Freeman Patterson told his class that the best place to find images is right where you are. I've lived in Jacksonville all my life and you would think that I would pay a little more attention to the photo ops here in my backyard. When a friend visited me two weeks ago he asked me if I have Jacksonville "covered." You know, all the classic images of downtown, the riverfront, the bridges, the parks, and the beaches. "Um, well, the last shots I did of the riverfront were back in 2004 when I first got my camera." Not a good answer. So why do I find myself traveling all over the country when there is plenty of really good stuff to shoot right here? Go figure.
My new project is called Jacksonville 400 (quite an arbitrary number). My goal is to assemble a collection of 400 images by the end of the year that are interesting views of Jacksonville. This means I will have to get myself out of my little office and out shooting ( good thing), and get up early more often than I really want to (a bad thing). We'll see how it works out. So far I've been out two days out in the morning. I missed the sunrise by about 45 minutes...there's nothing like driving in your car watching the sky explode with color, knowing that your destination is 30 minutes away. I know, you gotta get to bed early to get up early.
I'll keep updating my progress here, and collecting images in my pbase gallery. Let's see what I can come up with.