Low Tide

Low Tide

This is one of those images I couldn't make up my mind if I liked the colored version or the black and white. The black and white won out because I think I like the drama created from the monotone and high contrast. I wanted to emphasize the light and shadows caused from the early morning light.

This image was captured last January at the South Rest Stop under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The people out in the distance were crabbing, I think. Florida doesn't really have many rocks. The "rocks" in the foreground are recycled from torn up highways, etc.

One thing I liked about the color version is it showed the green algae on the rocks, however, since it was very cloudy, with the sunlight only peeking through, the color was pretty muted. I may or may not post the color version at a later date.

Kiteboarder

Kiteboarder

This shot was made nearly a year ago with my Canon 40D and Canon 75-300mm lens. One advantage of using an APS-C camera is the extra reach obtained by the 1.6X crop factor. So, at 300mm, this lens was reaching out at a whopping 480mm! Plenty long enough to get a great shot of this kiteboarder without having to go out waist deep in the cold water.

I also like the fact that this guy was either unaware of my camera, or didn't care. Most of the guys would ham it up when they spotted the camera onshore.

When I first started out in photography, I covered sports for the college newspaper. Later on, I continued to shoot sports for a few years until I turned my attention on bands, both local and some professional bands, then models/fashion and finally nature. I've been shooting nature since about 2005. I think I've finally found my niche, at least I hope so.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge

Sunshine Skyway Bridge

This was shot about 2 weeks ago from the North Rest Stop on the approach to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, here in St Petersburg, FL.

When you look at the other view I posted showing the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, you can't tell just how high it is. The funny thing, now with newer and newer cruise ships, it seems it's still too low. They're trying to figure out if they have to raise it, or to build another port so cruise ships don't have to cross under the bridge.

The bridge is 431 ft high with a vertical clearance of 175 ft. It is roughly 4 miles long.

The Travel Channel has named this bridge #3 of the Top 10 bridges in the world. It is Florida's flag bridge

This bridge also has a dark side, however. It is also known as a popular suicide place. It got so bad, that a radio station even had a jumper pool. As of 2009, 207 people have successfully committed suicide by jumping off the bridge, and 34 others tried it and survived. One man, who had been kidnapped, tortured and beaten was forced to jump at gunpoint; while another man hung himself from the bridge. There are many more suspected with people missing, but no bodies were found. This year in 2014, there have been 7 suicides, 23 possible (no bodies found), 1 survivor, and 2 saves. This bridge is known the #4 suicide bridge in the country and #1 east of California. 

South Rest Stop Sunshine Skyway Bridge

South Rest Stop Sunshine Skyway Bridge

I'm off work only 1 day a week, so I don't have a lot of time to go out shooting. I also can't pick the weather. Today, was an overcast, trying to storm all day, type of day. I originally took this in color, but the color was kind of dull.

It spans 3 counties, Pinellas, Hillsborough and Manatee, over the waters of Tampa Bay, which is usually pretty calm, but there were warnings of high surf, so that is why I decided to come here to shoot today.

In this shot, this bridge doesn't look very scarey, but I can tell you, there were high wind warnings, and you don't want to be driving an SUV over it, like I did today. It's definitely a white knuckle drive. This bridge is 4.1 miles long, has a clearance of 175 ft below the bridge and it's vertical clearance is 193 ft. The sides, which is what makes it so scarey are only Jersey Barriers. It has 2 lanes in each direction, so there's no safety in the middle lane. The Sunshine Skyway was named #3 of the top 10 bridges in the world by The Travel Channel. The tubes forming the sails are painted yellow.

I cross this bridge every day going to work. Most times it doesn't bother me, but it took some getting used to. The only time I'm scared at all is in the blinding rain, fog, and during high winds.

Christmas Tree at Florida Botanical Gardens

During our trip to the Florida Botanical Gardens, we saw many Christmas trees. This is one of the ones I liked best.

It is located on one of the rest areas on the bridge overlooking the water. I liked the way it is framed by the bridge and the overhang. The all blue lights with the white frame is what I think makes this one especially pretty.

Dawn Sunshine Skyway Bridge

I'm always trying to find a different perspective when I'm photographing a familiar site. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Ft Desoto, Tierra Verde, Florida is one of my favorite scenes to photo. Not only because it's the Skyway, but because I love to photograph bridges. I'm always on the lookout for a new one to photograph.

It's strange, I've photographed this bridge, especially at dawn and sunrise, hundreds of times and most of them from the same location on East Beach, and never thought to turn the camera on its side. I was pleasantly pleased with this shot.

Whenever I'm out with my photography students, I tell them to not be a "walk-up-shooter". Spend some time exploring the view; look up, look down, walk all the way around the subject if possible, take shots from near, from far, well you get the idea. I tell them this because it's one of my faults that I'm trying hard to overcome. I'll have to practice what I preach more often.

Playing Around With HDR

This scene was made at John Chestnut Park in Palm Harbor. If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you know I love to photograph bridges and I love this one.

