Decatur - Riverside Park and the Roseless Rose Garden

 

 Decatur, Riverside Park - One of the scenic overlooks of the Tennessee River and a great place to watch boats, trains, and automobiles.

Boaters out for a pleasure cruise heading under the train's bridge.

 

 

 A flock of birds take over the skies. As always, click on any of the photos to make them larger.

 

 

 A boat large enough to need the bridge raised. Some beautiful lighting is provided by the setting sun glinting off both the boat and the bridge.

 

 A sculpture on the green also provides a wonderful climbing spot for the little ones. While I despise artificial lens flares, I miss the old days of film where a lens flare would add to the composure of a shot. I manage to get a very small lens flare going with my digital camera anyway.

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Farther in the city is a park that was originally planted with roses for a "legacy" in the future. Unfortunately, the legacy didn't make it. The roses died at some unknown (to me) part in history and were never replaced. So presenting, the Roseless Rose Garden.

 Despite all this it still manages to be a pretty formal garden.

 
There's quite an argument between photographers about having people in landscape and scenic shots. Personally, in photos of places I like putting people in with their backs to the camera. It allows for a sense of scale, without being distracting from the real subject of the photograph.

 

 I almost didn't include this shot in the collection, but I like the layers of different textures, and I love the above ground root system.

I love Alabama skies, but I rarely end up photographing them and I don't have much practice capturing them properly. I plan to work on this and photograph overhead more. Here's the skies over the park as the sun is setting.

Also, if you love skies too, check out the Cloud 365 Project, a photographic celebration of the skies.