Framed by Palms

I'm always looking for different angles when I'm out photographing. During the Tampa Trolley Tour with my group last Saturday, I spotted this scene just begging to be photographed.

I like the way the Palms frame the facade of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Tampa. Our group spent some time there on our first Trolley Tour but we concentrated on photographing the inside of this beautiful hotel located across the street from the Tampa Convention Center. I'm not sure how many stories it rises up but I think this image displays it's height effectively.

Normally, it's not considered "good photography" to show a building tilted like this, but in this case I chose to break the "rules" in an effort to show how high this building really is. This inside is just as beautiful as the outside and one of the most unusually decorated or laid out hotels I've seen.

Lamp

Monday was our monthly Safety Harbor meetup. We've pretty much shot every blade of grass at the Safety Harbor Marina and Veterans Memorial Park, so in our quest to find something different, a few of us decided to take a walk downtown. That wasn't the only reason, though; it was really cold down near the water.

We went into Starbucks for a coffee to warm up and a snack. On the way back to the marina, we walked out the back of Crispers Restaurant and started to shoot a few photos.

This lamp is on the back side of Crispers. I liked the way the late afternoon light was hitting it and the contrast between the curved lines and round beads of the design against the square, sharp angles of the brick wall behind it and the sharp angles of the palm fronds just below it.

Burned Palm Frond

Our group had another meetup tonight. This time we went to Ft Desoto in Tierra Verde, FL. We walked on one of the nature trails for about an hour while waiting for the moon rise.

I will have photos of the moon in another blog; be sure to stop by and see it.

Getting back to the burned Palm frond. Prescribed burns are a way of managing our overgrown forests. The heavy overgrowth and undesirable non-native plants are burned to replace nutrients in the soil and to rid the forest floor of this heavy overgrowth. The burns don't hurt the trees and are controlled to prevent forest fire. Due to the warm tropical climate in Florida, we have a longer growing season, so we have to have these burns every so many years to protect the environment.

This frond will grow again and produce a healthy Sable or Cabbage Palm. I'm not an expert and naming the different Palm species unless I can see the whole plant. Obviously, I'm not able to see this particular plant.

Grapes and Palms

Just another experiment with HDR. This one was taken at sunset during our regular Monday Walk-Around Meetup in Safety Harbor, FL. The sky was actually this color and the clouds were just amazing.

I made several shots of these clouds and at one point there was a very faint rainbow shooting out just above these clouds. Unfortunately, it was very faint and although I tried, I just couldn't capture it.

It was really strange to see a rainbow, since there was no rain. I'm still trying to figure that out. I've never seen a rainbow appear without being precluded by rain.

The magenta sky this evening was magnificent. Florida has the most amazing clouds.

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