Lightning Crashes.

June 2009.

I'm fascinated by the lightning storms we have here in Florida.  There can be incredible displays of nature's fireworks for an hour and there may be no rain at all.  Other times, you're in a downpour appropriate for the Old Testament and you can barely see the lightning strikes.  Of course, if we're lucky - we avoid the hurricanes of category 2 and above.....

But this was just a night.  A random June night.  Probably a Wednesday, as I'm guessing that I drove home watching this display (as happens often in the summer along I-75) and then I became motivated to try to capture "lightning in a bottle" (so to speak) once again.  

Yes, this means that there is an earlier set of lightning photos.....  I'll dig those up soon enough, I suspect.

The big difference between this set and the earlier attempts?  Pure luck.

These were shot on the front balcony of my place using a tripod, my Canon G7, 30 second exposures and a healthy dose of karma.....


The other big difference?  


I didn't edit these photos.  They are straight off of the camera.  So...  Yes.  You can do a lot with a camera that doesn't have interchangeable lenses and a zillion settings.

And yes.  This time I ripped off the title of a song that's less great from a band that is certainly less great.  But the song is still pretty good.... 

All that aside....  The curls and loops in the lightning in these photos are amazing.  At least to me.


E.

The Downtown Lights.

December 2009.

It was just a typical Wednesday, actually.  I had driven up to Tampa to spend the evening with my daughter and was driving home on the Crosstown Expressway - where I found myself paying more attention to the low cloud cover hovering over Downtown Tampa.....

So I took the next exit, turned around and looked for the first free parking deck I could find.

Once I was up there, my attention was split between the lights in the clouds, the nighttime traffic and the utter bleakness of the parking structure.  I used the Holgas (plural, as one is loaded with color and one black and white) for a couple of photos of the structure.  (They are the square photos, btw.)

The Holga exposures were done by holding the cameras on a low wall and manually holding the shutter open for about 10 seconds (I think) - the rest of the images were on my Canon G7 which was also stabilized by low walls and exposures in the 1 second range.  Yes.  I should keep a tripod in the truck.  With the exception of the conversion of one G7 photo to black & white (I like the coldness of it in B&W better), none of the images have been modified in any way.

Sometimes it's a good idea to stop and smell the roses.  Or to quote the famous philosopher Ferris Bueller - "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it..." 

E.

(And yes....  I shameless ripped of the title of this post from a great song from a great band that you've never heard of....)

Holga, B&W - C41 Process

Holga - Color

When Things Changed.

Key West.  June 2004.

A very short return to Key West with someone important to me both personally and as a photographer.  We ran around like idiots with cameras for a couple of days.  I used my DSLR, she used her 35mm and threw random filters on the lenses that were on sale.  Both approaches were pretty great.  Almost immediately upon returning to Key West, I realized that how I looked at things in terms of how I'd take a picture had changed.  For the better, I hope.

As much as it might seem that I go down to Key West all the time to take photos, it would be over five years before I returned after this trip.....


A couple of these photos (the cemetery cat, the cemetery water well and the house with the funky wall) were buried on my hard drive until tonight.  All of the cemetery photos were shot through the fence - we were too late to walk through.  And the photo of the Afterdeck sign is still one of my all time favorite photos of anything.  


I included both the original camera image and the tarted up one that I've used for years of the broken angel statue.  I think I prefer the original now.  We'll chalk that up to evolving tastes....


And the photo of the girl?  Well.  I had forgotten that existed until tonight.  So I'm including it for purposes of nostalgia.  


I think I'll start jumping around a bit more in terms of chronology now.  I hope you enjoyed the ride so far....


E.

Seeing The Future Through The Past

May 2004.

