Crows, Ponte Vedra Beach

One of these thieves had just eaten my granola bar, cunningly snatched from my golf cart.

Ibises, Ponte Vedra Beach

Rules and Regulations

There is a slightly cavalier attitude towards authority in Florida and it gets more cavalier the closer to the beach you get. In their defense, there is nothing on the sign about graffiti or stickers.

Cone in batting cage, Jacksonville Beach

Marilyn, Jacksonville beach

The Marilyn Monroe image is actually a towel.

Railing by the beach.

The reason for the dark sky is that a huge thunderstorm was trying to make it's way to the beach. It stopped a mile short. This is a replacement version of this shot. I had it way too light in the previous version.

I have to make a file very light on the screen to get a good print and I didn't adjust this one before posting.

Yelling at the ocean.

This little boy came running past me, yelled defiantly at the Atlantic, and ran back to his mother, quite satisfied.

Turtle nest, Ponte Vedra Beach

This picture, taken today, just seemed to go with the one below.

Adventure Landing roller coaster, Jax Beach

Weeds, Jax Beach

This little weed will grow into a large plant with limabean-like pods if given the chance. Love the leaves.

Palm fronds, Sawgrass Village.

Palms are such lovely graphic things, and such a symbol for our tropical climate, that every now and then I have to photograph one.

Queen Anne's lace, dock, Roscoe

Villa D'Agave

I made the name up. I have always liked this house on the beach, mainly for the way the light hits it. I looks both very old and quite new, with bright, shiny, electric blue roof tiles. Their Century plant(agave, thus the name) bloomed and added just a little to the feel of age.

A tale of two crabs.

Our beach is inhabited by numerous species of crab. If you walk near the dunes and look a little bit further ahead of you than you normally do, you will see them scuttling back into their crab holes. This little guy built his home out on the sand and has to deal with traffic all day long.
The one below was a little more clever.

Weeds and crab hole

This crab chose the road less traveled. (I did live in Vermont)

Jacksonville Beach

No. I'm not this stupid. There was no pressure in these pipes when I wandered by. Jacksonville Beach is pumping sand from 8 miles offshore onto their beach. The hurricanes and winter nor'easters* erode the sand and, every 5 years or so they do this.

Oddly, the company doing this pumping is from the Great Lakes, not either coast.

*As some wit once said "For those of you that don't live on the East Coast of the US, a nor'easter is a big friggin' storm."

Sago palm fronds, Roscoe

Resurrection ferns, Roscoe

These are amazing plants. They live on the bark of trees and shrivel up like this until it rains, when they become full and green within an hour.

Dixie Liquor, Georgetown

Chairs, Georgetown

In May we went to my wife's 45th reunion in Georgetown. I was on my own for a whole morning, so I wandered around and took pictures. Nice to be in an urban setting.

Sand pattern, color, Ponte Vedra Beach

This is connected to the post below. This is the pattern where the woman saw feathers. Also this is a color file, whereas the one below is black and white. This more truly illustrates the different colors of sand on our beaches.

Sand pattern, Ponte Vedra Beach

This picture is more to illustrate a story than anything else. When I walk the beach here, on Fridays, I am alone. As everyone around here knows, I always carry a camera. The sand on our beaches is a mix of grey, black and a greenish blue. When we have a long stretch of calm weather all of the shells and rocks get slowly covered and the layers of sand mix about into wonderful patterns. They are probably more flow charts than patterns, dealing with the weight of each shade.

So, when there are these patterns, and I'm alone, I walk along and photograph interesting ones. To the average beach walker this looks strange, this big bald man photographing what looks like grey sand. Occasionally I get stopped. Last Friday a woman walked up and asked me what I was taking pictures of. (I should mention here that these patterns are visible, but are much more subtle than the files I post. You can see the pattern, but just a little. I add a bit of contrast to bring them out.) She was almost angry about the waste of time I was manifesting. I told her about the patterns and how I saw them change every day. Then she looked down and "saw" what I was seeing. She got into it a little and, within a minute was saying"Look at that one, it's like feathers!"

Part of the fun of taking pictures is showing people things the way you see them, usually from a different way of seeing. But the real fun is when you get someone to look at something they've been looking at for years and see it differently.

Burning sea

I hesitated to put this in the blog because I thought it might not show well. But it holds up pretty well. Last month there were a lot of brush and swamp fires up in Georgia, in and near the Okeefenokee and west of here in Florida. When the wind was right (wrong?) we got a lot of smoke. To spend a lot of time outdoors felt the same as smoking used to.

For a photographer it was fascinating, as the light had this orange apocalyptic look to it all day, made more intense when the sun was low in the sky. This was taken last month while I walked with my friend John early in the day.