Florida photography – Greg Urbano

Passagrille Sunset

The photograph of a sunset over the Gulf of Mexico from the Pass-a-Grille jetty captures a sense of departure and geometric clarity. It juxtaposes the structural jetty against soft, ethereal water and sky, reflecting the photographer’s evolving approach while highlighting the tension between permanence and impermanence in landscapes.

Sunset photograph of the Pass‑a‑Grille jetty in Florida, with a concrete pier extending into the Gulf of Mexico and silhouetted figures at the horizon. — Sunset over the Gulf of Mexico from the Pass‑a‑Grille jetty.

This image from Chapter 2 of the Top 100 Journey carries with it a distinct sense of departure—a final engagement with a familiar location rendered with the careful attention of someone taking leave. Shot at Pass-a-Grille, the southern terminus of St. Pete Beach, the photograph distills the photographer’s technical vocabulary into a study of geometric clarity against atmospheric flux.

The concrete jetty commands the composition with unwavering linear authority, stretching from the immediate foreground toward the distant horizon where the sun hangs in perfect alignment. This centered positioning—often avoided in landscape photography as overly symmetrical—here becomes an asset, emphasizing the directional thrust of both structure and light. The jetty serves as more than mere subject; it functions as visual pathway, invitation, and barrier simultaneously. Flanked by massive boulder riprap on either side, the walkway creates a corridor that focuses attention while the rough-hewn stones provide textural contrast to the smooth concrete surface.

The technical approach reveals the photographer’s continued exploration of extended exposure. At fifteen seconds and f/22, the water on both sides of the jetty transforms into a milky abstraction, its individual waves collapsed into a singular luminous mass. This treatment—shorter than the sixty-second exposure employed in his Pier 60 work yet still substantially extended—suggests a refinement in his methodology. The turquoise-tinted water retains enough definition to read as liquid rather than dissolving into pure atmosphere, maintaining a crucial anchor to physical reality.

Above, the sky performs its transitional theater. Wispy cirrus formations streak diagonally across the frame from upper left, their directional movement contrasting with the horizontal stratification of color closer to the horizon. The gradient moves from deep slate blues through amber and peach tones to the incandescent disc of the sun itself. A single contrail cuts through the upper portion—a contemporary detail that situates this timeless scene firmly in the present moment, a reminder that even pristine natural settings exist within our flight-path-crossed modern reality.

The photographer has positioned himself low, allowing the foreground boulders to occupy significant visual weight in the left portion of the frame. These lichen-stained rocks, rendered in earth tones that echo the warm sunset palette, ground the image literally and figuratively. Their solidity counterbalances the ethereal qualities of water and sky, creating a dialogue between permanence and impermanence that resonates with the image’s contextual note about departure.

Within the framework of Chapter 2—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—this photograph demonstrates the photographer’s evolving relationship with infrastructure as subject. Where tourist piers offer human presence and activity, this utilitarian jetty provides something more austere: pure form against elemental forces. The viewing platform visible at the jetty’s terminus, occupied by silhouetted figures, offers scale and human connection without sentimentality.

The work succeeds in balancing documentary precision with interpretive mood. It captures a specific engineered structure at a specific coastal location while transcending those particulars to engage broader themes: the paths we walk toward light, the structures we build against erosion, the moments we choose to mark as endings before moving forward.

Pier 60 Pink Sunset

In this contemplative study from Chapter 2 of the Top 100 Journey, the photographer demonstrates a sophisticated command of long-exposure technique to capture the liminal hour where day surrenders to night along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Shot at Clearwater Beach, this sixty-second exposure transforms the volatile surf into a glassy, ethereal plane that mirrors the atmospheric drama unfolding above, while Pier 60 extends into the frame with geometric precision against a sky rendered in deep indigos and persistent pink tones.

Long exposure photograph of Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach at sunset, with pink and purple sky tones reflecting on calm water. — Long exposure pink sunset at Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach.

