These people are on a brisk morning walk along the river a couple days ago. We don’t get a lot of cold days in winter, but when we do we wear sweatshirts and jackets that sit in the closet most of the year. Having endured the long hot seasons of Florida, you won’t hear me complain about a spell of chilly weather. Bring it on baby.
This is taken in Bradenton and that’s the Manatee River. It’s a half mile wide here and a couple miles downstream it empties into the Gulf. It’s not uncommon to see dolphins or manatees around here.
I live on the other side of the river in the little town of Palmetto. Locally the towns across the river are known as north river; simple enough eh?
I was walking my dog this morning as I took this image. He sits patiently as I crouch down to get this low angle and perspective of the brick walkway. I take my camera on many of our walks and he’s gotten used to my stopping at the oddest times. But come to think of it, this is probably the same view that he sees all the time. Hmmm, maybe I’m on to something.
This is the end of Lake Wakatipu in Glenorchy. I was here a couple of years ago on a Trey Ratcliff photo adventure. I had just switched from Nikon to Sony and so was still struggling with the placement of the buttons and menus. Sometimes I go back and look at my settings and wonder what I was thinking, like this one, my aperture was f10; seems a bit high. Maybe I should just forget about that and just enjoy the scenery. Forget I even mentioned it.
I was going back to look at my New Zealand photos and found this sitting in the bit bucket. I started working on its just out of curiosity and then got carried away. All the while I was thinking I’d seen this before. Sure enough, I’d processed and posted this same picture. My techniques and eye are constantly changing and this time the result was different. So maybe I should have titled it Glenorchy Part 2, …or some such thing.
Boy, if I could go back in time and make different choices. Well, just a few. Like buying a certain company stock when it was really cheap. Oh well, until I invent a time machine I’ll just live in the present, learn from the past, place one foot in front of the other, you know the drill. Actually, I’m kind of glad I can’t go back, it seems the longer I live the less confused things are. So going back and buying that stock might just put me into a place I don’t want to be. Hmmmm, … tis a bit of a conundrum.
The Foreshore Trail follows the shoreline around UBC in Vancouver. I walked several miles of it recently and took my time while I was at it. According to the map it was only three miles, but it took me two hours. I can be real slow when I have a camera in my hand. It’s a good reason to go it alone.
These people were jogging in the same direction, but as the trail became nothing more than big rocks on the beach they slowed down which allowed me to compose this shot. Soon they were off and I was composing other shots, with other people. If you are ever in the vicinity of me when I’m taking pictures, chances are you’ll end up in one of my images. Placing people in a landscape adds a human element, I find it allows me to project myself into the scene. I still shoot landscapes without people, but less and less these days. With people its like mixing street and landscape photography, two favorites of mine, a cross discipline of sorts. Mixing photography styles gives me more ideas and options with respect to the final image.
There is a very steep set of stairs to climb up to the road from this trail. If you walk straight up it will have you gasping for breath and wondering why your legs won’t move. But of course I didn’t go straight up. I stopped several times along the way and surreptitiously took pictures of the stairway through the forest with, you guessed it, people.
Keeping it real can be harder than it sounds. Putting aside all the things that we think are important, a little quality time is a pretty good way to start. In the end all we really have are connections. The rest can come and go, it’s connections that define us, or so I think. But when I think of the people that have made an impression on me, it was their gift of time that made that possible.
This is another photo from Fort Lauderdale Beach. I could just stay at the beach and take photos all day long, it’s a natural place for images to just happen, especially if you know what you’re looking for. I take a lot of photos of people walking on the beach. The initial snapshot is a reminder of what I saw in my mind and the idea that I had. Only later when the time is right do I express it, sometimes artistically like this. This image conveys the idea I had in my mind. I never really know how the image will turn out, but if I work at it enough I get close. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades. Bad reference, scratch that.
I’m going to go back to the beach sometime this week. Who knows what I’ll see or which beach I’ll go to. The main thing is to go and then just let the rest happen; kind of like keeping it real. I think that a lot of things can happen if we just let them. I rarely know what way the wind will blow, I just keep doing my thing and somehow it all works out.
For some reason this made me think of the other side of the rainbow. Maybe because we had nothing but rain before I took this, only there was no rainbow afterward, just clouds. The kind of rain they get here in Vancouver in the winter is not conducive to rainbows, the leprechauns get out of town and winter in Florida. It’s too bad, I would love to set the pot. That didn’t come out right.
To create this image I stood on the shoulders of giants. This is an HDR image which means I combined three exposures to get the maximum amount of light, more than I could get with a single shot. I combined the images in AuroraHDR Pro which is one of the latests products from Trey Ratcliff in collaboration with MacPhun. I created four layers with varying degrees of detail, radiance and color enhancement. I then returned the image to Adobe Lightroom where I used one of Trey’s presets. So, final result was a collaboration of sorts with the creative genius of Trey.
When I create images I use a lot of tools to create something beyond the ordinary. Sometimes I have an idea of what that is when I take the picture, other times after. It’s a highly subjective process and I never know where I’ll end up. Sometimes I struggle, other times it just flows. This image is one of the latter. I knew when I took it what I wanted, and then creating the final result was just a matter of sitting down and letting it happen. It just so happened that this time, I used Trey’s software for most of it. It was easy, fun, and I got where I needed to go. Thank you Trey!