These photos have a different feel to them and I realized that when I took them.  Since the evening that I took those sunset photos and the evening that I crawled over and through salvage debris, things had changed.  I met someone that was very encouraging and enthusiastic about my photography.  Oddly enough, she's a very good photographer of landscapes and architectural subjects - things I wasn't so sure about....  But these things get you thinking.  So as I was on my way to work one morning, crossing the south bridge onto the island - I looked at the growing pile of wreckage on the side of the road and saw potential.  They were destroying the existing drawbridges and replacing them.  All of the salvage debris was just tossed to the side.  In other words, opportunity was knocking.

And this is about the time that I started to think about myself as some sort of photographer.  Of course, I kept that to myself for fear of laughing out loud if I claimed to be one.

These photos are still hanging in my home and probably always will.  Particularly the first two - I was very fond of the "orange gear" as when I took the photo, I was the President of the local Rotary Club....

E.

Venice Beach.

March 2004.

Here is where the obligatory (and I believe to be legally mandated) set of "sunset photos" taken at a Gulf beach reside.  I'm sure that I was on my way home from the office and just turned the other way.  And no - I don't know who the couple is in the one photo.  I just like it....

E.

Ferdinand Street.

February 2004.

One of the things that I love about South Tampa is that there are moments that you can just look around at things and see the beauty in the imperfections.  Without moving.  These three photos were taken as my daughter and I were just hanging out outside.  I moved no farther than a 15 foot radius to capture these....  And yes.  The lizards were amusing me that day.

E.

 

A Day In The Backyard.

March 2004.

I really have no recollection of the reason that we all got together at Mom & Dad's house.  But at some point, all of the kids were in the back yard doing what kids do and I took the opportunity to get some photos of them.  This was back in the time that I could actually catch a photo without them either acting shy or like a miniature jackass mugging for the camera (I'm talking to you JD....)

These are my three favorites.  Including one of my all-time favorites of my nephew, JD.....

E.

 

Valentine's Day. 2004.

Little did I realize when I was taking some random photos of my daughter and one of her beloved (at the time) Elmo dolls, that my photography was going to take a turn for the better in the not-distant future.  It has never ceased to amaze me how the effect of meeting someone new and having someone appreciate and encourage you can so positively impact your desire to improve.  

It was true then.  It's true now.  

These aren't anything special.  Except to me.  

E.

September. Even longer ago.

In September of 2001, we took a trip back down to Key West with a bunch of our friends from Illinois.  It was the first time that we had been back since moving north almost a year earlier.  We had a great time and I'm still convinced that we took home a souvenir from the island that gets cuter every year....

Rummaging through the old hard drives, it was clear that I was using pretty weak equipment (an old Olympus point and shoot) and didn't have much else going on for me photographically.  But I did find a few from the sunset cruise that we took that didn't suck.  I'm putting them here as a historical benchmark.  If I was a real glutton for punishment, I'd also post the cemetery photos - particularly as that is a favorite photo stop for me on the island.  These are just the off-the-camera files - no editing has been done.


E.

October. A lifetime ago.

Staying with the idea of beginnings.....

Sometime in the late summer/early fall of 2003, I purchased my first (and so far only) DSLR.  The Canon 10D.  I still love this camera, but don't drag it around as much as I used to.

It seemed that in October of that year, I took some photos that I still really like.  Partially for the images themselves.  Partially for the reminder of the massive changes and upheaval in my life at the time.  Each of these photos tells a story to me, but they are ones (for the most part) that are very private - and as such, I'll keep the details to myself.  I hope you can understand.

One thing that is clearly evident in some of these early photos....  I really relied on using photo-editing software to get the images to look like they worked in my mind.  Although the photo of the flower is just one that I ran across this evening and didn't mess with at all.  As time has gone by, I'm much more interested in capturing the image directly on the camera and editing as little as possible.


The bunny costume photo is one of my all-time favorites.  It's certainly not that impressive from a technical standpoint and I didn't give any real thought to composition - in fact, I'd probably go back and change some of the levels in this image, but....  It was my daughter's first Halloween that she wasn't being carried around and there is something about her baggy bunny butt that makes me smile every time.

E.