SunshineSkywayBridge Archives - Page 2 of 2

September 6, 2016

Another Day Another Heron

I could post pictures of herons every day of the week, but then I’d have to rename the blog, Another Day Another Heron. This is such a common sight here in central Florida that I almost take it for granted; almost, but not quite. I used to live in Ontario Canada and I would travel into the back country. Up there the heron sightings were rare and it was a big deal when you saw one. Not so much here, they basically own the place. You see them along any stretch of water all up and down the coast. And they are territorial so you typically see them alone. I’ve noticed that other seabirds tend to give herons a wide berth.

Daily Image

The few I saw in Ontario were shy of humans, basically they would move away if you got within a hundred meters. Again, not so here, it seems they’ve grown accustom to us humans. They’ll even take an interested in us if we happen to be fishing. If you have bait or scraps they come right up to you. For me it’s quite an experience. It reminds me of feeding Flamingos in a petting zoo, they are even more amazing up close.

Florida Gallery

Herons fish in the shallow waters snatching fish with their pointy beaks. If you watch them for any length of time you’ll note they are extremely patient. They’ll remain perfectly still while a fish swims up and then they’ll strike like lightning. The prey never even saw it coming. It reminds me of martial arts, quick, precise, lethal.

August 31, 2016

Calm After the Storm

Today and tomorrow we are getting a tropical storm that’s dumping a bunch of rain in the Tampa area. That’s normal for this time of year. I look forward to getting outside to take pictures of the calm after the storm. This is an image I took a few weeks back after an afternoon thunderstorm. In the evening the clouds dissipate causing them to scatter like brushstrokes in the sky.

Sometimes we can tell that a storm is coming by the behavior of the birds. Where I live the houses form a circle around a stand of trees. The houses shield the trees from the winds and so birds will congregate as much a twenty-four hours before a storm. How they know is beyond me, I’m pretty sure they’re not watching the weather channel. Maybe the weather channel is watching them, you never know.

bridges from the gallery

This is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The surface of the road is four-hundred feet high and spans about eight miles over the entrance to the bay. When storms come through the wind can get high enough that they close it down. I’ve driven over the bridge in a tropical storm and it was an experience I won’t forget. However the next day the winds die down, the birds return to the shore and we all go about our business like it never even happened; summertime in Florida.

July 28, 2016

Skyway Rainbow

A couple of weeks ago after some afternoon rain I drove up to Fort DeSoto Park to take photos. As I looked back I noticed this rainbow over the bridge. From where I stood it appeared to span about 8 miles from one side of the Sunshine Skyway to the other. To get this photo I took four vertical images, from left to right and stitched them together to form a panorama.

I have mixed feelings about this image. On the one hand the placement of the rainbow over the bridge is nice and if you look close there’s even a double rainbow. If I didn’t know better I might think it was photoshopped. On the other hand the scene lacks drama. That aside I decided to keep it as is, an image of a rainbow over the bridge without much drama.

other skyway photos from the gallery

With some images I take a lot of pains to simplify them in post production. I feel it’s important to not have distractions in an image. This one however needed none of that, just water, sky, bridge and a rainbow. Sometimes images like this just demand to left alone because they have a voice all their own. In this case I suppose I have to agree with that.

July 17, 2016

State of Mind

From a photographic sense I love the summers here in Florida because we get storms during the day. That means in the evening the clouds break and we have sunsets with a lot of colors in the sky. For this shot I grabbed my camera and headed over to a nearby rest stop along the highway. I’ve taken many pictures from here but each one is different in some way. I love gradients in the sky like this. I guess you could say this is a remake of a previous photo, it’s new perspective on a familiar scene.

The other day I wrote something to the effect that photographs are not so much from a place as a state of mind. Each time I go to the same place to take a photo I see and experience it differently. Even if some of the same objects are in the frame, the image reflects a completely different experience. And of course, the time of day, weather and lighting all contribute to that. But the main thing is that if I’m aware of these things, each time they will combine in a different way.

Photo of or around this bridge

When I’m aware of what’s around me then each moment is different and so this is not so much a picture of the bridge but a snapshot of a moment when I experienced this scene. That’s why photography for me is a state of mind. It’s not so much the location but the things I notice and see when I’m present in the moment. Whether it’s something truly new, or something I just noticed for the first time, each time is a new experience and a new image, even if it has some of the same old things.

June 19, 2016

Lost in Reverie

This is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as it leads into Tampa Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. I was standing in my hometown of Palmetto about six miles away when I took this. I used a tripod to steady it since it was dusk and the light was fairly dim. The final image is composed of several parts combined into one. It’s an artistic rendering of the bridge as I imagine it. I do a lot of that with my photography, especially as I visit sites and scenes I’ve shot many times before. You might think I get bored from going to the same places time after time. On the contrary, it’s just the opposite; it fuels a desire to become more creative which in turn opens up all kinds of possibilities.

At times I take pictures just for the raw material of a creative rendering such as this. When I sit down to create the image I use a lot of different tools in the same way a painter uses a brush and pigments. I can spend hours on an project, working away hour after hour lost in creative reverie. Then at some point, I run into a wall and put it aside. Then when I look at it later I may start up again. And so it goes until I’m done.

more unusual images from the gallery

On the one hand I’m never really done with an image like this yet on the other I have to draw a line somewhere. It can be hard to let go sometimes. I’ve walked away from this image several times only to come back and have another go at it. But for now this is it, I’ve drawn the line and I’m off to my next project.