Earlier this month I captured this before sunrise in Ft. Lauderdale, which is on Florida’s Atlantic coast. I was hoping to catch the colors at dawn but there was too much of a marine layer and it wasn’t to be. Nonetheless the city lights cast a glow on the low clouds in this long exposure. I kept the shutter open for about eight-seconds which makes the ocean appear smooth.
This was taken from in front of the Marriott hotel where I stayed. I had never been there before and had to follow the GPS to find it the night before. I didn’t really know where I was or which way it was to the city. My room was set back from the beach so I could only see the beach, not up and down the coast. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised when I walked down here early in the morning to find that the main city was just a short walk north. I’m glad I woke up or I would have missed this scene, it’s not easy to take a picture of a deserted beach in Ft Lauderdale.
I walked up and down the beach taking all kinds of pictures, several I’ve recently published on the blog. It was a fun experience in the predawn hours with just my camera. Due to the soft sand it took a lot of effort to walk, but that’s how a beach is, sandy. When I walk on the beach I normally just pick a direction and start a slow plod, stopping to take pictures, slowly making my way until its time to turn around. And so that pretty much sums up this morning, a slow Sunday plod.
The coast of British Columbia is made up of islands, one after another, as far as the eye can see. I imagine this scene must have remained the same for the nine thousand years that the first nations inhabited this area. These were solely inhabited by indigenous tribes up until a couple centuries ago. I know this because when I took this picture I was standing on the grounds of the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. The MoA is largely dedicated to preserving remnants from those people.
The MoA contains artifacts, writings and art from these cultures and I left there with a new sense respect. A good museum does that, takes us outside of ourselves and provides different perspectives we can use to understand the world. I think that whether I descend from these people or not, we inhabit the same space and share the same planet and based on that we are more alike than different. I know that’s a little bit cliche, but it helps me understand their story just a little bit, starting from what we have in common. It’s a stretch, but it’s a start. Regardless, I left feeling a little bit conflicted about the current state of things. A problem for another day perhaps.
The next day I was walking through a crowded park in the city. Along a trail by a pond was a young lady holding her right hand out. I thought that was a little odd so I continued looking as I approached. In fact she was holding out bird seed and feeding some small finches as they landed on her hand. She did not look at me as she remained perfectly still, hand outstretched. I smiled and walked on, not wanting to disturb her communion, but I did think that was an odd sight, not something I see everyday. Is it possible that centuries ago this might not have appeared so unusual, that it might have been as common as, say, sending a text message? I have no way of knowing, but it made me think that we moderns and those ancients are probably closer at the things that matter than we might know.
The Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia Buy a mounted print
This is the Koerner Library building at the University of British Columbia. I walked through UBC on my way back from taking pictures along the shoreline. I was amazed at how big the UBC campus is. To me, coming from a small town, it seemed enormous and I suppose this is just one of many libraries scattered throughout. The sun was setting behind the building so it added a dramatic flare, at least to my eyes which never saw this building before.
I think that faculty and students don’t even bat an eye, and the thought of taking a picture of this might seem trite. That’s the value of having fresh eyes. This happens to me all the time back in Florida. I can walk somewhere and not see a thing I’d consider remarkable, but someone from out of town would. We all become blind to things we consider commonplace. In fact, I almost didn’t stop to take this picture because I noticed it was a library, what could be interesting about a library? I’m glad I did.
After taking the shot I continued back to the bus stop to catch a ride back to town. It was Saturday night and sure enough it was full of students heading into town to hang out. It was still pretty early so the bus wasn’t that full, but I’m sure had I left a couple hours later this library would have been empty and all therein lined up at the bus stop for a night away from the library. Not that I know that to be a fact, I’m just sayin.
I did a ton of these photos during sunset at Mile Rock Beach while in San Francisco. When I find myself in the right spot at the right time I go a little shutter crazy and end up taking dozens of photos. I’m going to reserve judgement and just say that’s a good thing.
The Pacific coast is lined with these big rocks just off shore. I imagine that back in the old days there were shipwrecks during storms and now are historical sights to dive and explore. The two furthest rocks here are Lobos Rock on the left and Blackhead Rock just right of center. They must be well known to mariners.
I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with the past. When I look at photos of a scene my brain looks for context, we all do that. So with a scene like this, or something completely different like the street scene from Barcelona I posted the other day, I take a step back in four dimensions. By that I just mean just naturally tent to view a scene or subject from a context outside the current moment. I’m not sure why I do that, maybe everyone does it and it’s not unusual. I wonder if there is a name for that? Good, bad or indifferent it does open up a whole new world of perspectives, especially in my photography.
I get up early because I find solitude at dawn, more so than any other time of day. The energy is fresh and going for a walking or doing something alone informs the rest of my day.
Like this picture, I think each day we have some place to go. For me, having quiet time is setting aside the space to contemplate my next steps and put in motion a direction of travel for the remaining hours.
Sometimes I don’t go very far in a day, but that’s okay. I might look back and think I didn’t accomplish much and then feel stressed or disoriented because I’m not where I thought I’d be. But my thinking is that I learn from my missteps or detours just as much as anything else. That’s part of growing, learning to take stock and continuing to persevere. So even if I don’t reach the far end that day, something was gained in the journey. That’s what I tell my self, and in truth, that’s what I believe.
I took a picture of this lady walking along the beach in Fort Lauderdale just after dawn. I could tell she was enjoying her alone time and I felt compelled to capture it. However in my minds eye I thought of this dreamscape as a metaphor for solitude and what that means to me; that we each must find some time alone to set and / or readjust the course of our day, and possibly our lives.
