Walk The Town
Las Olas and Riverfront
As part of my location scouting, my girlfriend and I took a trip to the Fort Lauderdale area on Sunday, June 14th. I was looking for two things: something that would give me an industrial-type setting and a place that would give me greenery and flowers. I found most of that in the Las Olas Riverfront area.
Our trip started out on the west end of Las Olas Boulevard where we walked in the east direction past many restaurants, bakeries, galleries, clothing, and art shops. We stopped at Gran Forno Bakery because the pastries were calling our name. We tried a blueberry (I don’t know what they called it) pastry and it was delicious. This is part of being a good photographer–knowing where all the good restaurants are located..lol. Walking Las Olas didn’t prompt any locations for family or individual portraits, but it is an excellent place for travel photography or photojournalism.
After we passed all the stores we came to a nice, old neighborhood. We walked down into the area, which I believe is the Colee Hammock historical neighborhood, and we had a nice stroll past some homes mixed in with some multi-million dollar condos. This is where my photography started to pick up. There was, to me, much more to photograph off the beaten path. I had a chance to photograph historic houses and much flora and fauna. I even had a couple of squirrels pose for a quick picture. When we made it around the block and back to Las Olas, we decided to take a trolley ride.
The trolley takes a 30-45 minute loop around the area and along Ocean Drive beside the beach. We opted to get off at the Museum of Discovery and Science. Across the street from the museum is Esplanade Park. The park was perfect for family or individual portraits. This is where I found greenery and flowers with plenty of shade. The park is part of the Native Plant Exhibit sponsored by Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, and Riverwalk. This area has much to use for backgrounds within a small space. There is a grassy lot, a tree line, columns on the pavilion, steep steps, nice architecture, flowers, and a fountain. There are clean public restrooms if the subject wanted to change outfits for different looks in the photos. Also, there is plenty of parking right across the street within a parking garage. The park also has plenty of native, harmless spiders strung on massive webs among the trees. I believe the best time to use this area would be early in the morning.
After spending some time in the park, we decided to make our way back to my truck. We continued to make our way on the riverwalk, which is a paved walkway beside the New River. This walk leads down to Las Olas Riverfront, which is full of cool architecture, the Sunrise Cinema complex, restaurants, bars, and the Museum of Art. On the way, we passed some cool railroad tracks. These tracks set the theme for my industrial look, but the tracks do not have all the brick warehouses surrounding them (that I’m use to seeing in Alabama). They can still be used as they are cool backgrounds for senior portraits. This area has a stucco theme on one side of the road and brick exterior on the other. Both sides of the street will photograph very well. I think the best time to be there for portrait work is very early in the morning, because there are no crowds of people to get in your way.
One of the thoughts I had was whether or not I need a permit to shoot in this area. Of course, in this day and age, no one wants to go to jail for taking pictures of a building or using the area without permission. That is one of my missions–to find out who to contact about photographing in the city of Fort Lauderdale. This will definitely be a topic for a future blog.
If anyone knows where I’m from back in Alabama, the town Albertville is the “fire hydrant capital of the world.” They ship hydrants all over the world, hence the title. Even when I was in Ecuador, I saw fire hydrants from Albertville. When I see hydrants I have to look to see where they are from. Here are couple of pics of Mueller fire hydrants manufactured in Albertville located in the Las Olas area. These hydrants are everywhere I go.
To follow up about the photo permit issue in the Ft. Lauderdale area, you do not need one for still photography. I was in contact with a very nice lady at city hall, and was informed that you do not need a photo permit if you are doing the photography for yourself. The only time you need a permit is if you are doing work commercially or filming. That is excellent news for us still photographers. If you would like to see all the shots I took from the walk please check out: http://digitaltravels.smugmug.com/Travel There is also a link to the right under the Blogroll category for the digitaltravels.smugmug site, then click travel>Las Olas.
