TownePlace Suites Marriott St. Petersburg Clearwater commercial hotel shoot

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TownePlace Suites by Marriott St. Petersburg Clearwater outdoor pool - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR mounted on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable release

Continuing my partnership with area Marriott hotels (see Historic Courtyard), last week I photographed the exterior & interior of TownePlace Suites St. Petersburg Clearwater.  This hotel is designed for long term stays with the rooms featuring kitchens and additional living and work spaces within the suites.  To my surprise, this hotel is also pet friendly, so your dog or cat can stay with you!

Lobby area features of TownePlace Suites - snacks & front desk are HDR; gym is single exposureI really liked the "In a Pinch" snack shelves for some reason, maybe because of the clever name or the fact that you can just grab a back of chips right from the lobby.  It was the hotel management's decision to photograph the front desk with no people.  The photograph mine will replace did include people.  What do you think, should a hotel lobby/front desk shot include people in it or not?

Features of suite rooms at TownePlace - kitchen, bedroom, living room are HDR; bathroom is single exposure with speedlight in the tub!Photographing rooms is very hard.  You might think making a sunset portrait on the beach is harder, but to me, photographing a hotel room is because the lighting is more of a challenge indoors.  I use a combination of HDR and off camera flash techniques to produce the best results given the rooms windows and ambient light.

Tropicana Field St. Petersburg Florida Landmark Series

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Tropicana Field in full - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable releaseI am starting a new photo series:  St. Petersburg Landmarks

The first landmark is the home of the Tampa Bay Rays -- Tropicana Field.  It is a much maligned dome stadium.  First, almost nobody is happy about its location.  It is far from the other major cities in the area, Clearwater and Tampa.  Even for us St. Petersburg residents it is not in any kind of walkable location.  It must be driven to and it is in an area there is no other reason to drive to.  It basically sits in the middle of a huge parking lot.  Inside it is dark and dreary looking.  I would actually say from the stands to look out over the field it is a depressing experience.

The entrance to Tropicana Field - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable releaseThe entranceway and the stores in the immediate grandstand are actually attactive and make you feel like you are attending an exciting event.  It is only once under the dome proper does the horridness settle in.  I have been to only one game (see photos) and photographed a charity event on another occasion.  

Palm tree lined parking lot walkway - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable releasePerhaps the best view of the entire property is when you are walking out of the stadium under a mosaic sidewalk lined with tall palm trees toward your car.  The walkway does not go on forever, eventually you would run into Tampa Bay!  

Mahaffey Theater to Marina St. Petersburg Waterfront Panorama Florida

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Click to see 2500px wide version - Mahaffey Theater on the left St. Petersburg downtown center - image available for fine art print & commercial license, call today! 813-240-5357

  • This panorama photograph available for fine art print & commercial license, inquire today! 

I am spending more time at the new Dali Museum and discovering the very different views of the downtown St. Petersburg waterfront it offers.  The above panorama photograph was made from a parking lot across from the museum at twilight.  Here I detailed my process for creating such panoramas. 

From this vantage point The Pier does not dominate the waterfront, and can only barely be seen behind the sailboat masts toward the right of the photo.  Instead, the Mahaffey Theater is the most prominent structure.  There is also a gradual light falloff from left to right instead of the harsher light falloffs when photographing directly into the sun.  I look forward to returning to this location to find more panorama photograph opportunities.

New Salvador Dali Museum at Twilight with Moon

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Moonrise of a purple twilight at the new Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL -- this image available as fine art print & commercial license -- f/8 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseThe new Salvador Dali Museum is situated in an ideal direction for night time photography as its most notable feature, the glass wave, faces due east.  This allows for the setting Florida sun to backlight the museum, which this time resulted in a reddish-purple sky.  The extended hours on Thursday evenings allow for the lights to come on inside the museum resulting in the image seen above.  In addition, the moon was rising and waxing just enough to be visible in the early twilight.

Looking east on the north side of the Dali Museum - f/8 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseThe view to the east in the evening offers an infinite gradient of blue until clouds hover on the horizon.  There are almost an infinite number of ways one can photograph the palm trees reflected in the glass wave as well.

Cyon? Egg? Hive? or other? - new Dali Museum glass wave at twilight with moon - f/8 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseIf you are looking for an outstanding new location to make photographs in the Tampa Bay area, I highly recommend visiting the Dali Museum with your DSLR and tripod on an evening very soon.   

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    • Dali Museum DSLR Photography Lesson with Pam & her Canon 60D

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    Pam with her Canon 60D at the New Dali Museum during our 8th & final DSLR Photography LessonIn the two full years I have been teaching 1-on-1 private DSLR Photography Lessons here in the St. Petersburg area, Pam is now my most tenured student as last evening she took her eighth total lesson.  We went to my new favorite location for having a lesson, the new Salvador Dali Museum at the southern edge of the downtown St. Petersburg waterfront.  The museum offers the opportunity for architecture, macro and portrait photography, as well as night time tripod shots.  

    Over the course of our 16 hours of photography lesson time together Pam has learned well how to shoot in manual mode and to take control over exposure to produce a shot as she wants be it in daylight, twilight or full on night.  This is the most important skill one needs to be able to continually improve as a photographer, and to be able to start to teach oneself how to shoot better.  Therefore, I am confident Pam will be able to from this point on improve her skills on her own each time she goes out shooting.  

    Thanks Pam and I look forward to seeing your work in the future!

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    Photography Tip - search your archives for photos you make like now

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    Abandoned train car in Tampa, Florida - Nikon D300 with Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D @ f/2.8 ISO 200 1/2500thI have been going through my photography archives from the past three years looking for images to update my various portfolios with.  While looking for specific types of photos, I also found random photos that I had never edited, never given any attention to before, that for some reason now catch my eye (see above train photo).  This gave me the idea for . . . 

    Photography Tip -- go through your photo archives to find hidden gems & to see how your photography tastes have changed

     

    Not only may you find that what you think is an interesting photograph has changed, but if you have greatly improved your digital photo editing skills like I have over the past few years, you may find that you can save a photo that previously was left for the scrapheap.  

    Go through your archives this week and see if you find a forgotten photo that you now really like or even love.  Post a link to it in the comments below! 

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    • Layer Mask Photoshop CS5 Digital Photo Editing Lesson with Ed

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    Using a layer mask in Photoshop CS5 to change the background of a portrait - book your lesson today to learn tomorrow!

    I met Ed from Jacksonville again this morning for our second of two Photoshop CS5 centered DSLR Photography Lessons.  After giving him a crash course on the basics of using many common Photoshop tools yesterday, today we focused mainly on one thing:  layer masks.  As seen in the image above, if you take a texture, drop it onto a portrait, create a layer mask, then "brush back in" the portrait, you have a very quick and easy way of completely changing the background of a photograph.  You could also keep some of the texture visible over the portrait subject as well to create a different look to the entire frame. 

    This layer mask technique is also very useful for fixing clouds in HDR images, which often turn out too dark.  Using one of my own HDR shots as an example, I showed Ed how you can get the benefit of an HDR image without the drawback (dark clouds) by taking a single frame of the bracketed shots that has very white clouds and using it as a layer mask to blend into the HDR image.  I will be posting this tutorial using the HDR example later this week.

    The four hours (total) I spent showing Ed what I know about Photoshop went by very fast.  We easily could have filled another four.  He took detailed notes so I am confident that with what he learned during our intensive lessons he will be able to apply to his own images and begin teaching himself how to use more features of Photoshop.  

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