Florida Keys Day 5, Part 3 (last post) | Anticrepuscular rays seal the deal

I was heading through Key Largo, the northernmost city in the Florida Keys, on my way home on the Monday night during my vacation when I saw a mildly nice sunset. Stopping at a private boat ramp and undeterred by a "no trespassing" sign there, I took a few hand-held snapshots of the sunset. Now that the traffic had cleared - at least in Key Largo - I was eager to get back onto the road and en route for Melbourne. This shot looks west, of course, over Florida Bay.

It's funny that on the previous night of this sunset, I had turned around after shooting the International Space Station and saw the Milky Way in all its light-unabated brilliance. The Keys are alive with meteorological phenomenon. This night, I turned around and saw this for the second time in my life: anticrepuscular rays. Sunlight appears to emanate from the horizon to the east, but it's an optical illusion: They're just sun says being filtered by the clouds to the west and cast onto the high, thin clouds in the east. Of course, light travels in straight lines, but in this illusion, the rays appear curved. This sight made my turnaround in traffic earlier in the day totally worth it. After this, I was home in three and a half hours.

Florida Keys Day 5, Part 2 | From slowdown to cooldown

I was pretty hot and bothered by the traffic late Monday, so I actually put on a swimsuit and took my D90 into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. Before, I had worried about the integrity of my waterproof case. But after a few uses of it with my D40, it had my confidence. The capture includes a few fish, but the lighting later in the day wasn't so hot, so they're a little difficult to pick out.

No fish in this photo, just grass and light. Too bad the life under the surface off Key Largo wasn't nearly as interesting as it was in Key West.

Florida Keys Day 5, Part 1 | Beginning of a slow ride to nowhere

What's a road trip without a portrait of your wheels? I took this after stopping along U.S. 1 on Duck Key. At this point, I rummaged through my camera bag for the remote control to my camera and came up empty. After searching my entire car, I determined that I had somehow left the thumb-size remote at the motel about 20 minutes to the south. I was considering a drive home on that Monday, but it wasn't starting out the way I wanted it to.

With the help of a nice motel manager, I found my remote and was northbound again. But as I expected, the traffic was bumper to bumper because of all the Labor Day weekenders from South Florida who were heading home. From my crawling vehicle, I snapped a shot of this bunny ear-shaped storm.

Stopping around Layton to admire the storm more, I jumped into the Gulf of Mexico - fully clothed - to get a shot of a buoy with the clouds in the background. The thunderstorm was moving quickly, so I didn't have another option if I wanted to capture the scene I had in mind. But the shot did not pan out. This one was taken from the dryness of the sandy shore.

Late in the day, as I was pretty much out of the Florida Keys after traveling about 50 miles in four hours, I decided to turn around because I thought the day had been wasted in the blistering heat of my Chevrolet (I do not use air conditioning when I'm out taking photos because the rapid change from cool to warm air causes condensation on the equipment). I took this shot showing the line of vehicles in the northbound traffic lane I had been in.

Florida Keys Day 4, Part 7 | Lightning, space station and the Milky Way

After the sunset at Bahia Honda State Park on the Sunday of my vacation, I traveled slightly north to the foot of Seven-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. I picked a pullover area, hauled out my equipment and waited for something I could see from most anywhere in Florida: a flyover by the International Space Station. In the meantime, I focused my lens on a thunderstorm over the Gulf of Mexico. There wasn't much lightning, but the storms in the Keys amazed me nonetheless: All of the ones I saw could easily be contrasted in a photo with clear sky.

The space station's 8:23 p.m. appearance lasted about five minutes and started in the southwest, a view that is pictured above. The streak in this 33-second time lapse is not lengthy, mainly because I was worried about overexposing the image at dusk.

I kept the shutter open for a lengthier period and caught the space station streaking above the thunderstorm over the Gulf of Mexico. This space station appearance, because of the clear sky in the Keys, was best I had ever seen.

From the space station's apex of 54 degrees, it began to descend in the northeastern sky, into the lights of Marathon on the other side of Seven-Mile Bridge. For these three shots, I was standing on a pedestrian bridge alongside U.S. 1, and many of the spans throughout the Keys are lined with these rusty guardrails. Also in this shot, you can see the pronounced anvil shape of the thunderstorm over the Gulf of Mexico.

