Moving Pictures

It is fairly easy to check the tides. I have an ap on my phone in fact. But it is not always convenient to visit certain places at the exact right time. Now that I live relatively "around the corner" at 30 minutes away, and have completely free days,,,,, I have zero excuses to do this right. Blowing Rocks Preserve is a somewhat unique bit of Florida beach. Solid limestone rather than endless sand that comprises most of the Florida beaches. For the first time I've captured the waves actually blowing out of the holes that have been drilled into the hard rock over the last hundred thousand years. There is even a low whistling sound as the air is pushed out ahead of the waves. It's hard to tell from the photos but this was a very breezy and rainy day. I was forced to return to the car more than once because of showers. Even though the weather was not the best for my camera, it was perfect for this bit of beach. The surf was crashing rhythmically and specta...

I thought I would finish up shooting with this really long lens by trying to squeeze the full two and a half miles of the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk into one shot. I saw it done very well once by a friend of mine about 10 years ago. Since then the light poles have been changed, repaired, and reworked several times. Pretty much every time I thought about shooting it there was mismatched lighting, construction, or bad weather. When I finally got there on just the right day, my biggest lens was just not enough. The 2x doubler I had just made matters worse and a shaky tripod made for a frustrating day. That was about 3 years ago. On this day I took my oldest working camera - Nikon D70, Cheapest lens - Vivitar Series 1 500mm F/8.0, and my $20.00 tripod set very low to the ground. I shot in the morning at Anne Kolb in highly overcast conditions. When I staked my claim on a bench at the end of the Broadwalk, the light could not have been brighter. My drive home was met with torrential rain...