Posts Tagged ‘vacation’

Tampa, Florida

Urban Walkabout

Downtown buildings of Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media
Downtown buildings of Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media

Last April, I accompanied my wife on a trip to Tampa, Florida. In a previous post, I talked about the trip out of DCA south to Florida. I have never been to Tampa before, and this was a great opportunity to see a new city for me. From my research before arriving, I did see that they had a nice downtown with some large buildings that I hoped to get in photos while I was there.

Downtown Tampa ©TimeLine Media
Tampa from above ©TimeLine Media

During the day, my wife was at a convention to earn some continuing education credits. I had some photography projects to work on that I had on my laptop. Despite not being at home, I can do most of my work remotely. Thanks to readily available internet and fast laptop computers! While my wife was out, I walked around downtown Tampa and saw a lot of interesting sights.

city skyline view from above ©TimeLine Media
Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media

Flying Mayor

The NHL Tampa Bay Lightning were in the middle of a playoff run! When I approached a building near city hall, I saw a ladder fire engine lifting the mayor up high into the sky! He revealed a “Go Bolts” banner on the side of the building. That was a fortunate event to run into!

Mayor Bob Buckhorn raising a Lightning Banner ©TimeLine Media
Mayor Bob Buckhorn raising a Lightning Banner ©TimeLine Media
Go Bolts! Tampa Bay Lightning banner ©TimeLine Media
Go Bolts! Tampa Bay Lightning banner ©TimeLine Media

Tampa is a very walkable city. From our hotel, we could walk along the Hillsborough River down to the Convention Center and Amalie Arena where the Lighting play. Walking around the arena area, we found a nice parking garage with a beautiful panoramic view of downtown. Because it was a quiet night in the city without any games being played in the arena, we spent some time getting some nice photos of the tall skyscrapers. I really enjoyed the short time we had to explore this area of Florida!

Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media
Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media

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Analysis Paralysis | Tech Tuesday

Outer Banks North Carolina

Analysis Paralysis will sometimes stall a creative process. It has been a while since I have posted! We have been busy with a lot of events, and we even took some time to go on some trips all around the country. I am back and finally getting some time to go through the photos. While going through the photos, I recall a question that my cousin asked as we were walking around his city. He asked – how do you find better landscape compositions?

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse - ©TimeLine Media
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse – ©TimeLine Media

I believe it is a combination of just shooting, and refining. Trying to overthink a photo when you arrive to a location can really take away from your enjoyment of your visit. Also, it may prevent you from getting any images at all! If it is a popular tourist, or familiar landmark like these North Carolina coastal lighthouses, you have a lot of images in your mind already. I always take these classic or overdone photos if I can to add them to my personal collection. But then, I use the digital tools, the back of the camera to review and get a better images before I leave the location. Here we found a nice dune overlooking the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. My first thought was to use my ultra wide lens to get a lot of the sky with the lighthouse in the far background.

Cape Hatteras through wide angle lens - ©TimeLine Media
Cape Hatteras through wide angle lens – ©TimeLine Media

Working a Scene

Not good. You can’t even see the lighthouse and the frame is dominated by large areas of sand and coastal grasses. I did not see anything that was worth trying again, so I changed lenses. I wanted to bring the lighthouse to a more prominent part of the frame, so I put the 105mm lens onto the camera.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse - ©TimeLine Media
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse – ©TimeLine Media


This is better. The lighthouse is larger in the frame, but I now see new distractions. There is a paved parking lot for visitors, and a radio tower both of which I did not even see in the first attempt. At least I solved how I wanted the lighthouse to look in the frame. Now I just needed to move my position slightly to move the distractions out of the frame.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse - ©TimeLine Media
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse – ©TimeLine Media


Crouching in between the coastal grasses gave me this frame. Most of the distractions are out of the way. I like how the out of focus coastal grasses are leading your eyes to the lighthouse that is rendered sharply. But a few of the tips are a little too large, so they can take the attention away.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse - ©TimeLine Media
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse – ©TimeLine Media


Just moving a few feet allowed me to find my final position. Nothing is blocking the body of lighthouse, and all the grasses are a consistently small size in the photo. I did have to crop a little from the left to completely get rid of the radio tower, but I am happy how this turned out. I really enjoyed making this image, but spent a lot of the rest of the day painfully picking out “hithchikers” that grabbed onto my sneakers.

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Looking Back | Throwback Thursday

Just in case you have not noticed, I have changed the date for my Technology/Technique posts. With everyone on social networks posting #TBT or “Throwback Thursday” photos, I wanted to join in on the fun. I have a huge library of photos from days past, and the collection keeps growing every week!

Vacation snapshot
Vacation snapshot

This will probably force me to look back on some older images, and hopefully see how I have improved, and grown as a photographer and blogger. I may go even further back and see where I have come from to help me see where I should be going. Does that sound too serious – I hope not! I have enjoyed looking at the older images of friends and family as they post to Facebook and Instagram, and I want to join in the fun.

Tatay on foggy beach with Nikon
Tatay on foggy beach with Nikon

I am so lucky to have so many photos that my parents made over the years from times before I was born to the present. In trying to work with these photos – where is the data? Overall, I am completely spoiled with the amount of data that you get from digital photography. The camera, aperture, the date, and sometimes the place where you take these photos are all a few clicks away. Comparatively, analog images turned into digital files have none of these. You have to examine each on their own and try to determine the relevant data by looking at the faces, the backgrounds, and asking people that were in the photos if they remember where they were taken. It’s a great start for a trip down memory lane.

Tatay-with-camera-on-tripod
Tatay-with-camera-on-tripod

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703-864-8208

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