Photo Stories

Hillsborough River State Park Relaxing with Canine & Human Friends

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Relaxing at Hillsborough River State Park with canine & human friendsIf you make the effort with your photography, you will be rewarded.  Sometimes that effort just comes from physically lugging your gear with you when you might feel like just leaving it at home or in the parking lot.  I met some canine and human friends yesterday at Hillsborough River State Park, a very dog friendly place that is also one of the best nature experiences in the Tampa Bay area.  Many parks do not allow dogs on boardwalks, but in HRSP they have free reign.  So four people and as many dogs were able to roam the banks of the Hillsborough River, walk through the slash pine forest and later relax hig above the river and just enjoy the view.  

Certainly it was a bit of an effort to carry my Nikon D300, Tamron 17-50mm lens and Nikon SB-600 Speedlight flash on this 2-hour trek, but not that much because I only brought one lens.  I knew ahead of time that the kind of shots I would want to make would require a wide lens.  So to save weight and my back I brought the minimum amount of gear to be able to make those shots.  Why bring the flash?  For fill light in all those three shots above.  They just would not have turned out as well exposed and lit without it.  

So since I made that bit of effort to carry that minimum gear with me, I will have forever visual aids to help me remember that afternoon spent with great canine and human friends.  

My photography tip to you is:  yes, do make the effort to bring your DSLR with you, but help yourself by bringing just the one lens you know you will use for the shots you want to make.

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    • Super Moon or Perigree Moon Over St. Petersburg Florida May 5 2012

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    Super Moon or Perigree Moon May 5, 2012 over Smacks Bayou St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/8 ISO 200 5-exposure HDR mounted on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseWhat is sure to be one of the most photographed subjects of the year is the so-called Super Moon or Perigree Moon that rose in the twilight sky tonight on May 5, 2012.  Luckily for me I had a good vantage point of the Super Moon right from my back patio allowing me to make the HDR image above.  I chose to center the moon between two palm trees.  Uncharacteristically, I did not try any other compositions, so I hope I wake up tomorrow still liking how I framed this shot and not regretting trying a simpler framing!

    Did you photograph the super moon tonight?  

    Family Beach Portraits Sunset Beach Treasure Island St Petersburg Florida

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    Vivid family sunset beach portraits on Treasure Island Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/250th Strobist: SB-800 to frame left & SB-600 to frame rightIt was great to see the Martineau Family again, who I first photographed back in the summer of 2010.  They were once again visiting from Pennsylvania with their three children.  We met at the same beach on Treasure Island, Sunset Beach, my favorite beach in all of Florida.  This is a great place for family beach portraits, and also skimboarding!

    Pulling light from the sky long after the sun went down - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 640 1/60th Strobist: SB-800 to left & SB-600 to rightI was looking forward to seeing how much the children had grown in the past two years.  The most noticable growth was of course with their youngest, and the fact that he could now talk and his favorite words appear to be "alligator golf."

    Cartwheel sunset beach skills! - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/60th Strobist: SB-800 to frame left & SB-600 to frame rightBeing a Thursday evening in late April Sunset Beach was mostly free of tourists and locals as well so we pretty much had the entire half-mile strip of beach to ourselves.  The only passersby were some water birds.

    Family running on the beach having fun - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 500 1/500th natural lightLast time we made a very similar shot to the one above with the family running and laughing down the shoreline.  The biggest difrerence this year was that it was a cloudless sky, whereas two years ago a storm was just upon to fall on the beach providing a dramatic cloudy sky for a background.

    Siblings having fun on the beach - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/80th Strobist: SB-800 to left & SB-600 to rightThe cloudless sky helped me be able to make shots well after the sun went below the horizon and still pull some color out of the twilight sky.

    Family beach portrait watching the sunset - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/100th Strobist: SB-800 to left SB-600 to rightI was very glad to be able to continue to be the Martineaus family photographer on their Florida visits and I look forward to their next visit!

    Kiki yawning studio like white background pet photography done in home

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    Kiki's mouth opens too wide when yawning to even fit in the frame! - Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/8 ISO 200 1/60th Strobist: SB-800 @ 1/4 power in brolly to frame rightI have been doing quite a few in-apartment photo shoots featuring white backgrounds added digitally lately of various subjects and inevitably when I finish them before I put my photography and strobist gear away I make a few photographs of beloved puppy, Kiki.  I cannot say she is always thrilled about this.  Her expression is usually pretty neutral.  This time I interrupted her naptime resulting first in a yawn then the look she gave me (see below).  

    Kiki looking very nonplussed as she usually does for photos - Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/8 ISO 200 1/60th Strobist: SB-800 @ 1/4 power in brolly to frame rightSince these photographs were made in the close confines of my living room, and even though the great Nikkor AF-S 105mm VR micro f/2.8G macro lens makes great bokeh, the backgrounds were still a distraction, which is why I chose to do a Quick Select of just Kiki in Photoshop CS5 and then refine the edges and send that image onto a new layer (done automatically if you choose the right output).  I added a layer below Kiki, painted it white, and voila, a studio looking image of Kiki done right in my own living room, no mess, no fuss.

    Get images like these of your dog or cat or pet done right in your own living room . . . contact Jason today to reserve your shoot!

    Sun setting through downtown St. Petersburg Florida HDR

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    Sunset through the trees in Vinoy Park St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseVinoy Park is my favorite spot in all of downtown St. Petersburg.  It juts out offering panoramic views of the downtown skyline and also The Pier and Tampa Bay too.  It is the best public place to watch the sunset in the area also, well, maybe the top of The Pier is just as good.  I am always looking for different perspectives, trying not to just use my own eye level for composing shots.  For this one I closed the legs of my tripod so that I was shooting just from about a foot off the ground.  This also allowed me to get the sun right under the tree's lowest branch.

    • Photography Tip:  Use your tripod at its lowest height, or lay on your stomach if no tripod required for a unique, low perspective.

    Marina view from Vinoy Park St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseMoving in front of the tree in the lead photo reveals a marina, on the far right Vinoy Renaissance Hotel and in the center 400 Beach Drive tower.  There are benches to sit on to enjoy this view.  I cannot imagine there are many sunsets they go unused.

    North Straub Park in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseAll along the downtown St. Petersburg area are parks like North Straub Park above that offer quiet places to sit and enjoy the green environment that city developers very wisely preserved.  It is these parks that in my opinioin make St. Petersburg the most beautiful area to live in all of Tampa Bay.  

    Banyan Trees on Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg

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    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.

    St. Petersburg dumpster named after fighting meth?

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    A randomly named dumpster in St. Petersburg? - Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/4 ISO 200 1/500thI took some time a few weeks ago to just walk around downtown St. Petersburg with my Nikon D300 attached to my Induro CT214 tripod with my Nikkor 80-200mm lens attached.  Before I left the house I had the idea to bring just this gear and make what shots I could using this somewhat unusual gear grouping for shooting an urban environment.  

    I came across this dumpster beside a building in a nondescript location.  It seems that dumpsters for some reason are named in St. Petersburg.  Long ago I photographed one named "KRESS."  Now that I think about it, these "names" very well could be applied by a third party and not the city sanitation department itself.  In light of that, I feel sure now that this dumpster named C.U. METH. is not random.  So it seems there is a further story behind this photograph lying with the person who painted the name on the dumpster and why.  One guess, this is where the person tossed away the last remnants of items used for taking meth.  

    Now that I have realized St. Petersburg dumpsters have given names, I will keep an eye out for more.  If you see any, be sure and get a photograph of them to share.