When I turned around and faced the east, over the Atlantic Ocean, the Milky Way stood out. It was the first time since I was in Maine last year that I had seen the galaxy in the night sky. The lights from Central Florida's cities drown out such a sight, depriving residents of the chance to witness the magnificence of our part of the universe. With the shutter open for about two and a half minutes, the stars are quite streaky in this image, in which yet another thunderstorm is visible.

And what's the Florida Keys without a tiki hut? Again with the Milky Way in the sky, this one was located at a small oceanside park in Little Duck Key. The park, of course, was officially closed at night, and it was dark for most of my time there photographing the stars. But a crew of fishermen hauling a boat had stopped for a break, and the lights from their truck lit the hut. This was taken with a 1000 ISO setting, allowing the shutter to be open for only 47 seconds, limiting the streakiness of the stars.

Florida Keys Day 4, Part 6 | A sunset at Bahia Honda State Park

I had meant to spend more time at the popular Bahia Honda State Park south of Marathon, but the events of my final day (Day 5) in the Florida Keys scuttled those plans. Instead, at the end of Day 4, I paid the $4.50 fee for park access and watched the sun go down from a former railroad bridge over Bahia Honda Channel. A large gap prevents walkers from proceeding but affords boats free passage.

I didn't want to see another sunset in the crowded Key West on Sunday, so I made the late-day trip north to Bahia Honda. A couple of foreign tourists had gathered at the end of the span to watch the sunset alongside me. Otherwise, the state park was not crowded with other Labor Day weekend travelers.

Seeing no traffic at all, the disconnected portion of the railway bridge is a haven for pooping birds of all sorts. Gulls and pigeons obviously have made a mess of it.

Florida Keys Day 4, Part 5 | This time, wildlife's a bit more colorful

After shooting a raccoon on the Sunday morning of my Florida Keys vacation, I noticed a few of these yellow prairie warblers browsing for bugs in a pine tree on Smathers Beach in Key West.

When there's nothing obvious, such as surfers on large waves, to photograph, I often get skeptical glances when I'm on the beach with a large camera lens. But I tried to stay focused on the birds rather than the swimmers who were enjoying warm water with little surf at all.

Florida Keys Day 4, Part 4 | Snorkeling, parasailing and seagull-feeding

Two young snorkelers inspect the bottom of a stairway off a pier at Smathers Beach in Key West. This is where I later snapped a few underwater shots. I am also in this photo.

Snorkeling is a popular activity for tourists in much of the Florida Keys. At Smathers Beach, rentals are available, and these three women were complaining that they couldn't see anything spectacular, thus wanting their money back. That's why I don't bother spending the money.

Tourists also spend their dollar bills on parasailing.

Some people are smart enough, though, to take advantage of cheap fun, such as feeding the seagulls.

Florida Keys Day 4, Part 3 | Key West from up high

This image looks north-northwest toward the port, where Disney's Magic was docked. The large shadow, of course, is of the lighthouse.

On the Sunday morning during my vacation, I put my name on the list for a Key West restaurant where breakfast is a popular item. Being told I would wait for more than an hour, though, I roamed around the downtown area, trying to get a different angle on things from what I got the day before.

That's when I saw the lighthouse. Perfect.

Of course, the cost for the privilege to ascend the winding, 88-step staircase was steep. It ran me $10. But that beat the $12 fee at the nearby Hemingway House, where I had already deemed that the sights would not be worth it. Built in 1847, the 86-foot lighthouse afforded 360-degree views of the island.

Click on photo above to see panorama in full resolution. This panoramic image, stitched from 12 photos taken without a tripod, looks toward the southernmost point in the United States.

This was not taken from the lighthouse but at Smathers Beach the day before, when Disney's Magic cruise ship docked in Key West, dropping off even more Labor Day weekend tourists. The top of the ship is featured in the first image of this post.

One way tourists tour Key West is on these street-legal locomotives. I might have done this if I had a child.

There was a steady stream of traffic to the top of the lighthouse, but it was nothing overwhelming. With a narrow passageway around the lamp, large crowds would be difficult to handle.


I held my camera above my head, up into the lamp for a shot.

On the way back down, I stopped to take a shot through one of the many circular windows in the side of the lighthouse.

The top of the lighthouse peeks out from a low canopy.

Back at the restaurant, Blue Heaven, I had missed my spot when the hostess called my named and I wasn't present. It took only another 10 minutes for me to be seated, though. These are chairs in front of a small outdoor stage, where people could wait to be seated and listen to hippie music.