The composition centers on Pier 60, an iconic structure that extends into the frame with geometric precision. The photographer has positioned himself to capture the pier in its full dimensionality—the wooden pilings create a rhythmic vertical pattern that draws the eye toward the pavilion structure, where warm sodium lights pierce the deepening blue hour. These artificial punctuations of yellow and magenta provide crucial counterpoints to the natural color palette, preventing the image from dissolving entirely into monochromatic twilight. The long exposure has softened the lights into glowing orbs, their reflections stretching across the wet sand in elongated streaks that echo the horizontal thrust of the pier itself.

The technical execution reveals deliberate choices throughout. At f/22, the photographer has prioritized depth of field and the creation of diffraction spikes around the light sources, adding a subtle stellar quality to the illumination. The ISO 100 setting ensures maximum image quality, while the 18mm focal length—shot on a full-frame Nikon D610 with an 18-35mm lens—provides expansive coverage that encompasses both the architectural subject and the vast atmospheric canvas surrounding it. This wider perspective situates the human-made structure within the broader natural context, a recurring tension in his Florida landscapes.

The sky commands nearly two-thirds of the frame, and rightfully so. The textured cloud formations—rendered in deep indigos and cobalt blues—create a dramatic ceiling that seems to press down upon the horizon line where pink and peach tones persist from the recently set sun. This color gradient, from warm horizon to cool zenith, demonstrates the photographer’s understanding of transitional light and his patience in waiting for the precise moment when competing color temperatures achieve balance.

The wet foreground sand serves multiple compositional functions. Its reflective quality doubles the visual information, creating subtle mirror images of the pier lights, while the barely perceptible texture of the beach—preserved despite the long exposure—grounds the image in physical reality. This detail prevents the photograph from becoming overly abstract, maintaining the delicate equilibrium between documentary observation and interpretive vision.

Within the broader context of Chapter 2—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—this image exemplifies the photographer’s evolving relationship with his adopted coastal environment. Where earlier works might emphasize the region’s vibrant daylight character, this photograph engages with Florida’s more contemplative aspects: the quiet moments of transition, the interplay between natural beauty and recreational infrastructure, the way tourism and wilderness coexist along these developed shorelines.

The photograph ultimately succeeds as both technical achievement and aesthetic statement. It captures a specific place at a specific moment while transcending those particulars to evoke the universal experience of standing at the edge of vast water as darkness approaches—a meditation on transience rendered permanent through the camera’s patient eye.

Tampa Night Skyline: The City as Light Performance

The photograph of Tampa’s skyline from the Platt Street Bridge highlights the vibrant interplay between urban light and architecture at night. With a balanced eight-second exposure, it captures the city’s dynamic illumination, showcasing rich colors reflected in water. The composition balances sleek design and texture, embodying Tampa’s architectural evolution.

Nighttime long exposure photograph of the Tampa, Florida skyline viewed from the Platt Street Bridge over the Hillsborough River. — Long exposure night view of the Tampa skyline from the Platt Street Bridge.

This nocturnal view of Tampa’s downtown district, captured from the Platt Street Bridge, represents a pivotal exploration within Chapter 2—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—where the photographer turns his lens toward the performative qualities of urban illumination. Unlike the contemplative stillness of his four-minute dusk exposure, this eight-second capture embraces the vibrancy of the city after dark, revealing Tampa as a stage for artificial light in conversation with architectural form.

The technical approach demonstrates confident command of night photography fundamentals. Shot at 21mm with an aperture of f/10.0, the image achieves comprehensive sharpness while managing the intense point-source lights that define the scene. The eight-second exposure strikes a careful balance: long enough to smooth the water’s surface into a receptive canvas for reflection, yet brief enough to preserve the individual character of each light source without excessive bloom or halation. An ISO of 160 keeps noise minimal while allowing the sensor to capture the full tonal range from the deep navy of the evening sky to the brilliant architectural accent lighting.