The scene was kind of bleak, so I decided to play around with it in Photomatix. It was a 3-shot combination at eV +1, 0 and -1. I combined the RAW files in Photomatix, then brought it back into Lightroom to tweak it a bit more.

While I'm not a fan of artsy HDR, I do like natural-looking HDR and this was the effect I was going for here. I've posted this before, but not on this blog. I would like a good critique from some of you other photographers out there. I'm particularly interested in what your initial impression of the shot is and any suggestions you can think of that would be helpful.

Thank you all in advance. I'm looking forward to your response.

Dawn at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge

Another day having to get up to check where the sunrise is and still no sunrise! Now I have to get up again tomorrow. I don't want to miss that window.

I do like this morning's dawn, though. I'm happy with this shot. I sure wish I could post it larger so it isn't so compressed. I caught it today during low tide and the water looked like glass. I think this is the first time I've ever seen the bridge reflected in the water in this spot.

I like the color, too. Nothing was done in post processing except straightening. I have to do that to all my photos where the horizon shows. I have astigmatism (I think that's how it's spelled), so everything I see as straight is crooked.

Setting used for this shot were 15 seconds at F8, -1/3 exposure compensation, in aperture priority with partial metering off the water, at ISO 200 to keep the noise down as much as possible. I used my 55-250mm IS lens.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge Sunrise

This is the time of year when the sun rises right between the spans of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Every year, around this time I start going there to check out where the sun is because it only rises between the spans for 2 days from this spot. Every year it's at a different time to complicate things even further.

I went for the first time on October 27th. It is impossible to tell where it rose because it was hidden by the heavy cloud cover. If I can get up in the morning, I'm going to go back to check it out.

Unfortunately, the jpg compression took a lot of the beautiful color and contrast in the image away.

This image was shot on a tripod, at ISO 200 to keep the noise down, for 1/25th sec at F4 using partial metering in aperture priority. Nothing other than straightening the horizon was done in post processing with Adobe Lightroom 2.5.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge

Another view of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge taken from the North Pier Rest Area Park. This bridge always has fascinated me and it has only been recently that it doesn't scare me to drive over it. I used to be so afraid of this bridge. It doesn't seem that bad now.

I like the way this shot of the bridge is framed by the tree and the gravel near the shoreline, although it seems very far away. This is the effect one gets when using a the shortest end of my zoom. It makes things appear further away than they actually are. In doing that, it creates depth in a photo, as does the framing in the foreground. By framing both the top of the frame and the bottom, it creates balance.

This image was shot using my 55-250mm lens at 55mm. With the Canon crop factor, that would be 88mm or a moderate telephoto. The framing makes it appear further away. It was shot at 1/6000 @ 7.1 and 400 ISO in Aperture Priority mode. I used partial metering and metered off the sky.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge

On Saturday, I participated in a joint meetup between my photography group and another fitness/adventure group. Not many people showed up for the event, but I had a great time and met some very nice people at the event.

Besides meeting new people, I also found two new places with interesting views of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tierra Verde, FL. I have been looking for a place to get this angle for many years and never knew this place existed, although I've seen photos of this angle. Now I know where to get these photos. This angle shows the steep curve of the bridge.

For those that don't know about this bridge, this is the second bridge built to cross the water of Tampa Bay, connecting St Petersburg with Sarasota.

The original Sunshine Skyway Bridge was the site of a number of tragic events, including the collision of the US Coast Guard ship Blackthorn and outbound freighter Capricorn in 1980 which claimed 23 sailors' lives, and a structural collapse caused by a collision with the bridge support by the inbound freighter Summit Venture in 1980 which killed 35 people.

The Sunshine Skyway is a cabled main span approximately 5.5 miles in length with a vertical clearance of 199 ft. Construction began in 1982 and was dedicated in 1987 and cost $244 million dollars to build. It is constructed of steel and concrete. The Travel Channel rated the Sunshine Skyway #3 in its special on the "Top 10 Bridges" in the World. The bridge is considered the "flag bridge" of Florida.

Settings used for this image are exposed at 1/2000 at F7.1 at ISO 200 with +1/3 eV, at 208mm hand held. My White Balance was set to Cloudy, which rendered the image too blue. The image was color corrected with PhotoShop.

Causeway Memorial Bridge 3

This image was taken the same day as the other two I posted, except it was taken before dark when the sky was a pure white overcast. There was no interest in the sky and no interest in the photo. The original is pretty blah, if I say so myself.

While I was reading Rick Sammon's tweet on Twitter, he challenged everyone to create an illusion using a plug-in and post it on his facebook and his site. It's not a contest, just a challenge. Since I don't have many plug-ins and the ones I have I've never had occasion to use until today. I couldn't figure out how to use the one I just won. I'll have to spend some time with the tutorials from AutoFx.com to learn how to use it.

