I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

• John Masefield, “Sea Fever”

These photos were taken at the Sail Tampa Bay, Parade of Sail event. July 10, 2010. The ships are the Columbian ARC Gloria, and the USCGC Barque Eagle.

There was yet another ship, the Uruguayan Capitan Miranda; it didn’t arrive as scheduled and I missed the photo opportunity. But I sure enjoyed the chance to photograph these two magnificent ships!

Many thanks to Michael White for scouting out the ships’ timetables and routes, and for baking in the hot sun next to me to get these images!

Lines can be interesting or boring, and when they are plain horizontal or vertical, they can fatigue the viewer. When angled and especially when asymmetrical, they can really add depth and perspective to a photo. Consider the way the offset lines draw you right into these images:

Sometimes the lines can be curvy or wavy, but the effect remains – grab your attention and pull it into the scene:

Within nature, we find the same organic trend towards perspective and symmetry.

But, by breaking the symmetry, we impart greater tension, interest and impact with our images:

Take note of the lines in your photographs. Strive to break the symmetry, shoot to add perspective and draw the viewer in. Give it a try!

Carol & I bundled up Ava, our granddaughter, and headed downtown towards the bay. We didn’t have time to find an optimum spot, so we settled for what we could get. Therefore, many of my photos have palm trees featured in prominent silhouette. Let’s just say, these are “Florida Style” fireworks photos, and pretend that it was planned!

I’m embedding a slideshow from Flickr, which is a first for me, so be gentle if I didn’t get it right on the first try

One evening, after huddling indoors from the rain, Carol called me to the front yard to see the sky. The sun wasn’t shining, at least near us, but the clouds were illuminated with many colors, shapes and textures. It was eerie and awe-inspiring!

And, here’s another view of the Saint Petersburg pier, with the afternoon storms rolling in across the bay from Tampa in the east. This photo was taken while the sun was shining brightly at my back:

For the past week of so, I’ve had it in my mind to photograph a few local landmarks at the golden hour in the evening. Or perhaps even first thing in the morning. However, it seems every time I have a few minutes to break away, our Florida summer storms are right there to interfere with my light!

Oh well, when you have lemons, make lemonade – and when you have storms, make storm photos! Here are a few shots I’ve taken in the past week, taking advantage of the rainy weather here in Saint Petersburg.

My team meets on (approximately) a quarterly basis, for 3 days of intense strategy discussions, and “Death by PowerPoint.” But, the part of the week that really brings us together as a team are the extra curricular activities. Over the years, we have tried everything from golf to bowling, to dinners, to paintball melees. But last week, we were fortunate to have a really, really great team-building event: White-water rafting.

We were in the Boise, Idaho area, and last Thursday afternoon, trekked off into the surrounding mountains to visit the Cascade Raft & Kayak center on the Payette River, just outside of Boise.

We were torn between anticipation and trepidation, but 13 of us decided to go for it, and we were rewarded for our efforts!

Aesop teaches us, “in union, there is strength,” and we learned that lesson in spades on this trip. Two hours of Class III/IV rapids, and it was non-stop, adrenalin-pumping fun! We managed to lose a couple of rafters overboard, but they were swiftly recovered and we considered it part of the team building experience. In this photo, you can see yours truly (last man on the right side) in our raft, overloaded by one, as we had picked up a man overboard from another raft. Weighed down, we crashed our way through the next set of rapids, and I believe there was as much water in the boat as there was outside:

All in all, we had a great time, and I have to say, thanks very much to our guides, Ryan and Dustin, for steering us safely through!

Afterwards, we enjoyed a cold one on the banks of the Payette, and soaked in the experience. Life was good.

Joe Paterno said, “When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.” We learned this lesson many times over while rafting. In fact, we lived it!

If you happen to be in the Boise area, please do stop in to see the folks at Cascade. Tell them I sent you! You won’t get a discount or anything, but hey – you’ll be white-water rafting, so who cares?

Highly porous carbon nanotube batteries that store five times as much energy as capacitors, and deliver their power up to 10 times as rapidly as lithium ion batteries. I’d love to have some of these for my SpeedLites! (via Slashdot)

Canon 5200mm (yes, 5200!) F14 EF Prime lens. From a Canon Flyer:
"This is the only ultra-telephoto lens in the world capable of taking photographs of objects 18 to 32 miles away (30km to 52kms away). Having a focal length of 5200mm, Canon Mirror Lens 5200mm can obtain one hundred times as large an object image as that of a 50mm lens."

Canon patent application for in-camera HDR. Done right, this could open a whole new door in photographic capture, saving a whole lot of time in “merge to HDR.” Some cameras boast in-camera HDR, but if this ever becomes a reality, that’s one camera I’d love to have!

Now, if they could bundle all that technology into my smartphone, I’d be good to go!

Nature didn’t cooperate, however; as we drove north we could see the clouds rolling in, east to west, and before we got there the entire sky was a gloomy grey. Rain was threatening, and sure enough, just as we arrived, the drizzle began. But an hour’s drive is an investment, and we decided to go ahead and have dinner anyway, and see what we could find worth photographing.

Being indoors, in the scenic Greek restaurant (The Parthenon, 751 Dodecanese Blvd; excellent food!), gave me a chance to try some high ISO images with my new Canon 7D. At ISO 12800, the images came out a bit on the noisy side, but Photoshop CS5’s Camera Raw features made quick work of it.

But the best was yet to come…

Later, as we enjoyed a cup of coffee and some Baklava at Hella’s cafe, lo and behold! The sun came out, and that elusive golden light made an appearance after all! Leaving Carol with the cappuccino, I grabbed my camera and tripod and raced back outside to see what I could see. With the light and shadows, HDR seemed to be the way to go, and I managed to capture some great images.

And, wouldn’t you know it, with the light streaming in before sunset, and shining directly on the gloomy clouds in the east, we got a rainbow!

All in all it was a lovely evening, great food with great company in a historic area, all capped off by nature’s best light show. Patience does pay off!

I started at the north end of the North Beach, and walking through the pines near the water, I spotted some interesting shore birds, including this Black-Bellied Plover:

Onward I went, and after much searching, I finally located the Australian pine with the dozing mother owl. I was able to get relatively close and take quite a few pictures:

Suddenly, looking at a branch several feet below the mother, I spotted the fledgling. He was out of the nest, but huddling within a sheltered part of the tree making it difficult to get a clear photo. He was getting large, maybe 2/3 the size of the mother, but he still had a quite fuzzy head:

All in all, a successful afternoon, and some good pictures to go along with it!

The tone was set for excitement as we spotted an 8-point buck near the park entrance. Deer that size are rare in Florida! We proceeded into the sanctuary, cameras ready and with bated breath. Alas, two natural occurrences prevented the day form being everything it promised: due to the cold Florida winter, there had been no wood stork nesting activity in the Sanctuary this year, and due to the unusually wet winter, there was a lot of water everywhere – so instead of the birds congregating in the center of the swamp, there were very few wading birds in sight.

We did manage to see a variety of birds, images below; the list we spotted included pileated woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, swallow-tailed kite, red-shouldered hawk, turkey vulture, Carolina wren, catbird, great blue heron, and a few great egrets.

This Carolina wren serenaded us beautifully from the treetops, then dropped to eye level to pose for a few images:

We spotted several young red-shouldered hawks, and even got to watch one as he stalked, then captured and devoured a small frog:

On the way back, Michael White and I also stopped at the Venice Rookery, where we watched quite a few pairs of great blue herons, great egrets, and anhinga tending to their young. Herons and Egrets in breeding plumage are a beautiful sight to see!