The composition is anchored by the dramatically illuminated bridge structure, its cyan LED lighting creating an almost theatrical proscenium that frames the skyline beyond. This choice of vantage point—shooting through the bridge rather than merely of it—adds dimensional complexity, transforming infrastructure into compositional architecture. The repeating vertical supports create rhythm and depth, while the horizontal span provides structural stability to an image otherwise dominated by vertical towers.

What distinguishes this photograph within the photographer’s evolving body of work is its embrace of saturated, polychromatic illumination. The water becomes a liquid prism, fragmenting and multiplying the city’s light signature into vertical streaks of cyan, magenta, amber, and emerald. These reflections possess an almost painterly quality, their chromatic intensity suggesting influence from both contemporary light art and the neon-soaked aesthetics of urban night photography. The contrast between the cool blue bridge lighting and the warmer tones emanating from building facades and street lamps creates visual tension that energizes the entire frame.

The foreground element—a wooden dock structure with visible weathering and industrial hardware—provides crucial textural counterpoint to the sleek glass and steel beyond. This detail grounds the image in physical reality, preventing it from dissolving into pure abstraction despite the transformative effects of artificial light on water. It’s a gesture toward documentary honesty within what might otherwise read as a celebration of spectacle.

Contextually, the inclusion of construction cranes in the left background speaks to Tampa’s ongoing transformation, capturing a specific moment in the city’s architectural timeline. These industrial silhouettes, backlit against the evening sky, add temporal specificity while contributing vertical accents that echo the tower forms they’re constructing.

Within the broader narrative of the Top 100 Journey, this image demonstrates the photographer’s expanding vocabulary for depicting Florida’s urban environments. Where natural landscapes might offer subtlety and organic complexity, cityscapes present their own challenges: managing competing light sources, finding order within density, revealing beauty in the manufactured. His success here lies in recognizing that the contemporary city at night is fundamentally an installation of light—one that reveals itself fully only through the camera’s ability to accumulate and organize photons across time.

Tampa Skyline Long Exposure: A Study in Urban Stillness

This long exposure photograph of Tampa’s skyline captures the city at dusk, highlighting the interplay of light, architecture, and time. With a 241-second exposure, the image transforms the water into a reflective surface, merging urban forms and enhancing their beauty. The composition emphasizes symmetry and color, inviting deeper appreciation of urban landscapes.

Long exposure dusk photograph of the Tampa, Florida skyline with illuminated buildings and reflections on the Hillsborough River. — Long exposure dusk view of the Tampa skyline with river reflections.

Within the framework of Chapter 2—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—this long exposure photograph of Tampa’s downtown core represents a sophisticated meditation on the intersection of natural light, architectural form, and temporal manipulation. Shot at dusk from across the Hillsborough River, the image captures the city skyline in a state of suspended transition, where the photographer’s technical mastery serves to transform a familiar urban vista into something altogether more contemplative.

The technical specifications reveal deliberate choices that speak to the photographer’s evolving understanding of long exposure craft. An exposure time of 241 seconds—over four minutes—has rendered the water’s surface into a mirror-like plane of silk, creating an almost supernatural calm that contrasts sharply with the structural solidity of the buildings above. This extended duration collapses time, erasing the ephemeral movements of waves and current to reveal something closer to the river’s essential character. The choice of an 18mm focal length at f/8.0 provides expansive depth of field while maintaining critical sharpness across the entire frame, from the foreground water to the distant architectural pinnacles.

The composition demonstrates a rigorous formalism. The horizontal bands of bridge infrastructure bisect the frame at roughly the golden ratio, their purple-lit supports creating rhythmic vertical elements that guide the eye through the middle ground. The skyline itself presents as a study in geometric variation: cylindrical towers, angular glass facades, and the distinctive peaked crown of the tallest structure each catch and reflect the fading daylight in subtly different ways. The photographer has positioned himself to capture not merely the buildings themselves, but their perfect inversions in the still water below, creating a symmetry that doubles the visual information while emphasizing the transformative effect of his chosen technique.

