miko russell

Top picture, the Howard Franklin Bridge (I-295) that connects St. Petersburg to Tampa: took this pretty soon after take-off from TPA, going against the No Electronics rule… Oops.

Middle & Bottom pictures, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge connecting St. Petersburg to Tierra Ceia: took these from a moving car going over the bridge into some serious fog. We’d never driven over before and had no idea the bridge went so high (we’re used to flat, floating bridges in Seattle…) and the fog made it all seem like it disappeared into ghost world.

Made it to Chicago, seriously a great city. History, culture, restaurants, architecture, and lots of interesting characters. We missed out on two things during our brief stay here, one being the Sears Tower and the other being Wrigley Field (the Cubs were away). The only thing I’d change for that trip was the weather–108F isn’t cool at all. Seriously though.

This picture might just be the one that ‘started it all’ for me. It was definitely not the first picture I took, nor was it the best–but it was probably the first time that I took a picture and really went, “Wow, I did that.” It was 2003 and there really weren’t too many digital cameras around, but I’d had my little brick-like Sony DSC-S30 for about two years by then. My friends and I always seemed to end up at Seattle Center when we wanted to go on a photography adventure and this was taken right outside of Seattle’s opera house, McCaw Hall. It had just rained so the ground was reflective and everything seemed to sparkle.

I posted it up on DeviantArt (this really dates me) a few days afterwards and it was a Daily Top Favorite, over 18,000 views, 650 favorites, and 320 comments. Talk about confidence boost.

My favorite city.