Smathers Sunrise

Rachel relieved me a few minutes earlier than scheduled so I had a slight head start on the usual sunrise I see as I ride home. I went by Smathers Beach to see if at 6am there was anything to see.I took these pictures in P mode (Pro Automatic which allows for some light settings) on my pocket Canon SCX100. These two I took holding the camera, and I liked how they came out.
There were a few boats anchored south of Key West likely fishing boats resting and they looked terribly inviting, oases of human habitation far from the rest of us. For these next two pictures I set the camera to a 13 second exposure and put the Canon on the seawall. Usually I set a two second timer to allow the camera to settle and be still for the long exposure but this time it appeared to be unecessary. This one I used a ten second exposure because the sunrise seemed to be lighting up the sky more efficently.
This last one was hand held in P mode again. I could have dallied here and used shorter exposures to put more color into it but bed was calling and I hadn't seen my Labrador since 5pm the evening before. Night pictures take a lot longer than daytime pictures to shoot. Looking toward Stock Island at Dead Man's Curve.Regular readers know I don't generally talk much about my pictures and how I took them because I don't use fancy equipment and don't consider myself a photographer. I prefer to have my camera to hand and take what I get to tell a story. Very rarely I adjust contrast and crop the pictures in the Microsoft picture mode but these were as the camera took them. I figure my Diary is about what I see, not I would like to have seen so my pictures include the Keys warts and all and most of the warts are the aggravating power lines...

The point of this explication is two fold. One is I loved what I saw, as usual, on my way home, and I wanted to record it. Point two is you don't need a giant cannon of a camera to take pictures. Take heart, a pocket camera does way better than you might imagine. There are too many well written blogs with few or no pictures and to me pictures add immediacy and depth, and not everyone wants to read my words. I keep the resolution low on my blog so they are easy for me to upload but that also makes it fast for viewers to open the blog. My technique is to take lots of pictures discarding as I go so only the best are in the camera when I get home and I don't have to sift through a pile of useless pictures to know what I want to upload to my new post window. I am usually thinking of the story as I take the pictures though not always, sometime I take a picture of something that appeals viscerally and I find a story develops from the picture rather than the other way around.

I hate giving advice as it is rarely taken but if this helps anyone develop the nerve to take pictures and post them despite the self concious obstacles I would be delighted. From one rank amateur to another.