Hurricane Dorian – A Beautiful Fury

Fine Art Photographs of Hurricane Dorian’s Glancing Impact on Florida’s First Coast

Hurricane Dorian - Jacksonville Beach Pier Waves

I don’t have to tell you, Hurricanes are a fierce force of nature – and Hurricane Dorian has proven to be one of the fiercest Atlantic storms since records began. The utter destruction and climbing death toll left in the wake of the storm’s lingering 185mph sustained winds over the Bahamas is just starting to be known, and our heart goes out to those on the islands, and the countless families awaiting news about their loved ones. Yet despite all of the horror, there is even in such darkness a beauty in the storm – an eerie, sober sort of melancholy beauty – but beauty all the same.

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Mardi Gras Style at the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island

Nov1

The story of this shoot begins a few months ago. Darden had planned to have their annual leadership conference in New Orleans. All was going as planned and everything looked great… until a few days before. That’s when Hurricane Isaac began to zero in on New Orleans. Fast forward two months, and our friends at the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island were able to accommodate the large group and we had the pleasure of spending a second year with the great folks from Darden! All this despite the looming specter of Hurricane Sandy.

This year, we provided green screen coverage and onsite real-time printing services, as well as our more traditional event coverage of their reception and awards. This was our first time shooting with a green screen (apart from a test session to get everything ready to go) and I was really surprised by how much people loved it. Who knew standing in front of a glowing green backdrop would be so exciting! Above you can see the before and after. Best of all, I was able to build a system to automate it all, so that all I had to do was select the best photos and send them to our high speed professional printer – everything else was done through an automated process we discovered/developed!

Below are some of our favorite shots from the evening – enjoy!

Photo of the Day – Ships Crossing in the Night…errr, I Mean Day

Oct27

With Hurricane Sandy off our coast, Jacksonville had an unexpected visitor (well, 1900 of them t be exact). The cruise ship you see in the background took a detour en route from Newark to Ft Lauderdale due to the high seas and intense winds produced by Sandy. Being a one cruise ship town, this was big news. So today, when we were going over the Dames Point bridge and we saw the Carnival ship going out, I traded seats with Bryn and started snapping away as we did a few passes over the bridge. The above photo is my favorite – an extremely rare site of not one, but two cruise liners in the St Johns River at one time. Below are a few more or my favorite St Johns River photos from years past! As always, feel free to share, download and enjoy!

Tropical Storm Beryl – DS National Coverage!

May30

It turns out it was worth our effort to plug in our computers, boot them back up, edit and post video from Tropical Storm Beryl to our blog and on YouTube while the storm was still raging outside. As providence would have it, Good Morning America, the Weather Channel, ABC News, and our local station, WJXT all picked up our footage. It’s not often our logo gets placed in front of 5+ million people for free. Granted, the clips were only two or three seconds, but it was still pretty cool! Big thanks to all the networks who featured our video!

If you missed the video the first time, below is our footage of the storm, complete with blowing transformers, wet rain and windy wind! Feel free to check out our other Beryl blog posts for free HD desktop wallpaper as well!

Enjoy!

Tropical Storm Beryl – Part 1

May27

Well, it seems we’ve had one of those early, unexpected, windbag of a guests tonight. No, I’m not speaking of an unwanted family member, but rather the first tropical storm to make landfall this year – right in our home town of Jacksonville, FL! Above is one of the photos I snapped from the front porch.

Below is a video complete with blowing transformers, wet rain and windy wind!