We recently traveled to St. Augustine for their big Christmas celebration, and while the holiday lights and mood were fun, I was really excited about being able to do some shooting of Castillo de San Marcos - the Spanish fort built there in the late 1600s. Unfortunately, the sky was cloudy the day we went, which left the colors pretty flat. I was happy with the shots I got, but grew frustrated with what I could do with them in Lightroom to draw the eye in. What the hell was I supposed to do with these shots?

I closed everything down on my Mac and decided to give things a day or two, which was EXACTLY what I needed. The fort is built out of blocks of Coquina - a sedimentary rock comprised of tiny shells and solidified sand, and its texture was not only rough, but showed an incredible depth of history in its formation. I can only imagine most of the shells in the material were prehistoric. That's when it hit me - color needed to be removed from the photos to allow the fort and Coquina to be presented as history. I think the effect speaks for itself in the above photos!

I was flying earlier this year, and while I normally try for an aisle seat, I was relegated to one at the window. It ended up being a lucky break, since the moon made an appearance in the waning afternoon sun when we got to altitude...I think we were roughly at 35,000 feet when I got the shot. My only gripe is the moon has ZERO detail because I was using my iPhone with limited exposure speeds.

The brown and orange on the horizon have an ethereal quality - I could see how you could get vertigo up there if you aren't careful.

Modern, film-free photography benefits from the law of averages - meaning, if you take enough shots, one of them is bound to be good. A fun challenge in that framework...can you transform a throwaway picture to something worth keeping? This photo is a good example of it. I am sure many people who take pictures with their phones forget to wipe the lenses off before they do, and I am no exception. Sometimes.

We were visiting Sister Bay, Wisconsin back in June when I grabbed this shot of a sailboat in the harbor. And, while I would have been quick to toss it out because of smudge on the lens, I decided to give it a go with my trusty Lightroom tweaks to see what I could make out of it. I like the result and now take second looks at my shots before I delete them, since there is probably more potential in them than I realize.

The weather was suffering an identity crisis the day I captured this shot at the beach. It was not only foggy, but the temperature also shifted quite a bit in a colder direction pretty quickly, which made me kick myself for not bringing a jacket. Anyway, I am a fan of narrative conflict, and this one has "Man vs. Nature" written all over it - you have to admire the person with the paddle board ignoring the same temperature shift to see if things were calm enough to go out  for a cruise.

I mentioned earlier that I have a fancy DSLR camera with all kinds of lenses and buttons, but it is an unrealistic expectation to lug it around everywhere I go. First, it's not very convenient and second off - I don't want to be that weird, lurker looking guy you see sometimes at places that make you wonder why he's holding a fancy camera and milling about creepily.

I am more than happy to let my phone's camera pick up the slack of not having a more "formal" device handy when I see a shot a like...especially with night shots. My iPhone's lenses and ability to automatically lock in all of the settings that you need to think about WHILE IN THE DARK really takes the guesswork out of capturing low light scenes. Is it a novice move to do that? Does it matter?

It is pretty certain you have seen a dead tree if you have hiked through a grove of woods or a trail into the mountains. Those deaths normally appear harmless - a fallen soul who is enjoying a slow and relaxing return to the ground it sprung from. And, for the most part, trees keel over and die the same way in the woods here in Florida. But, trees dying in view of a beach decompose differently. They seem to take the opportunity of being famous in the open exposure by being more dramatic and collapsing into odd, gnarled mandibles or stand proudly longer than they should as the sun and air bleach them into eternity.

Nature enjoys drama - any documentary will tell you so with a lot of slow motion footage and tense music. Florida dead trees are no different with their drama - it just unfolds on a different time scale.