2012 Christmas on Las Olas

The annual Christmas on Las Olas celebration, in downtown Fort Lauderdale, was bigger than ever this year. I say that only because I found the streets more crowded than I can remember. To see a larger version of this photo and a few more crowd shots from tonight, visit design215.com/photos/misc/lasolas2012_9347.

Day of the Dead South Florida - Fat Village Art Walk

Click images to enlarge!!

On Friday, November 2, 2012, people of all ages painted their faces like skeletons and descended on Fat Village Arts District in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There was a skeleton procession down Andrews Ave., art exhibitions, live music, circus performers, custom cars, food trucks, and more. To see more of my photos, visit my Facebook album, Day of the Dead 2012.

Moonlight over flooded A1A along Fort Lauderdale Beach

Earlier this afternoon, bulldozers and front end loaders piled up the beach sand that covered A1A, in an attempt to keep the ocean out of the road. By 8:30pm, the ocean was back in the street, with the water level higher than the sidewalks.

For more photos of this event, visit design215.com/photos/a1a_flooding.

Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Exposure: f/2.8 3s ISO 800

Ocean floods A1A along Fort Lauderdale Beach

Click Images to Enlarge!!

A combination of weather, tides, and the moon caused major flooding on A1A, along Fort Lauderdale Beach today. Police had to close the road from NE 18th ST to Sunrise Blvd. Some residents were trapped or didn't want to cause damage to their vehicles by trying to drive through the salt water. There had been rain earlier in the day but the skies were clearing by high tide. I've photographed this event in the past but I've never seen it this bad. In 2008, it was an inconvenience but at least the road remained open. Are ocean levels rising? What is this going to look like in 10 years?

UPDATE 11.26.2012:
I made a gallery for this event, with updated photos: design215.com/photos/a1a_flooding

Keeley Lynn Graveyard Shoot

Today I did an impromptu shoot with my friend Keeley Lynn. The weather wasn't great but we wanted to do something outdoors. I knew of this little old graveyard off of the 17th St Causeway and I think it worked perfectly.

Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 manual focus lens. Exposure: f/5.6 1/125 ISO 400.

Fort Lauderdale Beach Fisheye View

It was a long day and night. I photographed two back to back events, starting at 5:30pm Saturday, and ending at 5:00am Sunday morning. I shot enough pictures to fill two 16GB cards. I stopped to take this shot on my way home. I'm on A1A, about a half mile north of Sunrise Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale. Its 6:30am. Goodnight.

Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Exposure: f/4 1/125 ISO 200.

Gelato at Pan'e Dolci, Las Olas Blvd.

Gelato, made fresh at Pan'e Dolci Italian Bakery 613 E Las Olas Blvd. Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I was just having some fun, wandering around with my camera and fisheye lens. There is hardly any grain in this image, even though I was shooting at ISO 1600. I held the camera right up against the glass of the gelato case.

Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Exposure: f/4 1/500 ISO 1600.

12th Planet at Revolution Live

Wandering around downtown Fort Lauderdale, I ended up at Revolution Live for the 12th Planet show. I took this shot with my Nikon D7000 and 10.5mm fisheye lens. This fisheye is becoming one of my favorite lenses. It has a much wider field of view than my 12-24mm f/4.0 and I have several aftermarket plugins for Photoshop that can correct the distortion inherent with fisheye lenses, if I want to do so. The fact that this an f/2.8 lens makes it quite versatile.

Nikon D7000 with Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Exposure: f/2.8 1/4s ISO 800.

Bubier Park Fountain at Night

This is the fountain in Bubier Park in Fort Lauderdale, FL. It is located on the corner of Las Olas Blvd. and Andrews Ave. I took this shot with my Nikon 10.5mm Fisheye lens. Even though you might think a fisheye lens has limited uses, I've found that you can correct the "fisheye" distortion using Photoshop's native lens correction in CS5 as well as with several aftermarket plugins. This image has not been corrected and I think the effect is quite nice.

I did not use a tripod for this shot. The combination of an f/2.8 lens, and the D7000's excellent low light sensor certainly helped. A general rule of thumb is to always use a shutter speed that is greater than the focal length of your lens. In this case, 1/15 is greater than 10.5mm (15 > 10.5). If you want to look at it another way, wide angle lenses will show less camera shake than telephoto lenses. A steady hand helps too. After a lot of practice, I've found that I can usually hold the camera steady down to 1/4 second. This will depend on how much coffee I've had. =)

Nikon D7000 with Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens. Exposure: f/2.8 1/15 ISO 800. Handheld.

Las Olas Boulevard at 2am

I was working late and all of the regular restaurants were closed. I went to Rocco's Tacos on Las Olas and had some of their amazing guacamole. Its raw, its good for you, and it tastes really good too. When I finished, it was almost 2am and I was the last patron in the restaurant. I've had a lot on my mind lately and I didn't feel like going home just yet so I went for a walk. I love empty city streets in the middle of the night.

Nikon D7000 with Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens. Exposure: f/2.8 1/30 ISO 1600, handheld.

Guy Using a Jet Pack in the Boat Parade

Tonight I watched the annual Fort Lauderdale Boat Parade with my family. We were on my brother's small boat which he anchored in one of the side canals of the Intracoastal. Although we had front row seats, it wasn't all that exciting. Maybe I had seen this parade too many times and I was tired of the same thing every year. But wait! There WAS something new. Between two garishly decorated yachts, was a person flying what appeared to be a jet pack!