Florida Keys Day 4, Part 2 | What stays in Key West ... gets eaten

Upon checking out of the hotel Sunday morning in Key West, I spotted this raccoon rummaging through the garbage near the parking lot. Is that garlic bread? Mmm. It used the light pole to shimmy back to the ground, where it enjoyed the secondhand meal.

The raccoon headed back for seconds and seemed very conscious of its actions, locking eyes with me before again plunging into the can.

Key West Day 4, Part 1 | Underwater and just-above-water photos in Key West

This was some of the best lighting in my swimming adventure off Smathers Beach in Key West. The sun filtered down the side of a pier, creating this ray effect and brilliantly lighting some of the many minnows schooling underneath.

The Sunday afternoon during my Florida Keys vacation, I think, marked the first time in my photographic adventures when someone was fascinated with shooting me. The tables had turned.

I loaded my underwater case with my D40, the cheaper of my two cameras, and headed into the water off Smathers Beach, on the Atlantic Ocean side of Key West. As I waded into the water and periodically dove under to snap some shots, people became fascinated with my camera that could resist water. It's as though they had never seen such a thing. One person walking on a pier that juts out from the beach was so moved that he took several shots of me in action. A fellow swimmer remarked that she had to get an underwater case of her own.

For once, I was the awkward object of other people's photographic interests.

Old, cutoff posts sticking up from the water were perfect for birds. This anhinga was slightly perturbed when I poked my head out of the water just below its perch. At this point, the water was deep enough so I couldn't touch the bottom. Swimming and holding a camera up at a bird isn't easy.

I tried a few of these half-and-half shots, this one showing some of the underwater and above-water life at Smathers Beach.

This shot shows the magnificent green color of the water. Such conditions aren't available on the coast of Central Florida, where the ocean is rough, and churned-up sand often obstructs the view near shore. One of the drawbacks of the case I use for underwater photography is that I can't really check the image quality while shooting. The LCD screen on the camera often is obstructed, and lighting conditions are so harsh in the water that it would be difficult to see anyway. I didn't notice until after I removed the camera from the housing that some annoying black spots had appeared on most of the images, caused by dust on the camera sensor. My D40 is getting up there in age and needs a good cleaning.

No fish in this photo, just lots of grass. I liked how the sunlight hit the sand and vegetation on the bottom in the shallow parts.

I didn't snap any shots of the guy who was snapping shots of me, but just for illustrative purposes, this was the pier he was standing on. A police officer patrolling the beach by foot walked out on it, and the sunlight gleaming off his badge caught my eye.

Florida Keys Day 3, Part 3 | Sunset is a big deal in Key West

While the sun approached the horizon, most people watched and took photos as one performer took a break between acts.

I'm not quite sure what it is with sunsets in Key West. Maybe they're so special because it means people are allowed to drink more once the sun goes down. It's certainly not because the sunsets there are any more spectacular than they are in other communities facing the Gulf of Mexico.

Nevertheless, watching one was one of those more touristy things I just had to do during my short stay in Key West. In this, the United States' southernmost city, people celebrate the sunset nearly every day. In the early evening, performers gather in Mallory Square - dancers, escape artists, tricksters - hoping to collect cash from gullible tourists.

I am not sure what this red-shirted guy's act was. I took one photo and moved on.

Many sunset cruises are available from Key West, and several of them are on sailboats, making the spectacle more interesting for those on land.

A small sailboat cruises behind an island off Mallory Square, as storm clouds on the horizon obstruct a direct view of the sun.

I stopped and watched this performer, only because he was set up in an area that had the best view of the sunset. His name is Will Soto, and he has been at this for a while. He juggled and walked a tight rope, which is visible behind him. Soto said the spectators could boo when he messed up, so that's why they were booing when this photo was taken.

The juggling became more daring as the sun went well out of view.

Soto juggles fire, a knife and an apple that he had just taken a bite from.

Like with the first act I saw, I stopped to take just one photo of this man trying to escape from chains.

Florida Keys Day 3, Part 2 | Signs, chickens and other touristy things in Key West

With tight streets and spare parking, many tourists opt for two-wheeled transportation means, including bicycles. Though the sun had broken out over Key West, the puddles in many of the roadways were full of rainwater from storms earlier in the afternoon.

When I finally arrived in Key West on the Saturday during my vacation, it had stopped raining, the sun was peeking out of the clouds, and things were looking better. The first order of business was to grab a fish sandwich at a local eatery. To that end, I parked in a spot near downtown Key West and accidentally purchased the rights to a parallel space until 11 p.m. - through a pricey fee. It was then that I knew I would be walking most of the day, just to get my money's worth.

