Putting down the camera at Myrtle Beach ...except for a couple sunsets

From Savannah, Lee Ann and I drove up to Myrtle Beach to meet some of her family to enjoy the beach and some rest and relaxation.

We had mostly decent weather; there was a day or two when it was on the chilly side, and one evening we spent an hour or so monitoring a local television channel to ascertain when vicious storms headed our way could turn out to be serious enough to seek protection from tornadoes. 

But the storms moved out before turning that dangerous. 

Almost all the pictures I took while in Myrtle Beach this time were with my iPhone, and they were family photos. Nothing I am going to bother with in blog posts. 

The exception are images you see in this post. Usually I go to Myrtle Beach expecting interesting sunrise pictures. Lee Ann coaxed me to find something interesting with the sunsets while I was there, so that's what the images in this post are about, all taken from the balcony of our rooms. Yes, I use the plural rooms; for the first two nights, we stayed on the second floor at one end of the hotel; we went up four floors and to the other side of the building for the remainder of our stay. 

Leading off the post is a photo looking southeast and was taken from the balcony on the higher-floor room. The sun is lowering behind us, so you see rich, late-afternoon dramatic colors and contrast here. I'll let the captions tell the story of the remaining images in the post. There is some interesting "looks," given the direction and time involved.

Above: This image was taken from the first room's balcony, which looks due east and was right after sundown.

The photo and above and the last two below were taken on a different night, about 15 minutes before the sun went down. They also were from the balcony of the sixth-floor room. The first one above also looks east, and you appreciate that dramatic late-afternoon lighting on the orange building facade. For the bottom two images, I turned to look toward the sun. The first below, a perspective shot, finds the sun curling around the left backside of the building, casting out what I thought was some cool flare rays. I then put my polarizing filter on the Tamron 28-300 f.3.5-6.3 lens (on my Canon 6D) and zoomed in to get the final image, a much clearer depiction of how the sun was dropping behind the building.  

Return to Savannah, Part V: City Hall

It might not seem possible to devote an entire post to a city hall, but my recent visit to Savannah gave me a reason to consider it . While I've photographed the building's exterior on almost all of my previous visits, I'd never been inside the picturesque structure until the recent trip. 

And even after getting inside, I didn't get any father than the lower-level rotunda. Security wouldn't allow it. But that rotunda was interesting enough for me to take some pictures. 

The building was designed by architect Hyman Witcover and was constructed from 1904-05 before opening officially the following year.  

So, what you see in this post is several new exterior shots and the pictures from the interior I managed to grab in my short time inside. The photo leading off the post is the first time I tried to get the building's front facade in its entirety. It's usually impossible to get because of the angle and because of the constant flow of traffic along busy Bay Street. But I managed to get this one, as well as the first two below. The two below were taken with my iPhone 11, the first from ground level, the second later in the afternoon from the seventh floor of a building southeast of the hall.

Above: Looking upward from the entry-level floor toward the multiple circular rails on the building's upper levels. 

The rotunda sculpture centerpiece (above) with a close-up of the sculpture below. 

A curious doorway decoration (above) and a close-up of what appears to be the artifact (below). 

 

Above: Yet another curious doorway blockade. Apparently this is Savannah's way of telling visitors the through-way is not a through-way after all. 

End of series

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SERIES: 

Part I: Colonial Park Cemetery

Part II: A cruise on the Georgia Queen

Part III: More of the Historic District

Part IV: Small art galleries and shops

Return to Savannah, Part IV: Downtown art shops and galleries

When I left Savannah, Ga., after our most recent visit, I found myself appreciating the city for its support of local art more than I had ever done so before. 

The city has large art museums -- the Jepson Center and Telfair Academy jump to mind immediately -- and we had visited those. They are virtual neighbors at Telfair Square on the west end of the Historic District. 

But there also are striking collections by artists whose work is on display at small shops sprinkled throughout the Historic District. I decided to devote a post to a few of those artists simply because I visited them by chance as I strolled past them during my walks while in the city in late March. 

Lee Ann and I most enjoyed our stops at the Tiffani Taylor and Ray Ellis galleries, which are about five blocks from each other on opposite sides of Ellis Square. 

Taylor is still a working artist who graduated with several degrees from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). From her early years in Ogden, Utah, Taylor used her talent for observation cultivated by her grandmother into textured paintings and hand-painted pottery, from the field poppies (see photo above) to aspen tree trunks to a variety of floral interpretations. SCAD awarded her a grant to open a shop in Laconte, France, where she will spend time and draw inspiration for her work, which is on display in several international galleries. She opened the Savannah gallery at 11 Whitaker Street in 2011. The tea pot below is an example of her hand-painted pottery. 