Color plays a crucial role in the image’s success. The graduated sky transitions from warm peachy tones at the horizon to deepening blue overhead, providing a naturalistic backdrop that throws the artificial illumination into relief. The purple accent lighting on the bridge structure introduces an unexpected chromatic note, while the warm reflections—amber, gold, and rose—animate the lower half of the frame with points of concentrated light. This interplay between cool atmospheric tones and warm architectural lighting creates visual tension that keeps the eye engaged despite the overall compositional stillness.

The small electronic device visible in the immediate foreground—likely the camera’s intervalometer—serves as an unintentional but effective scale reference, grounding the viewer’s perspective and subtly acknowledging the technical apparatus required to achieve such results. It’s a moment of transparency that connects the finished image back to its means of production.

Within the broader arc of the Top 100 Journey project, this Tampa skyline represents the photographer’s deepening engagement with Florida’s urban environments as subjects worthy of the same sustained attention he brings to natural landscapes. The long exposure technique, applied here to a cityscape, reveals patterns and qualities invisible to ordinary perception—the fundamental architecture of light, the liquidity of solid water, the strange beauty of modern cities seen through the lens of time. It’s work that asks viewers to reconsider what they think they know about familiar places, finding in them unexpected dimensions of visual poetry.

Cocoa Beach Pier Sunrise: Architecture in Dialogue with the Atlantic

The photograph of Cocoa Beach Pier captures a sunrise through meticulous long exposure, transforming the landmark into a study of light and architecture. The image emphasizes structural details, blending engineering with nature. It highlights Florida’s coastal identity, embodying resilience and the interplay between human construction and natural forces against the backdrop of a serene seascape.

Long exposure sunrise photograph of the Cocoa Beach Pier in Florida, showing wooden pilings, warm light on the horizon, and reflections on wet sand. — Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean at the Cocoa Beach Pier, captured in a long exposure.

Within Chapter 2 of the Top 100 Journey—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—this sunrise study of the Cocoa Beach Pier represents the photographer’s engagement with one of Florida’s most iconic coastal structures. Captured with deliberate technical restraint, the image transforms a familiar landmark into a meditation on light, time, and the intersection of human construction with natural forces.

The photograph was executed during the liminal hour of sunrise, that brief window when the sun emerges from the Atlantic horizon, casting warm, directional light across the scene. The photographer positioned himself beneath the pier’s substantial wooden framework, creating a composition that emphasizes the structure’s engineering and architectural presence. The pilings—weathered cylinders marked by barnacles and tidal wear—march in rhythmic repetition from foreground to background, their reflections doubling in the wet sand left by receding waves. This repetition creates visual cadence, leading the viewer’s eye through the layered space beneath the pier toward the glowing horizon.

The technical execution reveals calculated decision-making. Shooting at f/16 with a ten-second exposure on ISO 100, the photographer achieves several objectives simultaneously: the narrow aperture ensures sharpness throughout the deep composition, from the foreground sand texture to the distant pier house; the extended exposure time smooths the ocean into a misty, ethereal plane, contrasting with the solid geometry of wood and metal; and the low ISO preserves maximum image quality in the challenging dynamic range between shadowed understructure and brilliant sunrise. The 20mm focal length on a full-frame Nikon D610 provides sufficient width to capture the pier’s span while maintaining rectilinear integrity in the vertical pilings.

What distinguishes this work is its treatment of architectural form within the natural environment. Rather than photographing the pier as a tourist attraction—a vantage point from which to view the ocean—the photographer inverts the relationship, making the structure itself the primary subject while the seascape becomes supporting element. The underside perspective reveals construction details typically ignored: diagonal cross-bracing, the density of support columns, the engineering solutions required to anchor a recreational structure in shifting sand and relentless surf. The barnacle-encrusted pilings become textural studies, documenting the biological claim that marine life makes on human infrastructure.

