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Daylight Savings Time

Daylight savings is upon us and somehow this seemed appropriate. It’s a combination of images taken at different times of day. By carefully merging them I’ve created a surreal scene that combines a daylight image with another one at night. It’s a little like the confusion I experience on a Monday after we change the clocks, eh?

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Daylight Savings Time
Images from day and night merged together

If you detected a slight Canadian accent it’s because I took this while in Toronto. I took one shot out the hotel window when I arrived in in the afternoon and another in the evening. In the past I’ve done similar images using a tripod, but in this case I handheld the camera each time. That creates slight variations which could have been difficult to align, but with a little effort it turned out okay.

more from Toronto

Even when I travel for reasons other than photography I bring my camera. This was a quick business trip with very little time for photos, yet I still managed to get a few shots from around the hotel. Hope springs eternal and I figure that if I bring the camera and I have an extra hour in the day (knock on wood), I’ll get a little time for doing what I like best: eh?

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Sunset over the Ringing Bridge

As a photographer I wonder if the architects of this bridge designed it with the setting sun in mind. It’s positioned such that in you get this view in the afternoon as you cross over to Bird Key. Sometimes if we are going to dinner in St Armand’s Circle we’ll cross the bridge at this time; heaven forbid I should have a camera.

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Sunset over the Ringing Bridge
I think the architects of the Ringling Bridge had this scene in mind.

If you scan through my portfolio, you’ll see a lot of photos on or, around this bridge. And yes, some were taken when I was heading to dinner. However, it’s such an iconic location that I’ll keep coming back to hopefully find something slightly different. I’ve worn it out for sure, but hey, who’s counting?

more sunset images

Often on a Sunday morning they’ll close the bridge for a run because this is the closest thing we have to a hill. Florida is really flat. If you want to see the landscape the easiest way is to walk or run up to the middle of the bridge. Of course, you could also stand on the top of a nearby hotel, but then you’d miss out on your exercise, not to mention the intentions of the bridge builders.

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Super Blue Blood Moon over Sarasota

Here is the super blue blood moon over Sarasota’s Ringling bridge. Boy, what a commotion this created. I was standing by myself along the water, nearly hidden by brush along the side of an empty section of road. Some passerby must have seen me and looked over to see what I was doing.

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Super Blue Blood Moon over Sarasota
This spectacle create quite the stir, around the world and right behind me.

As I was absorbed in my camera settings and composing the shot, I was oblivious to everything around me. At one point I heard someone’s voice and looked up to see a crowd of people standing behind me. There was all manner of smart phones taking this same picture with the little LED flashes going off.

Continuing the task at hand, a few minutes later I heard the sound of screeching breaks and horns. It seems the stopped cars nearly caused a traffic pileup. We were standing along a causeway of sorts with no safe place to pull over and park. Nevertheless, it seemed I started a trend, and everybody piled on for an iPhone photo.

more night photography

In the end I got a shot I had in my mind. Just taking a quick look at twitter there are millions of people doing the same thing. Anyway, I’m adding this one to the pile, even if it did nearly cause a pileup.

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Rainy Bradenton Sunrise

Here is a shot of the Bradenton Riverwalk on a rainy morning a couple of years ago, just as the sun is about to rise. Living where I do I prefer to have water as a feature in my environmental shots. If I go outside it’s almost unavoidable. The water creates provides a basic building block with which to build a composition.

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Rainy Bradenton Sunrise
A rainy morning at Bradenton’s Riverwalk

Another thing I look for is leading lines. In this case it’s a guardrail, but it could also be more organic elements like a path or shoreline. The line leads the eyes of the viewer into the picture where our imaginations begin to find root.

More photos in the rain

Finally, quite often I prefer to have some human element. In many cases it adds a level of interest that subtly draws the attention even more. It’s not uncommon to project ourselves into the scene through the perspective of a human figure. In this approach the person can be blurred or abstracted so not to provide too many details. These things are better left to our own imaginations.

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Sarasota Skyline at Night

Here is another panorama of Sarasota from Bayfront Park. Last year I posted an almost identical image that was taken during the day but have been waiting to do it again at night. Back then that big building (third from the left) was still under construction and it wasn’t lit up. So, now that it’s complete I wanted to shoot it again since the scene seems more complete to me.

