One of the nice things that they did when they built Legoland was to preserve some of the old Cypress Gardens. The first shot is the entrance to the old botanical gardens along with a Lego southern belle. The second shot is the biggest banyan tree I have ever seen. All of the branches and shoots are part of one tree.

Botanical Gardens Entrance

Banyan Tree

Probably the coolest area of Legoland for adults are the city scenes built entirely from Legos. There are many Florida cities including Tampa, Miami, and Tallahassee. There are also San Fransisco, Las Vegas, and New York City for US cities. For world cities London is the only one I can remember. Being from Tampa, the Tampa scene was really cool for me to see. The photos tonight are of the Old City Hall and Tampa Theater. You can click on the links to see the original versions.

Legoland – Old City Hall

Legoland – Tampa Theater

[facbook]

A couple of days ago we made our first trip to Legoland Florida for my daughter’s fifth birthday. I had been to Cypress Gardens as a kid and was interested to see what they had done with it. The did preserve a small part of Cypress Gardens including the huge banyan tree and the Gazebo. Here is a little about Cypress Gardens from Wikipedia “Billed as Florida’s first commercial tourist theme park,[1] Cypress Gardens opened on January 2, 1936 as a botanical garden planted by Dick Pope Sr. and his wife Julie. Over the years it became one of the biggest attractions in Florida, known for its water ski shows, gardens, and Southern Belles.[2] It became known as the “Water Ski Capital of the World” because it was the site of many of the sport’s landmark firsts and over 50 world records were broken there.” About 2 years ago it was reopened as Legoland Florida. There are Lego animals and people all over the park which are pretty cool. It seems oriented for the 4-12 year old set. My five year old was able to do about half the rides and my two year old was not able to do many of them at all. The two shots tonight are a Lego representation of Bok Tower which is in nearby Lake Wales and a southern belle in front of the gazebo.

Lego Bok Tower

Lego Southern Belle and Gazebo

My posting schedule will probably be pretty light over the next month. We are in the process of moving and have a lot going on right now. I will still post sporadically hopefully and will be back to a more normal schedule again in June. The two shots tonight are from the early morning and sunrise. The sunrise shot was from my shoot of the Skypoint condo building. I liked this angle and the great clouds. The other is from my default location which gives you the widest view of downtown Tampa’s skyline.

Polk Street Sunrise

Tampa HDR Pano

The first outing I took after getting my new Canon 5D Mark III a couple of months ago was to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge for a sunrise. The shots did not turn out quite like I hoped, but I got a couple of good ones. The other shot is a little older one from the Mahaffey Theater.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge Sunrise

Mahaffey Theater and Downtown

According to today’s Tampa Bay Times, the St Petersburg Pier is set to close May 31st. I have said before that it was always one of the focal points of downtown to me as a photographer. My main hope is that whatever they end up replacing it with, being the Lens or something else, is that it fills that same niche. Someplace to go and hang out along the water. Someplace where I want to go to take photographs.

Supermoon Rising 2012

St Petersburg Pier Cloudy View

These two places are kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Glazer Children’s Museum is of course all about kids. There are a lot of things to do there and if you have kids it is definitely worth a visit. Harbour Island on the other hand is a little more on the sophisticated side. Jackson’s Bistro is one of the best known places for brunch in the Tampa area.

Glazer Children’s Museum

Harbour Island

I generally prefer to shoot my photos of downtown in the early morning. That way I can capture night like pictures before sunrise, the sunrise itself and the early morning. The other huge benefit is there are very few people to get in my pictures. The morning I shot these I had headed downtown to capture the Skypoint building. Since I got there early I took a few shots from across the water before heading over to my target for sunrise. The Element building is right next to Skypoint and I was able to capture a few good shots of is also.

Element Condo

Vetrical Distortion

It’s amazing that you can find some backyard wildlife even in the middle of the very developed area of South Tampa. This afternoon along the fence in my backyard I spotted these pair of mating moths. After looking them up I found out that they are Pink-striped Oakworm Moths (Anisota virginiensis). The female is the larger of the two. This was in addition to this nice snake skin that one of my girls found the other day. I like how the whole skin is in one piece and you can even see the eyes. We do have a black racer that I have seen in the yard on occasion.

Pink-striped Oakworm Moth

Snake Skin

Winding roads area a landscape photographers dream. Our trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway last fall was full of them. As a photographer you almost want to stop every time you turn the corner and see a new scene in front of you. Lynn Cove Viaduct is probably the most famous section of the parkway, especially from a photography perspective. I arrived early and was setup for the shot. For those of you who don’t know, to get this angle you have to scramble up on top of a couple of large boulders and there is not a whole lot of space up there. A little while later another photographer arrived. I got one shot of him along the roadway and then he worked his way up to my vantage point. It took some maneuvering for both of us to setup there but we worked it out. The other shot is a section of the Droughton park region.

Blue Ridge Parkway through Droughton Park

Lynn Cove Viaduct