Ellis died in 2013 after a 70-year career that involved stops on seven continents, although he lived and painted mostly in the United States -- his native Philadelphia as well as New York, Savannah and Martha's Vineyard. In the 1980s, he and longtime CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite collaborated on a series of books celebrating America's coastlines -- "North by Northeast," "South by Southeast" and "Westwind." He opened the Savannah gallery in 1988.

For three consecutive years, beginning in 1998, Bill and Hillary Clinton commissioned Ellis to create scenes of the White House for their annual Christmas cards. Some of his works are in the permanent White House collection. In 2004, the Telfair Museum honored the depth and breadth of Ellis' work by establishing a traveling exhibit titled "Ray Ellis in Retrospect: A Painter's Journey." He collaborated with CK Wolfson on a biography of him that was published posthumously in 2014. 

The image leading off the post is among my favorites of Ellis I came across at the gallery. The one above the previous paragraph is another sailing work of his. 

We came upon a kiosk used by Jorge Lastra Guerra, a Chilean sculptor and jewelry maker, also by chance while walking along the riverfront on our last day in Savannah. His creations of sailboats using driftwood for the boat's hull and cut metal strips for the sails (see above) and his jewelry were limited in the small confines. But it caught our attention nevertheless. A sign outside the kiosk identified him as an "artist in residence," but did not explain the significance of that title. In addition, Lastra Guerra does not appear to have an online presence. 

The fourth shop, Savannah Gallery of Art, 304 E. Bryan St., was another surprise. Once inside the small quarters, we chatted with the attendant -- who actually was one artist whose work was on display -- and he mentioned the gallery had been in operation only since the previous October. Unfortunately, I didn't get his name, and the gallery's website did not seem to have any space devoted to him. Examples of some of the works on display are shown below.

Next Up: City Hall

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SERIES: 

Part I: Colonial Park Cemetery

Part II: A cruise on the Georgia Queen

Part III: More of the Historic District

Return to Savannah, Part III: More of the Historic District

For me, one of the draws to Savannah is strolling through the 23 neighborhood squares, or parks, carefully laid out in the 18th century by the city's founder, James Edward Oglethorpe. Most of the parks are adorned with stately oak trees, as the one shown above.

These parks, or squares, were designed by James Edward Oglethorpe when he founded Savannah in the 1730s, and I've presented images of them in blog posts after previous visits. They are in the city's Historic District. But I never seem to get enough of them; as an admirer of the elegant oak tree, I'm always in awe of their artsy branches and formations. 

In Chippewa Square, for example, the square almost in the center of the neighborhood parks grid, there is a statue of Oglethorpe (two photos below). On the first full day we spend in Savannah on the recent trip, we enjoyed a city-wide trolley tour -- something we also did on our visit in March 2017. It had been so long since we did the trolley tour, we found that we did not mind any of the repetition but, in fact, learned (or maybe remembered?) more this time around. 

One of the things we learned more about during the trolley tour was that Oglethorpe, after a brief military career in which he attained the rank of  general, served in the British House of Commons for 21 years. While in the House, he obtained a reputation for a champion of the oppressed, including those imprisoned under brutal conditions. 

In June 1732 he petitioned to obtain a charter to establish a colony in the New World. The petition was granted, and he founded Savannah as a charity colony in February 1733. The original founding charter banned slavery and allowed religious freedom, which inspired the establishment of a Jewish community in the city. 

Because of Savannah and Georgia's proximity to Florida, which was occupied by Spanish colonists, Oglethorpe made a point to make quick and lasting friends with the Native Americans he encountered after arriving in Georgia. He negotiated with Tomochichi, the leader of the Yamacraw tribe for land to build his settlement, and Tomochichi became a fast and lasting ally. 

There had been talk in the recent past (and perhaps there still is) about removing a confederate monument and bust of Confederal Col. Francis Bartow from Forsyth Park, the largest of the squares (it's actually a long rectangle). But they were still standing, at their usual prominent place at the south end of the park, when we visited there in March, as shown above. 

Below, are various scenes we came across on our afternoon of walking through the sundry neighborhood squares, beginning with the gentleman strumming the guitar.  

I made a lot of compositions using tree branches or their vegetation as either frames or secondary elements in some photos. The one above is just outside Johnston Square, while the one below shows a tree branch and leaves dangling above a stained-glass window on the backside of Trinity Episcopal Church. 