From the seafood restaurant where I ate lunch, I planned to stroll down Duval Street, which is lined with mostly bars and T-shirt shops. Interested in neither alcohol nor T-shirts, I expected for Duval to be a quick stroll. Truth be told, touristy things - the act of making sure one doesn't miss any of the must-see sights of a particular location - do not hold much appeal to me, particularly when I'm traveling alone. When I went to San Francisco with a friend last October, though, I did the touristy things, and they were fine. But alone, I'd prefer to hit the back streets, see the historic homes most people don't see and sometimes meet some of the locals that make a place what it truly is.

This strategy was akin to the one in New Orleans, which I visited in late 2007. Duval Street, much like Bourbon Street in the Big Easy, is full of drunken revelers wandering into traffic and nearly getting creamed by oncoming cars and scooters, a popular mode of transportation in Key West. But there was one key difference between New Orleans and Key West: In New Orleans, tourists buy beads. In Key West, they buy bad T-shirts.

Besides the public drunkenness and public nudity at rooftop bars, Key West is widely known for its geographical extremes: It contains the southern terminus of U.S. 1 and the southernmost point in the continental United States. It's ironic that I would be in Key West when I have never seen the northern terminus of U.S. 1 in Fort Kent, Maine, a state where I was born and raised. But something tells me that up there in Maine, it's not such a big deal. It's only a sign, after all.

Nevertheless, I was obligated to see some of these things just to say I did. A friend said I absolutely must get my photo taken with the buoy that marks Key West's southernmost point. But after I saw the line to do that very thing, doing something that everyone else was doing just didn't seem to fit the spirit of my trip. Maybe next time.

Being a Maine native, I appreciate the cuisine at hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurants. That's why B.O.'s Fish Wagon on Caroline Street in Key West appealed to me: It was less than a hole in the wall. In fact, it didn't really have walls. A wooden canopy with buoys hanging from the boards covered the dining area and the core of the eatery, the kitchen, which is the only part of the restaurant that had a door. The only walls to speak of were actually fences. I can't imagine that it's the greatest place to eat during a hurricane. In the upper left corner of this photo, a sign reads "No shoes, no shirt, no problem," reflecting the less-than-casual Florida lifestyle enjoyed in Key West.

My report on the actual food at B.O.'s Fish Wagon will be coming later, if I'm so inclined and motivated to tell you about it.

There is quite a bit going on in this photo, but for the most part, it's just a bunch of tourists taking photos with or waiting for a chance to take photos with the buoy that marks the southernmost point of the lower 48 states. I settled for cutting into the middle of the line and leaping onto a divider between the sidewalk and the roadway to snap this shot. I would be missing too much of Key West if I were to wait for 30 minutes to get a photo that would be good for nothing more than my Facebook profile.

There was less fanfare at the end - or is it the beginning? - of U.S. 1, which is called Truman Street in Key West. The truth is, though, this isn't the only Mile 0 sign I saw in the city. And there were signs that said Key West was home to both the end and the beginning of U.S. 1. I suppose it depends on how you look at it, but I would think that the southernmost extreme would be called the end, and up north, in Fort Kent, Maine, you could find the beginning. But that's just me.

The color that impresses me the most in Florida is green. In late winter and early spring, there is less of it as the dry season is harsh on the local flora. With heavy rain during the summer, though, vegetation blooms with vibrate hues. On this back street in Key West, a royal poinciana tree provided a brilliant green under the late-afternoon sun.

The royal poinciana also contains are great deal of red. In full bloom, these trees must be amazing. In early September, this one wasn't that impressive.

Again with the poinciana trees in the frame, this photo shows probably the most popular form of alternative transportation in Key West: the motor scooter. This one happens to match the color of the house it sits parked in front of. Both the locals and tourists use them.

Key West is widely known as a free range for chickens, as well as - ironically - cats, especially at famed author Ernest Hemingway's former home. Tourists share the sidewalks with the birds. I like parallelism in photos, and the intent of this shot was to match the three chickens with the three trash barrels behind them. That didn't work so well, but there's something about the simplicity of this photo that appeals to me.

This rooster was involved in a fight with a hen just before I took this photo. The public display of avian domestic violence drew a crowd of tourists eager to take photos. That event was probably the most egregious bandwagon-hopping tourist activity of my entire vacation.