag Archives: OM System

Birds, Egret, Film Filter, Marsh, OM System, Swamp, Wildlife

Great Egret Portrait

June 15, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography Leave a comment

The Great Egrets are certainly beautiful birds and make it easy to take way too many photographs of them. 😆.

I used a Pana Leica 100-400 for this shot. Leica ‘glass’ is known for its quality, some of the best in the world. The body of this lens has some short comings though. Most notable is the very still zoom ring making it difficult to quickly change focal lengths. My personal solution is to lock the lens at a set focus, around 300mm. With a long lens most of what you shoot fits here. Being good glass the photos can be great. I don’t shoot birds in flight with this lens, the OM 100-400 is best used for that.

Black And White Photography, Cemetery, Charleston, Historical, Landscape, Monochrome, OM System

Unknown Confederate States Navy – Monochrome Monday

June 15, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography 2 Comments

The Charleston harbor blockade by Union Navy started in 1861 and was ended 1865.

There were multiple blockade runners attempting to move goods through the harbor over the length of the US Civil War. In addition both sides introduced iron clad war ships, the Confederate Navy also had the first submarines that sank ships in battle.

The Charleston military cemetery at the old Umbra Plantation became the grave yard for the Confederate States Navy, a section included to bury any unknown sailors.

Unknown Confederate States Navy - Monochrome Monday — Unknown Confederate States Navy – Monochrome Monday

Alligator, Birds, Egret, Landscape, Marsh, OM System, Spoonbill, Wildlife

Odd Group

June 15, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography 4 Comments

This was taken from a large marsh dike that’s runs alongside another large dike. A canal runs between them, for some reason years ago two dikes made sense.

The water was low and we could see a good sized group of Egrets and Spoonbill all around a wooden trunk. There’s no way to really hide on the dikes. Grass can be 10 feet tall, but there are gaps. The shot below was from one of the openings.

At first I didn’t notice that long tail right in the middle of the lower group. The Alligator was around 9 feet long, just hanging out with birds

As expected we couldn’t walk past the group without them taking off.

In the image below you can see both sides of the wooden trunk, the gates upright. That’s how the trunk system works. Gates are on both sides of the dike, water flows through the wooden ‘pipe’ running through the dike itself. There are thousands of these trunks scattered across the Lowcountry ACE Basin controlling water levels through over the 350,000 acres here.

Bear Island, South Carolina.

Birds, Egret, Landscape, Marsh, OM System

Marsh Scene

June 15, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography 8 Comments

I moved external drives around today, it’s much too hot outside so time for inside chores. I have a much smaller catalogue of photos on my drives now.

I went through folders checking everything worked and decided to find some early spring landscape images never published. Landscapes are usually good candidates for DxO Filmpack.

Below is a photograph finished with an old Kodak 35mm film stock. A Great Egret flying low over a rookery.

Best viewed large.

Alligator, Close-up, OM System, Swamp, What I Saw, Wildlife

A Good Angle, Alligator

June 14, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography 4 Comments

Rather dramatic, but it’s an Alligator and they always are.

I was on a boardwalk to get this image not treading water. He swam under me, and filled the frame.

Photographed with the OM-1 mk2, Pan Leica 100-400.

Black And White Photography, Landscape, Marsh, Monochrome, OM System, What I Saw

Black And White Dirt Roads

June 14, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography 2 Comments

Take out color and the photograph becomes completely different. And a lot of fun too.

I do think it’s important to like post processing (developing) your photographs though. Just shooting monochrome helps me get started, seeing the image, but that creates flat jpg’s I feel.

Both photographs here were finished using a combination of Lightroom and DxO Silver Efex. Cropping and basic adjustments were first done in Lightroom. The images are completed in Silver Efex. Currently I use version 8 of Silver Efex, I will update to 9 soon. I like to wait a little while in case there are issues with the initial release. The last several versions have added many advanced editing features, the new one includes filters. If I just shot B&W and was new to editing a much simpler editing software, not Adobe would probably work just fine.

ACE Basin, South Carolina.

Black And White Photography, Landscape, Marsh, Monochrome, OM System, Swamp, What I Saw, Wildlife

Ghost Forest – Wood Stork

June 13, 2026 Ted Jennings - TPJ Photography Leave a comment

When forest wetlands, or swamp trees, suddenly die off what’s left are the bones of a ‘Ghost Forest’.

It’s a haunting scene that can be acres and acres of bones stretching to the sky. The usual culprit is salt water.

Under ground aquifers can be miles long, connected to other aquifers, and slowly be drained empty. There are two main reasons they empty, over development and now Data Centers. Both use a tremendous amount of water.

Those empty pockets can be filled by creeping salt water from rising tides, like here in the Lowcountry. Water seeks the lowest spot, and goes where it wants.

Below is a Stork high up in the bones of a Ghost Forest. Salt from the St. Helena Sound, ACE Basin slipped in here. This was a healthy swamp 5 years go. There are plenty of other places just like this.