I did some Googling and the company that makes it is JetLev.com. I found a number of videos on YouTube including this one. How does it work? In a nutshell, you are tethered to a small boat by a flexible hose. The boat has a 200 horsepower engine that pumps water through the hose to your jet pack. The water spraying out of your jet pack lifts you off the water. Ever play with a Water Wiggle when you were a kid? Well its basically the same thing, except you sit on top of it and control it. Sadly, it costs a little bit more than a Water Wiggle. Prices start at $99,500.00 USD.

In case you're wondering, those weird colored shapes to the right of the guy with the jet pack are the result of "lens flare". Lens flare is caused by a bright light (usually the sun) pointing directly at the camera, that makes reflections on the glass elements inside the lens. The spotlight pointing at me from the lower left is causing the lens flare in this photo.

Otters at the Museum of Discovery and Science

Here's one of the otters in the new wing of the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I was hired by the museum to photograph the interior and exterior of the new building, all of the new exhibits, and of course, the otters! The otters live in an open air habitat with a lake and waterfalls. On the inside of the new building, there's a glass wall where you can watch these playful creatures diving and swimming around underwater.

Nikon D7000 with 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 lens. Exposure: f/4.8 1/125 ISO 800. Weather: cloudy

Empty Guacamole Bowl, Available Light

Tonight I went to Rocco's Tacos in Fort Lauderdale for some of their guacamole. They make it fresh, in front of you, when you order it! You watch them cut open fresh avocados and mash them up in a cool looking, stone bowl. Next, they add fresh cilantro, diced tomato and onion, fresh lime juice, and some spices. As many of you know, I try to make raw food a substantial part of my diet and guacamole is one of my favorite raw foods. When I order it, I always ask for extra jalapenos. The chips are certainly not raw, so I try not to eat too many of them. The staff probably thinks I'm crazy because they always return to find my guacamole bowl empty and my basket of chips still full.

After I finished eating, I was talking to my friend Thea in New York. Thea is a dedicated raw foodist who is also studying photography at Columbia. I told her the guacamole story and she prompted me for a photo. It was pretty dark but I didn't use a flash or a tripod. Thea likes taking pictures at night so I added the captions so she could see how I set my camera. I have no idea why I used that font.

Lightning Over The Galleria

Tonight, I was working on my laptop at Starbucks, across from the Galleria Mall in Fort Lauderdale. The sky was really dark and there were numerous flashes of lightning. I stepped outside to get a few shots. I took around 20 pictures, all handheld, and this was one of them. It might have been a better shot if I had used a tripod. I could have combined several different exposures into an HDR image. Maybe next time.

Nikon D7000 with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Exposure: f4 1/50 ISO 400.

The Shovel and the Fury at Monterey

Tonight I went to Monterey Club in Fort Lauderdale to shoot my friend's metal band, The Shovel and the Fury. My friend Dee Mulligan is on the left, playing lead guitar. Watch as I try to hold my Nikon D7000 steady in a mosh pit, lol. Personally, I think I did a pretty good job of holding the camera steady with no tripod. I used my old school 24mm f/2.8 prime lens for a wider view than my 35mm f/1.8. I knew I wasn't gonna have much room to move around. I used my Zoom H2 to record the sound. The built in mic on the D7000 would have been WAY overpowered by the sound at this show!

Color Lab of Florida

Once upon a time, before digital cameras, professional photographers in Fort Lauderdale would take their film to Color Lab of Florida to have it developed. Many photographers, including myself, loved to shoot transparency film, also known as reversal or "slide" film. You could get deep, rich colors with slide film that you couldn't get from color negative film. The process for developing color negative film is called C-41, while the process for slide film is E-6. Consumer photo labs like the ones in Wal-Mart or CVS only had C-41 machines because the general public didn't buy slide film. If you brought a roll of slide film to your neighborhood drug store, they would send it out to a lab. Professional photographers used to rely on local labs like this one to develop their film quickly.

Many years have passed since Color Lab closed its doors, never to open them again. Today, the building still stands on Dixie Highway in Fort Lauderdale. Sometimes I miss shooting film but now I can use HDR techniques to create images that weren't possible with film.

Nikon D7000 with a Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens. ISO 200. HDR processed.

Confused...

Okay, I'm a little confused. Does anyone else see a problem here? This mishmash of signage is on Oakland Park Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale, by the Intracoastal bascule bridge.

Vacant land in Fort Lauderdale

For your viewing pleasure, I photographed this large section of vacant land on East Sunrise Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale, FL. There used to be a number of stores and shops on this land. There were two car dealers, a clothing store, and a couple of fast food chain restaurants. Now there is nothing. Sign of the times? Perhaps.

Publix Escalator

Here's the escalator in the Publix Super Market on S Andrews Ave. in Fort Lauderdale. The actual grocery store in on the second floor so you have to take an escalator up when you enter and back down when you leave. But what about your shopping cart full of groceries? Well, they seemed to have solved that problem, although its a bit of a weird ride. By the way, look closely and you'll see a sign at the top that says, "STEP OFF QUICKLY"

Birch State Park Railroad

Birch State Park is located on Fort Lauderdale Beach at the corner of A1A and Sunrise Blvd. It's an oasis of natural beauty in the midst of a sea of condominiums, bars, restaurants, and tourist attractions. When I was a kid, Birch Park had a narrow guage train that took visitors through swampy areas of the park that were difficult to get to on foot. The train crossed over a creek at one point with people paddling canoes underneath. Here's a postcard from the 1970's...

My photo at the top shows all that's left of the bridge and the railroad. The train and the canoes were taken away years ago to keep greedy developers from seizing the park and building more condos. The details of this story aren't easy to find but if you dig into the details of Hugh Taylor Birch's agreement he made when he donated the land, you'll find the answers.