NEW YORK NEW YORK and GASPARILLA ISLAND FLORIDA – We woke up today in New York, boarded a morning flight to Ft. Myer Florida, arrived there and drove to Gasparilla Island in time to be on the beach in the late afternoon. There is a lot of Florida that we don’t much care for but a 1980 legislation has protected Gasparilla from high density development – it’s like Nantucket with palm trees. I took my Sony Nex-7 and a selection of Leica lenses. Here is sunrise in New York (taken with a 135mm APO-Telyt lens) and a sunset on Gasparilla (taken with a 24mm Summilux lens).
Sunrise New York
NAPLES FLORIDA – Another walk on the beach at sunset with my Panasonic. There’s a stretch of beach here where thousands of gulls gather to watch the sunset, along with the local residents, who bring out chairs to sit on as they literally watch the sunset. As the last rays of the sun fade they (the people) break out into applause. Really. The experience of being surrounded by a very large number of birds was pure Hitchcock. Here’s an image:
Hitchcockesque
NAPLES FLORIDA – Day two of the conference. There is a little more daylight in the schedule today so I’m carrying my Alpa TC and a 35mm Schneider lens. Toward the evening I found myself on the beach with the Alpa. Did I say that it’s hard to find an interesting photograph on the beach. Well yes and no. True. But – – – In the few minutes of the “golden hour”, which is usually not an hour – more like 20 minutes, it really doesn’t matter what you point your camera at. When the light arrives, stop what you’re doing and shoot whatever is at hand. Even a beach. I have to relearn this periodically. In landscape light is more important than landscape. Anyway here is the golden hour light etching the beach in Naples.
Magic light trumps banal subject
Earlier in the day I spotted a familiar looking steeple and indeed it was the local United Church of Christ (in round terms the Congregational Churches outside of New England), a sure sign that Naples has been colonized by New Englanders.
NAPLES FLORIDA – Back here again, on a mission that’s unrelated to last week’s board meetings: attending the annual MFDF directors’ conference. Today is the first day of the conference and is thus busy, so I’ve limited myself photo-wise to my iPhone and what I can photograph within an easy walk. I caught this from a boardwalk through a local park with my iPhone. The image is my new lock screen image on my iPhone and I’ve adapted it to serve as one of this blog’s rotating headers. The over cooked quality is what comes out of the iPhone. I could dial it down in Lightroom or Photoshop, but who said this process needs to be serious. The image looks very good on a small screen. It demonstrates (again) that great light trumps every thing else (including limited equipment) when shooting landscape.
Another iPhone image from the top of the bar where I had dinner.
NAPLES FLORIDA – In a break from meetings I ran into a friend having lunch at a casual bar on the beach. He posed as I photographed him with my iPhone. But this presents a dilemma. This guy is pretty prominent in the world that I work in; when he posed he didn’t realize this was destined for the web; I don’t necessarily want to “out” him as having fun in the middle of the day. How to handle it? Well here’s one idea: There’s an app for the iPhone that converts an image into tiles. At tile resolution he’s not recognizable:
Incognito
Another sunset. This does happen every day so I’m generally against shooting sunsets (same category as pets and cute kids). It was really, really clear and occasionally when the sun sets toward the sea and it’s very clear you see a brief green flash. I’ve actually seen it once from Basil’s Bar in Mustique. So I set up to catch it but alas it didn’t happen. Here’s the sun where there would have been a green flash had it happened.
NAPLES FLORIDA – I flew down here from New York this morning for two days of client board meetings. I managed a long walk on the beach today. Beaches aren’t great for photography (at least when I’m pushing the shutter button) I suspect because they are all similar, if not the same. Here’s a sea bird admiring its shadow, taken with my Panasonic.
Naples Florida
