BABY YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR HAT ON !!!

Recently we were in Key West and as I was walking around I noticed that lots of people were wearing hats. All styles of hats, men, women and children all shielding their heads from the Florida sun. Now obviously I have seen people wearing hats before, so why did I take notice and start photographing them??? Maybe because I seldom wear hats, one reason being that I take a size 7 3/4 to an 8 hat! So when I say I have a big head, I mean literally not figuratively. Although some would say of me literally and    figuratively, but I digress !!!
One of the first pictures of a hat appears in a Thebes tomb painting which shows a man wearing a coolie-style straw hat!! I did not see any coolie hats that day but I did see many other styles and naturally I started photographing them! 
So listen to Tom Jones sing a song about a hat and make it sexy and look at some of the hats I saw that day !!


 This first one might have been my favorite !!

 This gentleman was walking with a women I took to be his wife.  He was wearing "her" hat at least I think it was hers. No, I didn't ask!!

This gentleman was weaving these hats and selling them on the sidewalk !!

  I agree the hat is not what is really interesting about this women but she is wearing one. She was sitting in a bar at noon wearing the hat and those glasses maybe it was her birthday !! This scene was a little surreal, off to her left was an Elvis impersonator!!  Just so you all know I took this from outside looking in !!!

Then there are those that might want to think about wearing a hat !!

A MOMENT OF ZEN LEAFS FLOATING IN SPACE

" LEAFS FLOATING IN SPACE"

What better day for a moment of Zen, a Sunday a day of rest for many !!

A SURF BOY, SURFIN USA, CATCHING A WAVE IN SURF CITY ( FLORIDA STYLE) , THIS POST COULD ONLY BE ABOUT ONE THING !!!

"...there was purity and there was the dream, and the adventure, and there was the counterculture aspect. It was like shove society, shove the nine to five, shove the rules... we're just going to follow our hearts, treat each other well, eat well and enjoy the ocean. It was not for money and it wasn't for fame... that's what we're gunna do... purely because that's what our hearts want to do. That was amazing."
— Jim Banks (quote from the Switch-foot book)


When I was a young boy, surfing songs were playing on the radio and TV all the time. The Chantays sang PipeLine, Jan & Dean had Surf City and of course, there were the Beach Boys!! It seemed for awhile that they had a hit every week and many were surfing related. They had Catch a Wave, Surfin Safari, Surfer Girl and the anthem of surfing; Surfin' USA. In Revere, Massachusetts where I spent my youth, there were no surfers, at least not that we knew or saw! We saw the teen movies with Annette (mostly bad) where boy meets girl, boy falls in love, then boy does something stupid and loses girl. But after some singing and surfing, the boy redeems himself, the girl realizes she loves him and they go off surfing into the sunset, usually while some surfing song played in the background!  


I remember loving the idea of surfing; the girls, the beach, the sun, the girls!! In the group of friends I had, you didn't run off to California in your teen years to surf, although more than a few of us thought hard about it!!!  In my case, it was a few years later when I moved away from the east coast of the USA to Arizona. Not much surfing in the Arizona desert!! By then I was married (a really bad decision ), owned a house and started working.. a lot !!! The idea of running away to surf was not even a small reality! 


All through the years when I had seen surfers riding the waves, I would stop and marvel at them. I think it's the sense of being young  again and their freedom on the waves. There is also a small feeling of remorse for not running off to California to 'catch' a wave.  My life is the best it's ever been but there still is the thought of being a surfer boy riding the waves while the girls all watch!


For the past three days, I have been teaching a one on one workshop and one of the days took us to a local spot named Bathtub Beach.
As we walked the beach looking for images, we saw two young guys on the beach, one with a camera the other with a surfboard. I knew I would not be walking any farther for awhile. I told John, the gentleman with whom I was working, that we should wait here and pick out some images!! 


Here I could combine my passion of photography with my youthful dreams, my california dreams! For a few minutes, I could watch and record the freedom of being young and feeling the power of the ocean under my board.


For a man whose only surfing is done on the web, this was going to be a great day!!

I was told that these were small waves and that the fall and winter produce larger waves on the east coast of Florida! To me, they looked large enough!!

As you can see in these next two images, this can be a dangerous sport. In the first image you can see one of the four surfers falling off the board.

In the next image that surfer cannot be seen. He is under the wave and his board is flying up into the air heading back down. These boards are heavy and if it was to hit the surfer, a serious injury could
be the result!! Luckily, the surfer was safe and was back up on his board in minutes looking for the next wave!
  