In the meantime, I had to do something, so I came up with this. I almost deleted the original, but something told me it would be perfect for fooling around in Photoshop and/or Lightroom so I loaded Dynamic HDR and ran the pseudo HDR twice on it. This is what I came up with. I think it looks a whole lot better than the original.

Here's the original:
What do you think?

Memorial Causeway Bridge

I've photographed this bridge many times, each time trying to do a better job with it. This is one of my favorite images shot last night during one of my teaching sessions.

It was shot fairly late and we had been waiting for a sunset that never happened, so we decided to wait a while longer to see if we'd get anything in the sky besides clouds. Even lightning would've been great after waiting so long.

Sunset was supposed to happen at 8:10 pm, but with the heavy cloud cover, we got nothing! No sun; actually, no sun all day which is unusual in Florida.

Last year, the City of Clearwater had planned to build slips along the beach just under this bridge. Everyone was disappointed because this is such a nice, quiet area. People from all over come by to sit on the benches and watch the sun set at this spot. Something must have changed the city's plans, because they built this fishing pier instead. While it does change the view quite a bit, we were trying to find an angle where we could work with it. I think this may be the best angle, but I'm not so sure. It's so close to the bridge, it's impossible to get the bridge by itself from this location. I don't think this is so bad; but we'll just have to work a little harder to get a nice view. I'll keep trying, though.

Techs are: shot at 8:18pm, in aperture priority mode for 1/4 sec at F7.1 using ISO 200 to minimize noise, with partial metering off the bridge at what looked like about 18% gray about 1/3 into the shot to maximize depth of field with my Canon 20D and an 18-55mm lens at 27mm.

Footbridge Lake Seminole Park

It is rare that I get a decent landscape worth posting; but more than one in the same place is unheard of for me. Landscapes are not my strong point. I really have to work at them.

I posted one yesterday and this one today. Both were taken the same day in Lake Seminole Park. It must be the beautiful sky and the combination of good light and of course, it was the scenery that made the image possible at all.

This footbridge spans over a stream that feeds two sections of Lake Seminole. The brook is loaded--and I mean loaded--with blue crab. At any given day, one can always spot the birds fishing for crab in the shallow waters of this stream. On this day, an elderly lady tied a half of chicken on the end of a string and flung it into the water. She pulled out crab after crab until an American Alligator chased her away. She said she got plenty for supper, so she didn't mind getting chased away. I guess the 'gator wasn't in the mood for sharing.

Hernando deSoto Bridge

Yeah, I know, another bridge picture. :) This one is of the Hernando deSoto Bridge in Bradenton, FL.

I wasn't able to find any information on it on the net, but it is part of a series of bridges crossing the Manatee River.

I was covering Manatee Memorial Hospital while a girl was out and I noticed the beautiful sky on my way home from work. I just had to stop and shoot it.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge Sunrise Check Up #2

We went over to check up on the position of the sun as it rises yesterday. This first one is a look at it in total darkness.

The next shot was taken at dawn.

The third shot, almost at sunrise. And finally, the sun rose. It still isn't between the spans, but I'll be going back to check it on Monday. Hopefully, it'll be a bit closer.

In 2006, it rose between the spans on Dec. 2nd, and in 2007 the date was Nov. 15th. It appears that it's about 2 weeks earlier every year.

It only lasts for about 2 days, so we have little chance to catch it until we have to wait another year to try it again.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge Panoramic

This is daybreak at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tierra Verde, FL. It spans between St Petersburg and Sarasota, FL.

It's span is 5.5 miles with a vertical clearance of 193 feet and the world's longest bridge with a cabled main span. Building began in 1982, and after a cost of $244 million dollars, it was dedicated in 1987. The bridge was built to replace the old structure after the freighter, MV Summit Venture collided with the original structure in 1980 sending over 1200 feet plunging into Tampa Bay killing 35 people.

If you like my work, please comment. If you'd like to see more, visit my website here.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge

Every year the sun rises between the spans of this bridge for only 2 days. The problem is, we never know which 2 days it is. In 2006, it rose between the spans on Dec. 2nd and in 2007, it was on Nov. 15th.

So, every year I start going to my favorite spot to check it out and try to guess when it's going to rise perfectly in the center of the spans.

I went out this morning and it's not even close, so I'll check it in about a month. However, we had some really nice clouds at daybreak when I captured this image.

It's too bad the bridge is being painted because the spans aren't lit up. It's so beautiful lit up. It'll be a while before it gets done, so it looks like it won't be lit this year when I finally catch it in the right place once again.

If you'd like to see a larger image, just click on the image.

If you like my work, please comment. If you'd like to see more, you can check out my website by clicking here.

Memorial Causeway Bridge, Clearwater, FL

This was taken during a meetup with my group. I decided to experiment with white balance settings on my camera. I used tungsten lighting for this one.

This site will look very different in a year or two. The city of Clearwater is planning to add slips in this area sometime in 2009. This is called progress?

If you enjoy my work, you can see more at my website. Just click on the title of this blog and it'll take you to my site.