Sailboat masts in downtown St. Petersburg Florida marina - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseMy goal when making this photograph was to just show the part of the sailboat that inspires dreams.  A sailboat docked in a marina is not going anywhere, so the collection of hulls is not the part I find inspiring.  My eyes focused on the masts and in particular the long row of masts, allowing one to pick out their own particular sailboat to build a dream on.

This composition also utilized repeating patterns and leading lines.  I chose HDR for the exposure so that detail could be seen in the masts as well as the background sky maximizing the color gradient as twilight approached.

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The sunrise dawn sky over Smacks Bayou as seen from my back patio - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/60th handheld 

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 Every morning I am outside, briefly around 6:30am.  It is almost like clockwork, but it is not my clock that keeps this schedule, rather it is Kiki's.  She wants to go out to pee then quickly come back inside to eat breakfast, then we both go back to sleep until a more sane time to fully wake up.  At this time of year (April) this morning ritual coincides with late dawn just before the actual sunrise.  In the approximate 2-minutes we are outside I usually look at the horizon through not quite wet enough contacts and note what color can be found in the sky this particular morning.

Yesterday the water of Smacks Bayou was particularly calm producing a fairly clean reflection.  My senses were of course not fully functioning, but after feeding Kiki her breakfast I did go back out to make a few handheld photos of the above scene.  I should have been using a tripod of course, but I did not have the ambition or coordination at that moment to fumble with putting on the tripod plate, etc.  I think what I will do to remedy this is already have my camera mounted on my tripod before I go to bed, so should the dawn sky be particularly beautiful, all I have to do is step outside, compose and click the cable release letting the gear do most of the work for me.  

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Sunset Beach, Treasure Island, St. Petersburg, Florida - my favorite beach - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 2 sec tripod mounted with cable releaseIt seems to me Florida is a very specific place to live.  It is warm and its extremely long coastline is all beach.  These two things are why we live here.  Being a specific place to live, it lacks certain things, most notably mountains and four seasons.  Instead of mountain views there are amazing sunset and twilight sky views that fluctuate in color throughout the year.  Intesad of four seasons there are essentially two, the humidity season (April through September) and the dry air season (October through March).

I value being able to go swimming at the beach in February.  I like wearing shorts 362 out of 365 days per year.  I pay a price in sweat for those things though.  Therefore, in the remaining days of the dry air season, I savor each one, like today.  

Why do you live in Florida?

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Sunset Beach Treasure Island Florida at Twilight - click to view at 1800px - 4-shot panorama image - available for commercial license and fine art print

I have heard that Montana is called Big Sky Country.  Picturing that in my mind has fascinated me for years.  I have lived in claustrophobic places, where glimpes of the sky are all that is allowed.  Fortunately, for a majority of my life I have been able to gaze westward across a 180 degree expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.  The horizon is not infinity, it is Texas.  Still, since 1992 when I first discovered Sunset Beach, it has become a sacred place to me.  

A whole novel could be written about my time on that half mile strip of sand over the past 19 years, though I would not want to share those stories, at least not yet.  For now I will only share the view that has given me solace and freedom of mind.  

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The marina across from the Vinoy Hotel sailboat reflections - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens @ f/11 ISO 200 3-bracket HDR handheld

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One day I will have to go out and make fine art photographs like this on purpose, as this one was made while teaching a DSLR Photography Lesson.  I noticed the sailboats' masts reflecting in the water and thought this makes this spot look much more interesting than the other 198 times I have seen and walked by it.  I normally do not center the horizon so much in the frame, but for certain reflection shots it works.  I left the top of the sky and did not crop right to the top of the masts to let the sky itself have more of a place in the photograph instead of only featuring the boats themselves.  

Taking three bracketed shots and using HDR processing allowed for a much more colorful and detailed image than the single exposure photo I took first.  I liked the scene, but I recognized that a single exposure may only leave me with a black & white choice for a final image, whereas also taking bracketed shots for HDR gave me an additional option to pick from once I returned home and looked at the photos on my 24" monitor.