by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Most everyone loves the new photos of Jacksonville that adorn the walls of the City Council offices. From the shots of the river to the zoo to the Jacksonville Beach Pier, Bryant Jennings has covered and shot the whole city.
Jennings owns StarTech Computer Center and it’s his prints that City Council President Michael Corrigan liked enough to place on the walls of the Council offices. There are 35 prints, but hundreds of digital photos were originally taken.
“I took about 1,500 pictures,” said Jennings, who has done work for Corrigan in the private sector before and attends church with the Council president. “They are not evenly distributed, but there are 14 Council districts and there is at least one from each district. It was a collective process and each one doesn’t stand alone. The idea was to get a good cross section of the city.”
The process was time-consuming, too. Many times Jennings planned to shoot a particular area only to have the weather not cooperate.
“It took weeks. The weather, the sun, the timing — all of that had to go into the play,” he said. “I had to go back several times to some places because the light wasn’t right.”
Jennings is up-front about the fact he isn’t a professional photographer and the City didn’t pay him as one. The City did pay Jennings to reproduce the images he owned and it was a project he enjoyed.
“It was fun. I have lived in Jacksonville all my life and it was neat to see other areas of town that I hadn’t been to,” said Jennings.