This evening I went to Bradenton Beach to catch this partial eclipse just as the sun set upon the Gulf of mexico.
House and Sky
This house is the visitor’s center at Robinson Preserve in Bradenton Florida. As you walk through the preserve you see this beyond the grasses. It reminds of a little house on a prairie, only it’s not so little and this isn’t a prairie, but you get the drift. I came here because it has a lot of wide open space and every once in a while a little space is a good thing.
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Still Pond
Here is a pond at Emerson Preserve, which as you can see is quite calm in the morning. This is not the first I’ve posted from here with the calm reflecting water and the clouds overhead; and I’m pretty sure it won’t be my last. Anyway, hundreds of years ago native americans occupied this spot. I’m sure it looks different, but possibly they had a similar scene each morning as they went about their tasks. I would love to travel back three hundred years in a time machine to see what I could see. But until they invent one I’ll just have to imagine for myself.
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Wordless Wednesday
Impression
In art I’m attracted to impressionistic styles. I prefer to let my mind fill in the blanks. I do that a lot in everyday life, I think. My way of dealing with complexity perhaps, a momentary reverie while forming an impression, possibly an opinion. As I’m thinking about it, In general I don’t like being fed too much detail. That’s because my mind automatically fills in the details, not always right, but details nonetheless. I think we all do that, it’s part of what makes us unique, it is part of the filters through which we see the world. It starts with an impression.
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Break in the Clouds
I come here in Bradenton Florida to a place called Riverwalk several times a week to walk my dogs. We have a little routine of sitting on the dock for a spell and watching the sun set. On this day I brought a camera but we didn’t get a sunset because of the clouds. So we started walking back and before we got off the pier I turned back to see this break in the clouds. Even though it’s dark the light is shining through and in some way that seems like a metaphor for hope. Something nice about that don’t you think?
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Manatee River, Florida
Recently we got rain here in central Florida and I got inspired to drive up the river from my home. The river is about a mile wide near home but a fraction of that here. A tranquil setting yet I was on guard for any alligators that might be nearby as I positioned at the waters edge. It’s unlikely I’d ever have a problem with a gator here, nevertheless it’s wise to use with caution when in and around Florida’s waterways. As I write this our rainy season is coming to an end which I’m sure is perfect for all the people that come here to visit. But with a little bit of weather comes picturesque skies and as you know I’m a sucker for that.
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Sunrise at the Pier
This is the Anna Maria Pier one morning which is probably my favorite place to be if I can wake up on time. Problem is when I do then I don’t feel like doing much the rest of the day. It’s too easy to get relaxed down here and sometimes when I work I have to close the curtains lest I get distracted by things like clouds, sunsets and all manner of stuff peeking through the window. I think I need to move to Norway just to get a little work done. Naw, that wouldn’t work, too many cool things to take pictures of. Maybe the moon.
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Sunshine Skyway Bridge
All ships coming into Tampa Bay pass under this bridge. Knowing that, when they built it about thirty years ago they made it fairly tall at about 130 meters. Now it turns out it’s not tall enough for the new mega ships which has planners scratching their collective heads. One idea would be to take the bridge down and build a tunnel under the bay. I don’t think that will ever happen but that’s just me, you never know. Once I took a cruise out of Tampa and stood on the top deck as we passed with what looked like only a few feet of clearance. And that ship was small as compared to the “mega” ships. Boggles the mind.
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Little Skimmer Boys
I took this a week or two back at Bean Point which is at the very tip of Anna Maria Island. It’s a remote spot that feels about as tropical as you can get in the lower forty-eight. When I head out here I never know how the light will look so there’s a lot of luck involved. When I was about five minutes from here I saw a big funnel cloud in the overhead cloud layer and when I finally got here a crowd was watching the last remnants of the waterspout. These boys refused to call it a day with their skimboards, waterspout or not, they were squeezing every last moment out of the end of this most awesome day.
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