New Day on North River

New Day on North River
New Day on North River, the Manatee River from Palmetto Florida                                                    Purchase a gallery quality print

The sun rises on a new day on North River across the Manatee. The river is about a mile wide here but only goes upstream for about ten miles. The land of Florida acts as a large catch basin for the tropical rains. We don’t have long rivers as compared to other parts of the country, but they can carry a lot of water nonetheless. The water empties into the ocean and so where I’m standing rises and falls with the tide.

I took this with a wide angle lens because I wanted to show the expanse of the river, it’s nearly a mile wide here. This area is a bird sanctuary, which means a lot of migratory birds come here in the winter. At this spot there is a great Heron that can be seen every morning. I suppose they are territorial because he is always here. He’s quite skittish so when I show up for sunrise he usually flies away. But this is his spot all the same and sometimes I see him when I drive by on the bridge just behind where I’m standing here.

Whenever this section of the country gets a cold snap, we get a lot of birds that fly down from Georgia and the Carolinas. They’ll end up staying for only a week or so until it warms up and then head back north to their own home. I suppose the birds that live here full time might get their feathers ruffled with all the visitors, and of course, the short timers need to get back to their own territory. But in the meantime, this is the view all the birds and a few of us humans see, even if it’s not our territory.

Keeping it Real

Keeping it Real
Keeping it real on Fort Lauderdale Beach                                        Purchase a fine art gallery print

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.

Solitude at Dawn

Soltude At Dawn
Solitude at Dawn on Fort Lauderdale Beach                                                   Buy a fine art gallery print for your wall

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.