September 2009 Calendar Picture and Bradenton at Night
Seen in daylight, this pine tree would hardly attract a second glance. When I saw it at night, though, I saw a beauty I'd missed before. The nearby street lamp highlighted the trunk in a such a way that it almost appeared to be a bonsai.
When I set out to take some pictures of my home town, Bradenton, Florida, at night, I knew it was going to be a challenge. Low light is the bane of digital cameras! Still, I managed to get some interesting, if not great, shots with ambient light and no flash. I hope you enjoy them.
Sometimes everything is in the crop. This is the calendar photo shot at a greater distance. It loses some of the magic with the lights and street signs in frame, but it's still a beautiful setting.
Though the Green bridge rises some 60 feet over the Manatee River, from this vantage on the other side of the marina near the municipal pier, it forms a line just over the tops of the sailboats moored there.
This banyan tree is in the current parking lot of the First Presbyterian Church (lit in green at the far left). When I was 12, I joined Boy Scout troop 17, hosted by the church, which had it's meeting house on the property. All of us climbed around in that tree more times than I can count and many of our initials are on it still.
The lights from the hospital parking garage made an interesting display when reflected across the Beau View Bay of the Manatee River where I live. The posts are all that's left of Mr. Krump's dock where I used to launch my small boat.
This beautiful stone building belongs to Central Christian Church. It's bells can be heard all around the central part of Bradenton when they chime every half hour.
This is how my neighborhood, Beau View, looks from the river at night. Many times I've been greeted with this view when returning late from a boating trip.
I don't think I'd like to live in this house in downtown Bradenton with the bright lights in the parking lot behind, but it certainly makes an interesting photograph.
This is the Bradenton Ice House which really hasn't changed much since my dad was a kid in the late 1920s and 1930s. In those days, everyone had an ice box (a term my parents and even I still use from time to time) and the ice house sent out their trucks to deliver every few days. The worker would come into the home and use a pick to break up whatever remained of the existing block, then return to his truck, grab a new block with metal tongs, and haul it into the house where it was positioned on the chips of the old to keep things cool.
These days they mostly supply chipped ice in bags. As you can see in this close-up of the loading dock, they've named the clanky mechanical ice chipper, "JAWS," but it's the same machine I remember from over 40 years ago when they used to make artificial orange snow for one of our local celebrations.
Looking out across the Manatee River from near where I live, you can see the DeSoto Bridge and, in the distance to the right, the city of Palmetto across the river.
This is Bradenton's restored "Old Main Street," which runs from the waterfront up to the courthouse. Today it is mostly restaurants, pubs, and tourist shops, but in times past it held a more eclectic mix of industry and business. Our local paper, The Bradenton Herald, used to be printed nearby and my dad had a large paper route. When I was six, he took me with him one day to pick up his papers. Inside there were high rolling tables where the papers were prepared for delivery. Dad said, "Mike, don't climb up on the table because you'll fall off and break your arm." Sure enough... I did, and I did! It's a flash memory for me, as clear as a bell. Dad asked me to move my fingers and, when I couldn't, he felt my forearm, then picked me up and walked the block and a half to Doctor Hall's office to have it set. An hour later I was back at home, waving at mom, and shouting, "Look what I got!" As I recall, mom just shook her head slowly and rolled her eyes.
