August 25th, 2010 · ramblings
I hadn’t heard of this place until a few months ago. I was interested and scheduled a photo walk. I picked up Todd and Sherry since it is a long drive from Wesley Chapel.
The park is actually a series of parks all connected through foot paths. And google isn’t too clear where the actual address is so we had people end up in 4 different locations. Cells brought us all together.
Heritage Village is a series of restored old buildings from around the area. Some of the buildings are open to the public. The area is shaded but it was still pretty warm.
The botanical gardens have seen better days. Most of the high maintenance plants and flowers have been removed with budget cuts. There wasn’t anything interesting to see as far plants are concerned.
There is a art museum but it has closed. All of the outdoor sculpture is gone as well.
The wedding garden is still kept up but the fountain has been blocked up.
I would like to go back but just spend time at Heritage Village and skip the gardens.
We went to Crabby Bills in Indian Rocks Beach for lunch. Good food, slow service.
Tags:florida botanical gardens·heritage village·largo·photo walk
(click to enlarge)
We had a Saturday morning photo walk at the University of Tampa. It was nice being down there when the campus was virtually empty. We almost had the place to ourselves along with a couple of unknown photographers. We walked around Plant Hall shooting with the morning light. At 0:00 am, the opened up Plant Hall so we went indoors. I wandered all the way to Fletcher Hall which looks to be the old dining hall from when it was a hotel. I would have done better to have my tripod.
The plan was to walk across the river and have lunch. Since I parked closer than most, I offered to take Frank and meet them at Five Guys. It was really nice to get to talk to Frank one-on-one and get to know him. We didn’t have to wait at the restaurant too long before everyone else showed up. Five Guys is a burger joint. They do have grilled cheese sandwiches and a veggie sandwich that is just made using the veggie toppings of the burger. I had a burger.
Afterwards, the group left to walk back across the bridge. Frank and I went back to my van. I saw an old DeSoto in the parking lot and we took some shots of that. Then I took Frank back to UT so he could ride home with Jeff & Theresa.
For the rest of my photos, please see my flickr set.
Tags:photography
Oh man! What a fun night. Even if I got no photos I would claim the evening a success.
The trolley ride was OK. The trolley barn was interesting. The company was way too fun.
We started out at the first trolley stop near Centennial Park. We got aboard a trolley and they took us to the car barn. We got to see one of the oldest trolleys in existence. Sherry laid on the tracks for a fun photo op. I was using my camera’s live view instead of stooping down and that was overheating my camera chip. There wasn’t much to see inside the barn. Or maybe I was just too hot to find much of interest.
We went back to pickup some late arrivals. Then continued onto Channelside. Since we were just there a few days before, there wasn’t much I wanted to shoot. Norm & I went into Wet Willies and got large margaritas. We were soon joined by others. The place has great colors for hdr.
Jeff introduced me to Bob who shoots with an Olympus E-3. The only two Olympians in a group of 300+ photographers! Jeff used to shoot with Olympus back in his film days. Olympus was late to the game with good auto-focus and dSLR cameras.
Jeff took the group down to the Dick Greco plaza. Norm, John, Sherry & I started to follow but it began to rain so we used that as an excuse went back to Wet Willies for another round.
John wanted to shoot from UT. The four of us got on a crowded trolley and headed towards the convention center. We had to walk the rest of the way. We got about halfway there and Norm decided to turn back. I went with him. We got back on a trolley and found more of the group. They stopped at Channelside again! but Norm & I continued to Ybor and Tampa Bay Brewing Company.
The drinks flowed. The conversation flowed. It was a fun night. They couldn’t provide separate checks so the $300 bill took quite a while to straighten out. We could have had more drinks while we waited!
Tags:channelside·photo walk·photography·tampa·trolley·ybor city