Above: A carriage ride vendor and his passengers turn a corner around a square (which is off to the left) with another long oak branch helping to frame the top of the photo. 

An outdoor cushioned bench (above) on the sidewalk in front of the DeSoto Hotel on East Liberty Street, and outdoor seating for the Treylor Park Hitch (below), an eatery across Drayton Street from the DeSoto.

 

Above: Just a cool brick corner structure with elegant ironwork framing. 

Above: The main entrance to the Georgia Historical Society building at Whitaker and Gaston streets at the northwest corner of Forsyth Square. 

Above and below: Views from different angles of the Independent Presbyterian Church at Bull Street and Oglethrope Avenue, again integrating tree branch and foliage into the image.

 

Above: Our tour guide on the trolley ride told us that this Candler Oak, on property owned by the Savannah College of Art and Design at 516 Drayton Street across from Forsyth Park, dates to the 1700s and is one of the oldest living landmarks in all of Georgia. It is 54 fee tall and has a circumference of 17 feet and a diameter of 63 inches. It is not the oldest tree in the state, however. That distinction goes to a red oak along Mann Road in Palmetto, Ga., which has a diameter of 10 feet and is estimated to be 350 to 450 years old, which means it dates back to the 1600s. 

Above: A house that caught my attention for its architecture, ironwork and the oak branches and leaves intersecting with its street appeal. 

Above and below: Two closeups of main door or gate ornamentations we came across on our walks in the Historic District. The one above shows some wear on the nose and forehead area. 

Above: The Harper-Fowler House, another instance where I used trees to help me frame a composition. 

Above and first two below: Broughton Street is the main commercial thoroughfare of downtown Savannah. Portions of the street were being torn up and rebuilt while we were there, but here are views of two sections that were not part of that work. 

Above and below: The section of Broughton Street that was being thoroughly rebuilt. 

Next up: Small art shops and galleries

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SERIES: 

Part I: Colonial Park Cemetery

Part II: A cruise on the Georgia Queen

Return to Savannah, Part II: A cruise on the Georgia Queen

 We'd seen the Georgia Queen (pictured above) on every visit to Savannah since 2017, but we never felt inclined to check out what the cruise ship was about.

That changed last month. I will say -- as a testament to how much the COVID pandemic stops to  make you think about doing certain things -- that we hesitated for a moment before discussing whether to try out the Georgia Queen. But when we realized we were going to be on its outer decks the whole 90 minutes of the relatively brief excursion, we decided not to fret. 

The Georgia Queen has elaborate tourist offerings, such as a nighttime dinner cruise. This would have had us in a confined area inside the vessel, not to mention its greater expense, so we decided not to even consider that. We'd do the simple daytime cruise from the downtown dock point west to a short ways pass the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, a cable-stayed cantilever span. The the Queen turns around and cruises in the other direction almost to the river's mouth at the Atlantic Ocean when it turns around again and heads back to port.

Above and next four below: One thing you come across a lot while on the daytime cruise ... is other vessels, large and small. The boat above is the free ferry from River Street to Hutchinson Island, where the city's convention center and adjoining Westin Savannah Hotel. But Savannah also is a major harbor for massive cargo ships as seen in the photos below. 

 

 

I went a little overboard when the Georgia Queen passed under the Talmadge Bridge, composing from all sides and angles, illustrated by the photos above and below. 

The next popular subject in my shoot aboard the Georgia Queen was the golden dome on Savannah City Hall, illustrated in the shots above and next four below.

The Westin Hotel (above) and adjoining convention center (below) on Hutchinson Island. 

The Cracked Earth Monument to soldiers who died in World War II (above) and a slice of the Savannah riverfront (below). 

East of the riverfront promenade there is heavy industry, exhibited in the picture and above and two below. 

Above and below: A cannon is fired from the grounds of old Fort Jackson. Our tour guide told us that the firings are timed to coincide with each Georgia Queen passing to entertain passengers. 

Above: Our tour guide says the vessel above is a wreck. I don't know how long it's been there, or whether it will remain there permanently. 

 

Above:  A view looking southwest from the Georgia Queen. The twin spires of St. John the Baptist Cathedral can be seen just left of the large structure.  

Several people in a section of the riverfront plaza (above) seemed enthralled by the Georgia Queen's return to port. Not far from them, and closer to the dock point, one of several daily riverfront street musicians performs (below). 

 

Next Up: More of the Historic District

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SERIES: 

Part I: Colonial Park Cemetery