The color palette reinforces the temporal specificity of the moment. Golden light bathes the right side of the frame, warming the wooden planks and casting long shadows that define the pier’s three-dimensional form. The left side remains in relative shadow, creating tonal gradation that adds depth and volume. The sky transitions from warm cream near the sun to deeper blue overhead, while the smoothed water reflects this gradient, creating visual harmony between sky and sea.

Within the broader context of Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes, this image represents the photographer’s recognition that Florida’s coastal identity includes not only pristine natural beauty but also the structures through which residents and visitors experience that environment. The Cocoa Beach Pier, a mid-century landmark rebuilt multiple times after hurricane damage, embodies Florida’s complicated relationship with its shoreline—simultaneously celebrating and challenging the power of the Atlantic.

The photograph ultimately documents persistence: of structures rebuilt after storms, of daily tides that reshape the beach, of light that returns each morning to illuminate the coast.

Tampa Panoramic at Night: A Study in Urban Luminescence

The panoramic long exposure photograph of downtown Tampa captures its urban beauty at night from the University of Tampa. This 2014 composition emphasizes artificial light’s role in depicting the cityscape, blending architectural detail and varied illumination. It challenges perceptions of Florida, asserting urban environments as significant alongside natural landscapes, showcasing the photographer’s technical skill and versatility.

Panoramic long exposure composite of downtown Tampa, Florida, photographed at night from across the Hillsborough River, showing illuminated skyscrapers, waterfront reflections, and dramatic clouds. — Panoramic long exposure view of downtown Tampa at night, captured from the UT campus across the Hillsborough River.

In this commanding 2014 panoramic composite, the photographer captures downtown Tampa’s nocturnal identity with technical precision and compositional sophistication. Selected for Chapter 2 of his Top 100 Journey—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—the image represents a pivotal moment in his exploration of urban environments, where the built landscape becomes a canvas for light, reflection, and architectural rhythm.

The photograph was executed from the University of Tampa campus, positioned across the Hillsborough River to establish both physical and aesthetic distance from the subject. This vantage point proves strategic: the river functions not merely as foreground but as an active participant in the composition, its surface transforming into a liquid mirror that doubles the visual impact of the skyline. The long exposure technique smooths the water into a reflective plane, allowing the city’s illumination to paint streaks of gold, pink, and violet across the lower third of the frame.

What distinguishes this work within the chapter’s broader narrative is its treatment of artificial light as a defining characteristic of place. While Florida’s natural landscapes—its coastlines, wetlands, and subtropical flora—typically dominate photographic representations of the state, this image asserts the validity of the urban experience as equally worthy of documentation. The photographer approaches Tampa’s skyline not as an intrusion upon nature but as a distinct ecosystem of glass, steel, and light, possessing its own aesthetic logic and visual poetry.

The panoramic format extends the horizontal axis, emphasizing the sprawl and variety of Tampa’s architectural character. Twin residential towers anchor the composition’s center, their construction-phase lighting creating vertical counterpoints to the horizontal sweep of the skyline. To the right, a cylindrical high-rise glows amber, its illuminated facade creating a beacon within the frame. The building adorned with pink-magenta accent lighting introduces chromatic variation, preventing the warm-toned dominance from becoming monotonous. This diversity of illumination—commercial, residential, decorative—reveals the stratified nature of urban nightscapes, where different lighting purposes create unintentional visual harmony.

The technical execution merits attention. Creating a panoramic composite requires not only multiple exposures stitched seamlessly but also consistent exposure values across frames and careful management of the long exposure duration. The photographer balances ambient light with the stronger point sources of building illumination, preventing blown highlights while retaining detail in darker architectural elements. The clouded sky, rendered in motion-blurred copper tones, provides textural contrast to the sharp geometry below.