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Sarasota Skyline at Night
Sarasota Skyline at night taken from Bayfront Park

To take this I mounted my camera vertically on a tripod and took ten shots from left to right. With the resolution of the Sony camera, it will be about seven feet across when printed!

Here are some links to other panoramas I’ve taken in and around Sarasota…

Same perspective from the day
From City Island Day
From City Island Night
A different perspective from Bayfront Park

And here are links to other panoramas from all over

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Ladies in White

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Ladies In White
I took this somewwere in Barcelona one night

I don’t recall exactly where I was when I shot this but it was probably close to the gothic quarter in Barcelona. I spent a lot of time shooting scenes at night there, just out having a good time. In the middle of summer, that’s what everyone does.

more daily images

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Sunrise over the Manatee River

I took this sunrise over the Manatee River with a drone one morning. For years I wanted to take a helicopter so I could get a photo with this perspective, but now I just use the DJI. It’s a lot cheaper and I don’t have to hang out the door to get a shot.

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Sunrise over the Manatee River
Sunrise over the Manatee River as viewed from a small DJI MavicPro drone camera

The town of Bradenton is on the right and my home town of Palmetto is on the left. The traffic flows into Bradenton over the second bridge in the morning and the other way at night. The first bridge is the rail bridge to the Tropicana plant. In the old days the trains carried people, now it only carries oranges to the plant and juice in the other direction. If you buy a container of orange juice, chances are it crossed that bridge.

other images of this river

I was standing on a pier just off camera to the right. The drone was so high and far away from me I couldn’t actually see it with my eyes. But I could tell where it was through the live feed it was sending back. I always get a little nervous when it’s so far away, but nothing happened and I got the image I’ve been waiting so long for.

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An Afternoon Thunderstorm Dissipates over the Water

I took this from Palmetto Florida one evening last summer. There is a lot going on in the sky as an afternoon thunderstorm dissipates over the water. I needed a panorama to capture the expansiveness of the sky. It’s made up of ten photos in two rows so there is a lot more to see than I would get from an ordinary photo.

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An Afternoon Thunderstorm Dissipates over the Water
An Afternoon Thunderstorm Dissipates over the Water

This image is a good representation of what it’s like here in summer. You look one way and it looks dark and ominous, you look another way and it’s a nice sunset. That’s why I used a panorama, so we can see in both directions.

more panoramas in the gallery

But in reality, panoramas are the predecessors of 360 images. With your browser or a VR viewer you can look in any direction. I like still pictures because of the creativity I can put into them. VR is a different thing altogether but they each have their place. Maybe one day all photos will be VR, wouldn’t that be interesting?

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First Night in Venice

I took this while in a water Taxi on my first night in Venice. Sunsets like this don’t happen every day so I felt fortunate. This is one of those cases where just being there is fifty-percent of photography. I was ready with my camera so I was lucky to get the shot.

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First Night in Venice
First Night in Venice

They say the best camera in the world is the one you have with you. In this case I was touring so I had my Sony. More often however I have only an iPhone. I see sunsets at home all the time and I wish I had the Sony but at least I can pull out an iPhone. It takes nice pictures but not as good as the Sony, at least for now. The way things are going that gap will continue to shrink and maybe cameras will become a thing of the past.

more sunsets

Every picture tells a story and as we take more the stories just keep piling up. Then, long afterwards we can go back and re-live the stories by looking at our pictures. The same for video but I prefer still images because I think they go deeper into our thoughts, imagination and memory. Regardless of the camera, it’s good to never be without one, you just never know what you’ll see.

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Agbar Tower

This is an artistic rendering of the Agbar Tower in Barcelona. A few days ago I posted a section of the tower at night. The tower is so fantastic to look at that I couldn’t help but take a bunch of photos. Also, I was staying at the hotel right next door.

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Agbar Tower
Agbar Tower in Barcelona

I worked a long time on this in post-production. First of all it’s a vertorama of three stacked images. I was standing about block away yet it was too big to fit in the frame with my 35mm lens. Later I rendered the sky in Topaz and masked in the tower and the people. That’s a quick description of a long but enjoyable process I used to get to the final image.

Speaking of final images, I worked so long on this it feels incomplete. Whenever I perform any kind of detailed work I have a tendency to want to keep fiddling with it. That also applies to other areas, not just photography.

more architecture images

In any case, at night this tower is lit and can be seen from all around Barcelona. Figuring it would be a challenge I wanted to create a daytime impression as well and this is what I ended up with.