Early Light on South Lido Park

March 31, 2013

Drove out to South Lido Park this morning in time for the sunrise. I love the early morning light but usually don’t inflict my sunrise and sunset photos on people. I’m sneaking this one in, though. . . . The red mangrove is one of my favorite trees, as you know if you’ve been looking at my photographs for very long. Red mangroves and early sun, now there’s a combination. . . . For years I’ve wondered what these plants (see third photo) are, and today I finally did some research. I remembered a similar-looking northern plant that my biologist husband says is a portulaca. So Googling Florida portulaca I see that this one is sea purslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum). While the colorful stems are what interest me, the leaves are edible. One web site says the plant has been used to treat scurvy. . . . Sometimes when the sun hits ripples in water, it seems to create a lens. Do you agree? Do you know why that might be so?

Dust to Dust, Metal to Metal

March 24, 2013

When we saw that today (Sunday) had a better chance of rain than yesterday, Janet and I decided to go out with cameras yesterday. It gave us the opportunity to visit places that are closed Sundays (our usual day), like this wonderful metal scrap yard we discovered a few weeks ago when the gate was closed. We thought we might get chased out right away, but the guys actually let us shoot for a little while—and we shot like mad. I wish I’d asked Howard, who drives the huge piece of heavy equipment there, the name of his machine and especially the name of the pincher-grabber part. . . . After Howard sorted a bunch of things, moving them with the grabber from one pile to another (had to be some reason he did that, but I didn’t figure it out), he grabbed the wad of springs, wire and chain link that I had photographed earlier and carefully swung it like a broom to clear up the ground. Cool. He made it look easy to do, but I’m sure it isn’t. I asked Howard if his job was fun, and he said yes, that it was like playing a big video game. That’s Howard taking a break outside his cab to look at this blog on his phone. . . . I had to Google: The first name I found for the pincher-grabber thing is —ready for this?—“pincer grab,” though the generic word seems to be just “grabber” or “crane grabber.” And I think Howard’s vehicle is Sennebogen’s 825 Mobile Material Handling Machine. You can spend a good eight minutes watching these machines in action on YouTube.

Fog Adorns, Then Abandons, Anna Maria Island

March 2, 2013

Why is the weather iffy whenever Janet and I decide to drive up to Anna Maria Island? This past Sunday was predicted to be cloudy, but we’d already had our hearts set on the trip. Good thing! The “cloudy” quickly turned to “foggy,” which is something else altogether. And when the fog lifted? Gorgeous blue skies. Still, after many shots of fog, sand, and sky, I reverted to some of my old habits (hoses, faucets, rope, and details that betray the history of a building)—all waiting for me at the end of Anna Maria’s City Pier.

Cold-Weather Alternative

February 25, 2013

A week ago Sunday it was too cold outside for Janet and me, so we went to Lowe’s to see if we could find anything to photograph inside. It was fun roaming the aisles with a photography intent. I don’t even know what the things in the first photograph are—just didn’t look at the sign. Husband David thinks they are called bazooka sprayers, but I didn’t get very far when I tried Googling that notion. Maybe one of you knows? The third photograph is rebar—I knew that. But I didn’t know that the wire in the second photograph is also rebar until David told me. . . . There I go with rust again.

Good Luck in Nokomis

February 17, 2013

Janet and I have been looking for new and exciting places to take photographs and pretty much striking out at finding them. But two weeks ago we tried Nokomis—a couple of towns south of Sarasota—and lucked out. We found an old building that had been an ice house in the 1920s, long before a hurricane removed the upper stories. According to a nearby plaque on the Legacy Bike Trail, which runs in back of the building, “The Venice Ice Company produced 20 tons of ice a day to serve the southern part of the [Sarasota] county.” Sounds like a lot of ice until you remember that these were the days before electric refrigeration. I was especially happy to find industrial fans along the back of the building, perhaps installed by Emery for his welding business. We were fortunate to meet Emery himself and his dog Dandy on the porch.