Within the context of the Top 100 Journey, this image demonstrates the photographer’s versatility in approaching Florida’s varied visual territories. While subsequent work in this chapter may explore the state’s natural drama—storm systems over the Gulf, the crystalline waters of its springs, the atmospheric density of its wetlands—this urban portrait establishes his comfort with diverse subject matter and technical approaches. The photograph argues for Tampa’s inclusion in the visual narrative of Florida, asserting that the state’s identity encompasses both wilderness and metropolitan sophistication.

The image remains a testament to the possibilities inherent in patient observation and technical mastery, transforming a familiar skyline into a study of light, color, and urban form.

The Gulf Pier: A Foundation in Light and Structure

Greg Urbano’s “Landscapes in HDR” captures the Gulf Fishing Pier at Fort de Soto Park, reflecting his artistic development in photography. Utilizing a Nikon D7100, he balances composition with HDR techniques, achieving naturalistic vibrancy without over-processing. The image embodies a pivotal moment in skill mastery, exploring the connection between environment and human creation.

HDR landscape photograph of the Gulf Fishing Pier at Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County, Florida, extending over calm water under a bright sky, taken with a Nikon D7100 at 14mm. — A 2013 HDR landscape photograph of the Gulf Fishing Pier at Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County, Florida.

In the early stages of any photographer’s journey, there exists a pivotal moment when technical curiosity converges with artistic vision. Greg Urbano’s “Landscapes in HDR” from 2013 captures precisely this convergence—a photograph that speaks to the fundamentals of seeing while revealing the seeds of a maturing artistic voice.

The Gulf Fishing Pier at Fort de Soto Park presents itself as an exercise in classical composition, yet the image transcends mere documentation. Shot with a Nikon D7100 at 14mm, the photographer embraced the distortion inherent in ultra-wide-angle photography, using it not as a limitation but as a tool for emphasis. The pier’s concrete pathway stretches toward the horizon with geometric insistence, its weathered surface textured with salt stains and age—details that anchor the ethereal quality of the surrounding environment.

What distinguishes this work within the context of Chapter 1—Beginnings is the deliberate exploration of HDR processing, a technique that dominated landscape photography in the early 2010s. Rather than falling into the trap of over-processing that plagued much HDR work of this era, Urbano demonstrates restraint. The luminous gradations in the sky—from deep azure to wispy white—retain a naturalistic quality while revealing detail across an impressive tonal range. The turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico maintain their vibrancy without crossing into hypersaturation, suggesting an eye already sensitive to the boundaries between enhancement and artifice.

The technical choices reveal a photographer building his fundamental vocabulary. The aperture of ƒ/8.0 ensures critical sharpness from the foreground concrete to the distant structures, while the fast shutter speed of 1/400s freezes the subtle motion of the scene—likely the flutter of distant flags or the movement of the few figures visible along the pier. At ISO 100, the image maintains clarity in its textures, from the horizontal railings that create rhythmic lines to the architectural shelters that punctuate the composition’s middle ground.

What makes this photograph significant in understanding Urbano’s artistic evolution is not its perfection but its purposefulness. The nearly symmetrical composition, the careful attention to the leading lines, the consideration of how architectural elements frame the natural environment—these are the building blocks upon which more complex visual narratives are constructed. The weekly visits to this location mentioned in his notes speak to something essential in photographic development: the practice of returning, of seeing the same subject under different conditions, of learning through repetition.

The landscape itself offers something eternal—the meeting point of human construction and natural expanse. The pier extends confidently into the Gulf, a gesture of connection between land and water, between the photographer’s position and the infinite horizon. In capturing this scene, Urbano was not merely documenting a favorite location but engaging with fundamental questions about how we frame our relationship to place and space.

Within the broader context of “Beginnings,” this image exemplifies the necessary stage of mastering craft before transcending it. The imperfect attempts referenced in the chapter description are not failures but essential experiments. Here, we witness a photographer learning to see in high dynamic range, to compose with geometric precision, and to capture the luminous quality of coastal light—all foundational skills that would inform the more sophisticated work to come.

This is where journeys begin: in the clarity of intention, the discipline of practice, and the recognition that every master was once a student of light.