Class Week 3 - Cityscape

Florida Museum of Photographic Arts www.fmopa.org lies in the heart of the city in downtown Tampa and the first time visiting the museum with my daughter I knew I wanted to shoot the city around it. There is a certain amount of hesitation walking around by yourself in areas not know with camera equipment. Having a camera stolen years ago has had a lasting impact on how paranoid I am with a piece of equipment that can so easily be lifted and two women walking around streets they do not know with thousands of dollars strung around our necks and stuffed into a bag is just asking for trouble in my book, especially in this economy.

Intermediate Class Week 3 was shooting Cityscape and we met Chip at the Museum 1st thing for our chat before heading off into the land of towering structures. We hit the door by around 8:30 am with the streets being mostly absent of traffic. Never a city girl, my heart was always drawn to wide open spaces, mountain trails, gazing up at stars in the nights sky devoid of city lights. Never venturing into the congested city limits, yet here I was drawn in and ready to photograph what the city was to me. Now in the big city, I felt like a misplaced adventurer captivated by the light, color, shapes and textures with green life thrown into the harshness of straight lines, the work of men.

There was a lot of looking up that day, for me it was in wonder, the beauty of the tall trees as they were over shadowed by mirrored glass, brick lined parks, vacant tables with chairs, parking structures and stairs, water features and fountains were all there. People of the city with boldness spreading God's blessings or just wanting an ear, lingering near.

I don't know how long we spent on the street level before we made our way to the top level of the parking structure where the city towers so magnificently, there reflections are cast and clouds dance on the sides of blue mirrored buildings. For me it was scenery overload, for Jen being out in the morning sun was torture after spending the previous day at a water park with her girls where her waterproof sunscreen had little effect and there she was at class, boiled lobster girl on the hot tin roof making me carry the backpack.

I would have to say one of the most unique spots that day was being able to shoot this metal wire sculpture in front of Bank of America, which is just a massive building. Now Chip had warned us the bank does not like people photographing the building and we probably would see a guard come out and tell us we cannot photograph there. But all we had to do was move onto the public sidewalk they couldn't make us leave. Well heck... Chip had told us about this in the classroom what seemed like a lifetime ago and I totally forgot. There we all were all of us gathered around this thing that I thought looked like a bunch of cable wires that unraveled in a weird way while under tension. When we heard this voice over an outside intercom saying, "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PHOTOGRAPH THE BUILDING!!" at that point we moved to the sidewalk which was just a couple of feet away from where we were and there most of us continued to snap away, while the chanting reminder of not being allowed to photograph the building grew in intensity. Not handling the pressure well, I caved, I couldn't even hardly look at the sculpture let alone photograph it.. So I snapped off a few shots of the reflection in the pool as to not have to lift my lens from the ground. (me photographing under this pressure was like cooking this wonderful meal while the fire alarm was blaring, I just couldn't do it) So I just turned around to photograph the bank that was across the street. Thank goodness they didn't have mean voices screaming out of their building. I wonder how much you get paid to do a job like that or if they had to put the building on lock down due to our convergence upon the building with all our menacing black camera equipment? Hey maybe it was the bright red lettering on our camera straps that said Canon.. hmmm?? My daughter Jen got some incredible shots of this sculpture.

Shooting the city was amazing! Chip's wit, humor and willingness to help push us from our comfort zones to enrich our own photography was greatly appreciated.