The two famous banyan trees on Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR on tripod with cable releaseThere are banyan trees throughout the downtown St. Petersburg area and nearby surrounding areas, but no banyans are as famous or more photographed than the two trees above located right on Beach Drive NE. As large as they are, they always seem to appear all of a sudden to passersby who often audibly gasp upon seeing them.
I first photographed banyan trees in the St. Petersburg downtown area back in August 2011 when walking back to my car after a meeting I passed by this pair.
Photographing the famous Beach Drive NE banyan trees is rather challenging. Their large branches and wide trunks create deep shadows and on one side of them is always a row of parked cars not making for the greatest background. The angle of composition I chose was the only one I could find that included almost no man-made objects in the shot. I used my Induro CT214 tripod with all the legs collapsed, shooting from just about a foot of the ground. I chose to make a 9-exposure HDR image in order to get detail from within the trunk shadows as well as in the bright sky above.