Tampa Bay Waterfront Workers - Working Water Photo Project

Tampa Bay is often presented as a postcard: bright water, open horizons, and a shoreline made for looking out from. But the bay is also a working landscape—a network of crews, vessels, repair yards, divers, channels, engines, steel, salt, and daily labor. Here, water is not just scenery. It is livelihood, passage, hazard, and home. I’m Austin Strickland, a Tampa Bay photographer, former Navy corpsman, and scientific diver. Working in demanding environments taught me to move carefully, earn trust, and look beyond the surface. That perspective shapes Working Water, my ongoing photographic project about the people and places where industry meets the bay. I’m documenting this world from docks, working vessels, repair yards, and below the surface—tracing the knowledge and endurance that keep the region moving. I’m especially interested in hearing from people whose work may not already be represented in my network: commercial fishermen, tug and tow crews, marine contractors, shipwrights, welders, mechanics, dockworkers, port and terminal workers, environmental crews, salvage operators, boatbuilders, marina staff, and others whose livelihoods depend on Tampa Bay. If you work on the waterfront—or have spent your life around its docks, boats, yards, channels, and working communities—I’d like to hear from you. Please share this with someone whose story belongs in this project. What does this water mean to you? What does your work demand? What do people rarely see? Your story may help shape the next chapter of Working Water. Learn more or get in touch: https://lnkd.in/ecvuJ5GV