bradentonbeach Archives - Page 5 of 7

October 11, 2016

Next to the Bridge Street Pier

These are moored next to the Bridge Street Pier in the town of Bradenton Beach. Normally I come here to take pictures at the beach but there is another side of town that’s not as well known. It’s on a barrier island so to the west is the gulf and east is the inter-coastal waterway. It’s on the east side that you can watch the sunrise while enjoying a cup of coffee on the town pier. The Bridge Street Pier has a restaurant thats open early seven days a week for breakfast and is one of those gems most people miss.

Daily Image

Anyway, there are a lot of boats moored here and just across the water is the town of Cortez. Cortez is one of the last remaining commercial fishing villages on the East coast. You can watch the fishing boats as they head for the draw bridges that surround this spot. Depending on which way they go there could be one or two drawbridges too pass.

florida gallery

Anyway, like many places along the coast, people are famous for getting up to watch the sunrise, (or sunset for that matter). I suppose some do both. This spot is next to a little trailer park with pastel colored mobile homes and flower boxes out front. They are quaint and I thought to myself they are in the perfect location. Out one window you can see the sunrise and out the other the sunset. I could see living that life one day. But until then I’ll just grab a coffee at the pier when I want to see a sunrise.

October 10, 2016October 10, 2016

Offshore Overnight Thunderstorms

Sometimes the weatherman will say we’re going to have offshore overnight thunderstorms. Well, perhaps this is what that looks like. I took this from Bradenton Beach early one morning before sunrise. Despite the hour it was an awesome time to be here. This is a busy beach by day but I guarantee you there was nobody here before six on a Sunday morning. It’s not always easy dragging myself here at this hour, but being the only person here for miles in each direction is pretty cool.

Daily Image

This is a three minute long exposure. My thought was that the waves would be smooth with such a long exposure. But as a result of the lighting flash the waves were exposed allowing their texture to come through. It was as though the lightning was a large flash unit.

night gallery

In three minutes the stars begin to make an arc. The more I look at this the more I know I need to spend a night out here getting start trail images. Maybe I’ll plan that for next weekend. If I try it during the week I’ll end up falling asleep at my desk. Then I’d be dreaming about being at the beach and not working. Come to think about it maybe that’s not such a bad idea after all.

September 13, 2016

Dusk at Bradenton Beach

I took this about a week ago during dusk at Bradenton Beach. This is a one minute exposure which makes the waves of the look smooth. It was actually a little darker when I took this but the long exposure makes it appear a brighter.

Daily Image

Along the right are the lights of the restaurants as they cast their glow on the overhead clouds. These restaurants attract both locals and visitors here at night. The Beachhouse Resturant is on the right, a reliable favorite of ours.

Straight up the beach about a mile is Holmes Beach, its more popular than Bradenton Beach so this is a little less crowded. This whole area is known as Anna Maria Island. It’s basically a key linked to the mainland by two bridges, surrounded by beaches and dotted with little villages, piers and restaurants. This is the laid back section of Florida.

I love coming here at sunset and night to take photos, there is always something interesting. We love the area so much we are planning to rent a beach house here soon and do a stay-cation. Why travel when you have all this in your own backyard?

June 26, 2016

Leffis Key Dune

There is nothing higher than a palm tree in central Florida. As a result there aren’t may places you can go to get a perspective of the landscape other than a bridge or lookout tower. Leffis Key however contains a dune covered with vegetation that provides just barely enough elevation to look out onto the inter-coastal waterway. In this image the sun is rising over the fishing village of Cortez. Whenever visitors ask me where to get fresh fish I always recommend Cortez.

This is a single image HDR. That just means I didn’t use multiple exposures to balance the highlights with the darker areas. The sensor in the Sony A7R2 camera captures an very wide range of light so that images like this are possible. That wasn’t the case just a couple years ago unless we combined multiple images using HDR.

anna maria island

There was a breeze blowing so that the grasses swayed from side to side. Using traditional HDR, I would have taken three shots and combined them, however that normally causes problems with ghosting of the grass as it moves between each frame. Those problems are eliminated with a single frame and so it makes possible compositions like this. The technology in cameras is getting better every year and it makes me wonder what we’ll be able to do in another year or two. It’s is an exciting time for photography and geeks like me.

March 28, 2016March 28, 2016

Crossover

The sun is setting and I’m at the beach. I have exactly three minutes left to find one more composition. Those are some of the thoughts going through my mind at moments like this, it’s like a game and it can be a lot of frantic fun. Such was the case when I found myself behind some seagrass and a tree that created a kind of frame and just then these folks walked by. Click.

Checkout some more of my recent beach photography in the blog here

Framing an image is an important aspect of street photography. Find some interesting scene and wait for someone to walk through it. When people are in an image we tend to put ourselves into that scene whether we realize it or not. In this way artistic images have a way of pulling us out of ourselves.

