This was the first morning of a short trip to the other side of the state at St. Augustine, the oldest city / town in Florida. We stayed at Anastasia Island SP for about 9days.
Washington Oaks SP is about 20 miles south.
Those were the only clouds of any real compositional elements I had to work with that week. Our cool fronts here tend to pull all of the clouds out to sea when they pass. Nice weather though.
View Large On Black
Tags: st.augustine sea-scapes sunrises state-parks parks landscapes 100-400-mm florida-images
© All Rights Reserved
This was the first morning of a short trip to the other side of the state at St. Augustine, the nation'a oldest permanently occupied European settlement. We stayed at Anastasia Island SP for about 9days.
Washington Oaks SP is about 20 miles south. A friend told me to go when the tide was low to get a nice sunrise with all of the rocks on the shoreline. He didn't mention the fact that the park doesn't open until 8 AM, which is very hard to do a sunrise. I climbed over the low gate and walked the 1/4 mile to the beach and found to my surpeise this. Well, as you can see the tide was low alright, but the rocks were not where I thought they would be. Actually, high tide would have been better. Since the cloud formations on the horizon were exceptional and a cool front was due to arrive the next day, I began shooting. I knew that after cool/cold fronts move through here in Florida, the next few days would be clear blue skies with no clouds.
This is a manual blend of 2 frames and I pulled the waters edge closer in to the rocks. It just looked too far away for what I wanted.
Those were the only clouds of any real compositional elements I had to work with most of all that week. Nice camping weather though.
View Large On Black
Tags: sunrises st-augustine state-parks seascapes parks landscapes blending 24-70-mm Picnik florida-images
© All Rights Reserved
When I go to new places I always like to look at the post cards for that area. But when your confronted with clear blue skies and no clouds what-so-ever, and you see "what could be", given the right conditions, you then need to utilize what PhotoShop can do for ya.
Since this image as shown was not going to be had on this trip and I really liked the what I saw on the psot card, I turned to PhotoShop for this final image. I made the initial image with the sun coming in from the correct position and then used a previous sunset sky image from another photo.
I know some of ya don't care for utilizing multiple images for the final product, but I love to "make images" and do whatever is required to obtain what I have in mind.
BTW, all of those magazines ads that you look at and admire the images within them, look at them again...most are composits.
View Large On Black
© All Rights Reserved
St. Augustine, located on the northeastern coast of Florida has it's most historically significant structure called the “Castillo de San Marcos”, a fort constructed by the Spanish between 1672 and 1695. Spain claimed this penninsula of land in 1513,when Ponce de Leon landed there an named it “La Florida”.
Later in 1565, King Phillpi II sent an expedition under Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles to eleminate the French threas to the spanish fleets and to establish settlements to further protect the coast. Several wooden forts were established along the northern coast at the town of St. Augustine was established.
The need to fortify the tiny garrison town of St. Augustine was understood as early as 1586, when it was attacked by Sir Francis Drake, an English corsair whose fleet of twenty ships and two thousand men sacked and burned the town. In 1668, the
English pirate Robert Searles assaulted and plundered the tiny settlement of St. Augustine and about that same time the threat of English colonization in the north had significantly increased, and Queen Mariana of Spain authorized the construction of a stone fortification. It took nearly a hundred years of defending the spanish establishments until that need for a more substantial fort was undertaken and over 25 more years to complete the “Castillo de San Marcos”.
Also there was a great need to protect the spanish armada of ships heading back to Spain loaded with gold, silver and other trade goods from pirates and other countries looking for the bounty of the spanish. The “Castillo de San Marcos” provide the much needed long range cannons and fire power to destroy that threat.
The layout of this fort that withstood so many bombardments is a simple hollow square with diamond shaped bastions at each corner, with only one way in or out. A surrounding water filled mote protected the soldiers inside from a ground attacks. Heavy fortefied gates sealed off the main entrance to the fort. The center of the square (courtyard), Plaza de Armas at ground level provided a secure space for whatever the soldiers and the towns people required during an attack. Located around the courtyard were various rooms under the main top deck. Sleeping quarters, chapel,cooking, storage of foods and equipment and the powder magazines. Everything required of the men that defended the fort was housed within these walls.
The fort was built of coquina, a type of natural shell stone indigenous to the area and quarried from Anastasia Island.
The Castillo has never been conquered despite attacks by English General James Oglethorpe who attempted to subdue the town in 1740. Firing from the tip of Anastasia Island, he found his cannonballs were no match for the unusual consistency of coquina which absorbed the blast rather than crumbling.
Shortly after Florida became a territory of the United States, the fort was renamed Fort Marion in honor of Revolutionary War General Francis Marion. It retained that name from 1825 to 1942, when the Castillo appellation was restored.In the 1870s and 1880s, the fort housed native American Indians detained by the U.S. Government. The Castillo and Fort Matanzas have been under the auspices of the National Park Service since 1933. The fort is open to the public daily, except for Christmas.
View Large On Black
© All Rights Reserved
When we went to ST. Augustine last month we camped at Anastasia Island SP,which very close to the Atlantic ocean. A short boardwalk up and over the sand dunes is the beach. These wooden fences are put up to help control sand erosion and sea oats are planted as well. Not much in the way of clouds when a cool front moves through Florida.
View Large On Black
Camera Canon EOS 10D
Exposure 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture f/11.0
Canon 24-70mm f2.8L
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
© All Rights Reserved