Another Ybor City Photowalk

Ybor, yet again! I signed up for an event called the Worldwide Photowalk. Scott Kelby, a photographer who writes digital photography and Photoshop books, hatched the idea as a book promotion. A bunch of photographers would meet someplace, roam around snapping shots of it for a couple of hours and meet at a restaurant afterward for either lunch or dinner, depending on whether it was a morning or afternoon walk.

It now includes 24,000 camera toters in events around the world.

I had gone to one last year in Safety Harbor. We got rained on but the overcast skies made the light ideal. This year I chose Ybor simply because it was the one closest to my home. As the day approached I wondered if I'd want to shoot there again, especially in a Florida July mid afternoon.

Usually I've started shooting at Centro Ybor, the hub of Tampa's party town, and branched east or west from there. So today I started at what is normally the easternmost spot, the venerable Columbia restaurant at 7th Ave. and 21st St., then ventured south then east from there.

Here are a few of the vertically oriented shots.



The shots of the walkway framed on the right with brick arches was a place I had stopped to get a bottle of Gatorade because I had forgotten to pack a cooler with drinks. That sun will sap your energy fast if you don't stay hydrated. I walked outside, looked to my left and said, "Wow!"

Good photos are often right in front of you, if you're willing to notice them. My apparent fixation with railroad tracks continues. And, like last time, a shot of a padlock made the best-of batch. What would Freud say?

Now some of the landscape oriented photos:



I don't know if some of the painting on the wall is graffiti or used to be intentional decoration or is some combination of the two with some mold added for panache.

The green shot is the underside of an umbrella in Centro Ybor where I sat as I drained the rest of my Gatorade. There's a lot of color in Ybor City. Some weirdness too. Like the guy lining up those giant pipes on the counter of a hookah bar. I'm not sure what they smoke in those things in a public bar, if they're indeed smoked on the premises.

See more photos at photoquist.com.