Any athlete will tell you that part of the enjoyment of their sport is the camaraderie felt with fellow athletes. It is a big reason they enjoy their sport!

                       Of course there are other reasons !!!

A WILD LOOKING GUY, A CAT JUMPS THROUGH A FLAMING HOOP AND OTHER IMAGES FROM OUR VISIT TO KEY WEST!!

As you may have guessed I really love living in Florida. As a photographer what is not to like? We have the ocean all around us    (well at least on three sides), beautiful birds, great seascapes, sunny skies and almost everyday with wonderful sunrises and equally beautiful sunsets. What I have found in the year and a half that we have lived here is that of all the places in Florida we have visited, Key West is very special. 


Our second day started out early with me being alone roaming the piers looking for images at sunrise to ending with everyone watching the sunset once again in Mallory Square. I was hoping for another great sunset and Key West did not disappoint! I also saw one of the street entertainers that I briefly photographed on our last trip: a man with a heavy french accent, a unique hair style and his cats! I only watched a few minutes last time because the sunset was coming and I had to find a spot from which to photograph it! What I did see left me puzzled. This man took a cat out of a cage, actually he attempted to but the cat would not come out, and then acted like that was the trick???? Well this time, I caught the end of his show, literally the last minute, and I was behind a large crowd that was watching him. I took three images and actually saw something that was quite surprising and worth the stop to watch him. You will see it near the end of these images. I hope you enjoy seeing the rest of our stay in Key West.

   Then it was back to the hotel for breakfast with the others but not   
   before a grabbed a few shots from the hotel's pier!

  The hotel had a turtle pond with beautiful orchids hanging in trees 
  surrounding it!

 This was the view while walking down the street. Key West is a  
 stop for many of the ocean liners and it's really funny to look down 
 a busy city street and see this looming behind buildings!!

 There are plenty of souvenir stands selling trinkets like these strings 
 of sea shells !!

   Just one example of the colorful style homes in the city!!

I thought this shot was interesting. It was standing atop a restaurant. I was shooting upwards and composed to not see the building just the white statue against the beautiful blue Florida sky.

 Key West is a very colorful place, in many ways, filled with very  
 colorful people.

                       The ocean liner we saw earlier!

These are a few of those colorful people I mentioned earlier. This first gentlemen saw my camera and asked me to take this particular picture of him!! When I showed him the results he loved it. I might be wrong but I think his judgement might have been impaired!! Actually I am pretty sure it was !!!! 


The other two images are friends of his; the young man in the hat was busy rolling a very organic cigarette. I think those cigarettes contributed to the first guy's impaired judgement. I am told nicotine will do that to you!! The three of them were really fun to meet and just a part of the reason Key West is such a colorful place to visit.

                      A few last images of that night.

Back at our hotel as we were walking to our room, I took this image of one of the staircases. The patterns intrigued me. I like the results.

                                    Sunrise the next day !!

This is Sunset Island which is off the coast from Key West. I am told that among other celebrities, Oprah has a home there. You can only get there by shuttle boat. The island consists of 48 single family homes and 21 vacant lots, all of which are valued at over $1.5 million. I didn't see Oprah but if you know her, please let her know that I would love to photograph her on her island!! I will be waiting to hear from Oprah!! Patiently!!!!!!!

One of Key West "Feral Roosters", I kid you not. The city has these wild chickens walking around. I read that when the people came over from Cuba they brought their chickens. Then because of hurricanes or just chickens being abandoned, they are now wild  walking along busy streets as this one was. Really beautiful isn't he!! Early in the morning you will hear them welcoming the sunrise!

         This brown heron was resting on a boat in the harbor!

                  Another beautiful Key West sunset!

After the sun set this Disney ocean liner left the dock headed out to sea!!

After this, I started walking away and saw a crowd standing around  the cat man!!! As I wrote, it was at the end of his show and standing behind the crowd, I grabbed a few shots.


            Sorry for the person's head in the front of this shot.

Phyllis and I have two cats that let us live with them and I can tell you this did impress me. To train a house cat to jump through a flaming hoop is amazing!!

     Might be a really nice man but he does look a little umm 
     interesting!!! But he does seem to work well with cats!!

                            Another beauty of a sunrise!

You do a lot of this when you're in Key West!! Just staring up at palm trees from your lounge chair, with a cold drink sitting beside you.

 A few rocks off the shore! I once told you I am always shooting lol.

 On the way home we stopped at a small inlet and I saw this gentleman net fishing. In the short time I was there, he didn't have any luck.

So when you're looking for a beautiful place to relax and have a lot of fun, come to Florida and enjoy the beautifully colored ocean and the SUN !!!