My earlier landscapes almost never had people in them. Someone once pointed this out and I started to take notice. Now I’m not so concerned with finding landscapes without people, if I do great, but not required. So this resulted in a blending of my love of both street and landscape photography. Now when shooting landscapes I will often look for a frame and wait for someone to walk through it. In a long winded way this is the thinking that went into this image. It’s a crossover of sorts.

March 22, 2016

Going Nowhere

I don’t know about you but when I walk on the beach I’m not really going anywhere; just walking for walking sake. Maybe I pick a point at the turn of the coast or a pier off in the distance, but really, it’s just something to satisfy my sense of progress while the rest of my thoughts are allowed a little down time. Going nowhere in particular is good.

Beach Sunday

Today was Beach Sunday in my town. It’s not a holiday, just the day after Saturday and the day before Dreaded Monday. And I know it was Beach Sunday because when I got into my car to drive to the beach at 12:15pm, I hit traffic. It seems everybody got the same idea at the same time. A lot of great minds thinking alike.

When we get perfect days like today I have to pinch myself and remember how lucky I am to live here. It’s a twenty minute drive to some of the best beaches on the planet. Today I was with a couple family members who had just flown down from Canada. So I have it on good authority that today scored high on the awesomeness scale. They made sure they sent pictures back home just to rub it in. Of course I had nothing to do with that.

Check out the beach gallery here.

I love it when people come here from somewhere cold and get to experience days like today. It makes all the planning and waiting worthwhile. For me, I’m glad I have family that comes down so that I can have an excuse to go to the beach. Whenever someone comes to visit, I always bring them here on the first day, just to feel the sand and water and get in the right frame of mind for the rest of their stay. As far as that goes today the mission was accomplished.

February 12, 2016February 12, 2016

Sunset Beach

A couple of nights ago I ago I went to Sunset Beach (yes, its a real place) to capture these waves at sunset. The wind off the gulf whipped up some wave action that provided a little more drama than normal. Despite the blustery weather the conditions were good for a sunset. Waves look awesome when you are on the same level. In this case, my camera was slightly below which allowed me to catch the sun on the wave top. Grody to the max.

The beach was deserted yet there were a few diehards walking the shore. I think some people walk the shore no matter what the weather. I can understand that. If I lived here on the beach I’d probably do the same thing. How awesome would that be; can you imagine? In the summer you’re barefoot in shorts, in winter maybe you wear a coat, but so what, you’re by the water. Awesome possum.

Did you know orange and blue are complimentary colors? I’m not sure how that happened but mother nature seems to have it all worked out, especially at sunset near the ocean. I suppose that fires some ancient memory buried deep in our DNA, but for whatever reason it just works. So here’s a toast to ancient DNA and the awesomeness of Mother Nature’s color wheel.

Gallery Link

Check out the Anna Maria Island Gallery here.

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016

Random Beach Shot

This is a random beach shot I took last year at Bradenton Beach, Florida. I was standing alongside this old broken down pier, one of several which has since been demolished and removed. I don’t know the county’s plans but it would be nice if they built a new one so I could take pictures of that too. It’s all about me.

I work during the day and spend much of my time at a computer. So when I write my blog I get to stare at something other than documents for a spell. I remember back when I took this I was standing in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s about as far away as I can get from meetings and status reports. This picture shows where and how my batteries get recharged so I can do the stuff I have to do.

I think that looking at photos at the end of the day activates different centers in my brain. I have no idea which ones, just that they have nothing to do with computers. It has more to do with where I want to go. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could just look at a photo and then enter a dream of that location? I’ve heard that some people can do that, and for all I know so can I, the only problem is I rarely remember my dreams. I’m going to hope that when I go to sleep this evening this is where I end up. Whether I remember it or not.

January 10, 2016January 10, 2016

Waves at Sunset

This was taken in the last days of the year when I went to the beach to watch the waves at sunset. The waves were the result of a storm that blew off of the gulf. As I recall the evening was warm, more so than normal.

Hard as I might try to the contrary, I take days like this for granted. The winter warmth is not as appreciated by me as much as you might think. That’s simply because I live here and I’m used to it. Even so I do take advantage of what the area around my home has to offer. For instance I enjoy walking the beach. That might sound cliche, but it’s one of the things people do here. I do it mostly for photography because I will typically see something interesting, either in front of me or in my minds eye. It’s as though those walks help to prod my artistic muse.

Prior to moving here it would never have entered my mind to go to the beach just to walk and take pictures, yet now I do it. And when I’m away I feel a longing for those walks and the sound of the waves. I guess thats some new part of my makeup, something new I’ve discovered I like. I guess we are always developing new things we like, unconsciously evolving some new aspect of ourselves.

Despite taking scenes like this for granted, I find that when I return from a trip I become subtly aware aware of the Florida climate as though it was something new. As I write this I’m traveling and have warm clothes in my suitcase as I sit in a hotel room with the heater on. It is a real possibility that when I return I’ll drive to the beach and go for a walk with my camera. Then I’ll probably say to myself how fortunate I am to live here and once again will appreciated it, …until such time as it becomes normal and I start taking it for granted again.