Today I’m introducing a new planned weekly feature, the “Travel Tuesdays” post (thanks to Chris for the name!). My idea is to spotlight something about a place that we’ve traveled to on our Plan G adventure.  To kick things off, I’m going to ease into the theme with an almost-at-sunset view of the Melbourne Marina.  It’s what we can see from the balcony of our vacation-apartment rental condo.

Or, more accurately, it’s what we can see through the glass doors that lead onto our balcony.  It’s super hot here at the moment – today the real temps were well over 90ºF (32º C), with a heat index over 100ºF (nearly 40º C) — so at the moment we are enjoying the view while staying inside the air-conditioning of the condo.    That’s the challenge of visiting Melbourne, Florida in August – it’s hot, hot, hot here.

The other challenge is that it is often storming these days, with thunderstorms popping up a lot, and the sky turning gray and cloudy pretty quickly. But when there is even just a bit of sun in the sky over the marina it can be quite lovely, with all the interesting clouds and light.

The images below are two different versions of the same photo, which I took while standing outside on the ground below our balcony.  I have adjusted the contrast and brightness/darkness in version #2 of the photo, to bring out the intensity of the colors that occurred naturally, which are shown in photo #1. The skies last night unfortunately didn’t stay clear enough long enough for the colors to darken naturally while the light on the marina got darker.  So I helped things along while working on it back in my air-conditioned digital darkroom; the contrast and vibrancy of the colors have been increased, but photo #2 has not been colorized.

See what you think.

Melbourne Marina almost at Sunset

Melbourne Marina almost at Sunset #2