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Sweet Nothings

I take a lot of photos of the sea and sky. Not all of them are winners, in fact most aren’t. Nevertheless, I’m incapable of restraining myself when I have a camera and a sunset. I end up with a lot of images composed of the sea, the sky and nothing else so I had an idea to patch them together. Each image is of a different location taken within fifteen of home.

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Sweet Nothings
A collection of simple sea and sky cloudscapes

Now I feel a little less ambivalent about all those “wasted” shots. I think that together they add up to a little more than the sum of the parts. I think now I’ll keep taking these and do more compilations.

more cloudscapes

Yesterday I saw an amazing sunset and took dozens of shots. Out of those I’ll choose maybe one or two and the rest will fade away like the winter sun on equinox. I’m glad I hung on to these though, and now I have a bona fide excuse to go shoot more images of sweet nothing.

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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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Lonely Holmes Beach

Last night I made it to the beach for sunset and to take a few photos. Lately it’s been a little cold here which keeps people away from the beach. Now by cold, I don’t mean cold-cold, like you guys get up north. No, I mean cold for us, like maybe I should wear a sweatshirt, …or maybe not.

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Lonely Holmes Beach
Holmes Beach om Anna Maria Island

I’m being facetious of course, I’m perfect aware of the fact that I don’t know what cold is. Nevertheless, my kinda cold keeps the locals away from the beach so that I can get these empty beach shots. In summer it’s a whole different ballgame.

This is Holmes Beach, which is between Manatee Beach and Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island. You can drive for miles either way and it’s just one little beach town after the next. That’s why so many people come down in in winter; to get away from the cold-cold and enjoy a little beach weather, even if I do think it’s cold.

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A Familiar Scene

Here is another shot of a familiar scene along the Ringling Bridge in Sarasota. I posted a similar image from the same batch about a year ago, but this uses a different lens and processing. Nevertheless, it’s a scene and a location that I keep coming back to time and time again.

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A Familiar Scene
The Sarasota Bay along side of the Ringling Bridge

Sarasota Bay is an estuary and if you stand here you’ll see dolphins and other sea life. It’s under the stewardship of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program and if you visit their home page you notice another photo by yours truly. Due to the abundant sea life it’s a fishermen’s paradise and less than a hundred yards from where I’m standing is a bait shop. I could think if worse places to fish, …if I did.

more sunset images

If I didn’t do photography I’d have to fish, it’s kind of a requirement down here, everybody does it. Sometimes I’ll show up at a location by the water with a tripod in hand and fishermen will just assume it’s a fishing poll. But as I said I don’t fish, I take photos. If I need fish I get it the old-fashioned way, …from the supermarket.

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Two Hotels in Barcelona

Here is a shot from atop the Grand Hotel Central in Barcelona. I took this in the morning on my first trip here. Morning is a better time for these kinds of shots because around sunset the pool will surely be filled with guests sipping martinis or sangria, as the case may be.

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Two Hotels in Barcelona
From the pool at the Grand Hotel Central looking towards the Hotel Arts

Looking at this I just realized that the second building from the left is the hotel I stayed at on my second trip, the Hotel Arts. I should have known because there are no other tall buildings in this section of town. Perhaps unknowingly I was seeing reflections into future, or some such thing.

more from Barcelona

I did come up in the evening with my camera, but it just wasn’t the same so I’m glad I was here at sunrise. This hotel is in the gothic section and that other one is along the beach, two completely different areas with their own character. About the only thing they have in common are martinis and sangria.

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Gondola at Night

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Gondola at Night
Gondola at Night in Venice

If you go to Venice take a gondola at night. It is an experience that reminds me of a ride at Disney World, only it’s the real thing. The sounds of the oars in the water and the lights streaming from the windows overhead combine in the most exquisite way.

more from europe

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The Line Across the River

This is a spot I like to photograph. There are a lot of reasons but the main one is that the tracks form a leading line across the river. We are drawn to leading lines because they provide a sense of movement and direction. For some reason that’s important to us at an instinctual level.

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The Line Across the River
The line across the Manatee River in Bradenton

Maybe the rules of photography are based on some primal desire for survival. If that’s true it’s an interesting idea and, all the more reason to break the rules once in a while. That might mean considering compositions that will not lead us back to safety.

more from bradenton

I know I’m drawing a long bow, but writing about photos as I do forces me to think about these things. Let’s just say I do more than my fair share of introspection. In the end, I would really prefer to just get out and take pictures and worry about the intellectual stuff later. Or, not worry at all.

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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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Overhead Shot of Coquina Beach

Here is an overhead shot of Coquina Beach I took last summer. The camera is pointing west but the beach is diagonal. It’s something I never noticed from the ground. In this case I was standing about a mile up the beach recording video of the waves and stopped to shoot this still. I still think it’s strange that I can be taking photos remotely.

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Overhead Shot of Coquina Beach
Overhead shot of Coquina Beach on Anna Maria Island, Florida

When I’m flying the drone, I don’t like to get too close to people. If I was going to the beach to relax I would not want to be irritated with the sound of a quadcopter buzzing overhead. When they first came out it was a novelty, but now with so many people flying them I think a little etiquette is in order.

In this case I’m flying high enough above the beach that the sound of the drone is not audible. And, the drone is so small that most people would never notice. This way I can fly up and down the shore line looking for compositions without disturbing anyone.

more beach photos

One other thing I’ve tried is flying a parallel path a hundred yards out over the water. With the overhead perspective I can see marine wildlife such as dolphins, manatees and sharks. That’s not unusual for this area, just part of the normal scenery from a drone.