Saturday, August 29, 2009

Siesta on Siesta

We decided to take a break from the work-a-day world this week, and headed cross-state to Siesta Key on Florida's west coast. A nice break it was -- time with family, time on the beach, time by the pool, time at the Selby Botanical Gardens, time at the auto dealer's service department when my battery went bad... More than anything else I had expected to spend time with my photo gear on the beach shooting a Gulf of Mexico sunset or two. Unfortunately Mother Nature had other ideas and every evening was either drowned in torrential tropical rains or simply clouded over. These shots are as close as I could get -- finding a bit of artistic drama in the late day storms, backlit by a setting sun that never showed us her true colors. A minor disappointment in the end...

I read a great deal ( finished Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning", Dennis LaHane's "The Given Day", Richard Russo's collection of short stories "The Whore's Child", got a start on Jana French's "In The Woods" and revisited parts of Harriet Beecher Stowe's
"Palmetto Leaves"), and Kay and I are working on jointly composing a little waltz -- something we've not tried before. We kept mostly to the back roads and off of the dreaded Florida Interstate highways, passing through miles of undeveloped interior land that few folks even know exists (ever hear of Dallas, Florida?). What a treasure this state is! Time now to recover from our Siesta...

2 comments:

I am a lover of children's literature said...

After just experiencing torrential rains from hurricane Bill and tropical storm Danny, I find that this bad weather gives a great opportunity to take some very good photos.

I just love photos with a mixture of contrasting grays! I like the way they match my greying hair, I guess?

Paul Garfinkel said...

Less light is certainly better for longer exposure times -- and sunsets do become trite after your first couple of thousand or so... most of my recent images have involved clouds -- a seasonal thing, I suppose... Thanks, Don!

--Paul