May 15, 2016May 16, 2016

East View

I’m standing on the pier at Fort DeSoto Park in St Petersburg looking east at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge on a Sunday afternoon. That’s the bait shop on the right where you can get a few items while you fish on the pier or wait for the ferry. This is a nice place to check out if you come here to visit.

They also have a campground not too far from this spot as well. I’m born and raised in California so I’m not sure what its like to camp near the beach in Florida. When I think camping I think of mountains, lakes and streams. Wouldn’t it would be too warm for a sleeping bag? I think my three season bag would be uncomfortably hot. Maybe just a light blanket is all I’d need. The more I think about it the more I think I should try. Who knows, I might like it.

I just noticed that you can see the whole length of the main span of the Skyway from here. In total it’s about ten miles across the bay, here we see about five miles of it.

Pure and Simple

These surf kites at the midpoint of the Sunshine Skyway in Tampa and can be seen for miles away whenever there’s a breeze. Once in a while I’ll pull off the highway to watch. The main impression I get is of the contrast of these colorful canopies moving against the sky. They are mesmerizing to watch and this is a simplification of that scene as it appears in my minds eye.

The wind here changes direction from one day to the next and depending on that the surfers alternate from one side of the causeway to the other. The spectacle of the scene is so compelling it’s a wonder there aren’t accidents as drivers crane their heads to get a look.

In my way of thinking, I’m always trying to simplify things. I work and live in a complex world and what helps is if I can simplify the complexity a bit. I do this by removing things that I feel are unnecessary to the central core or subject of a thing. In this case, the subject is little colorful kites in a big sky, so to convey that I needed to remove as many distractions as possible. I think this might not be a bad philosophy to live by. In fact it’s called de-cluttering, and now there are de-clutter coaches you can hire to help with de-cluttering you life. We’ll, I’m no guru or coach, but I do like to get to the essence of a thing, and in this case, it’s all about the kites.

Pure and simple.

Some other images with or around this bridge

March 9, 2016March 10, 2016

In the Next Life

This is a I275 rest stop near Tampa just before the Skyway bridge. Its one of the most scenic highway stops in the state, especially at sunset. Truckers know this well as I see them all lined on break with this scene out their windscreens. Moments like this, especially at dusk, have me longing for the open road; next life perhaps.

Other images of or near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge

In this life I’m a software architect by day and a photographer by night. It keeps me home yet longing for the road. I spend more time pining for a journey than the comfort of home. If I was a trucker it would be the opposite, longing for home on long lonely highways. The best solution for me is to live in the moment, be thankful for what I have. I am thankful for what I have, but in my next life, …

Speaking of the next life, if you could choose to come back as an animal, what would it be? I have so many ideas it would be hard to choose. Living here in Florida I’d want to be an Eagle or Osprey, I like the thought of flying high and surveying the landscape, although I’m not sure about eating my prey while it’s still alive. Another idea; my own pet dog, his name is Wiggles, he gets a tonne of love and has a good life. But he is a rescue, and I wouldn’t want to go through the abuse he did before we got him. On second thought, I guess I’m happy just being me for now.

March 1, 2016

Looking North

Here is another shot I took from an observation tower looking north towards St Pete. In the foreground is the trail through Robinson Preserve, off in the distance is the Sunshine Skyway bridge and, if you look closely, beyond the bridge is downtown St Petersburg.

Click for Florida Gallery

For the sky and water I overlaid the texture from the inside of a native american Cedar canoe. Surely that has nothing to do with this picture yet it seemed to work well. Textures are photos of other things that can be used to add to an otherwise plain surface. I started collecting textures, which is just another way of saying I’ve been taking pickers of the ground, walls, clouds or interesting patterns. I never know how something will work until I try it out, like this one.

I wrote a post about pictorialism and how I gravitate towards the artistic side of photography. That’s evident in this image because I’ve changed it to convey a feeling or idea, not so much a strict representation of the moment. I’m not that much into the purist side of photography where we document a moment in time. That’s an honorable profession, it’s just not for me. I’m in it for the art. Totally.

December 29, 2015December 29, 2015

Fort De Soto Beach

Visits to the beach

This is Fort De Soto Beach a couple of days ago. With the holiday over we decided to head to the beach and unwind. This is a section that looks across towards the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as it enters Tampa Bay. I don’t spend as much time at the beach as you might think. I go for photography quite a bit, but to sit and vegetate, rarely. I suppose that’s common among us who live here, we take it for granted. I go maybe two or three times a year. But as I say, for photography I go many more times than that. In the end it doesn’t matter because I do spend time along the shore with the waves, breeze and sunsets; I do not take that for granted, at least not yet.

How I created the Image

I worked on this image for several hours this evening. I used a motion blur and carefully blended the original layer. Prior to that I created about ten layers in Photoshop to carefully craft the image to an idea I had in my minds eye. Then finally I used a Lightroom preset to give it an overall desaturated tone.

What I was thinking at the time

You may understand some of these technical details but if not, no worries. The point is, on some images I spend a lot of time and effort to transform an image into something resembling a dreamscape. For no other reason than I like to and, I think that dreams can be just as important as ordinary life. I’ve heard that we make our own reality, so if that’s true, then sometimes I like to create a reality that is a little bit ethereal like a dream, one that I would like to inhabit if I could; at least in my mind.