Photos: The Next Generation (Film Edition)

I put up a post the other day with some photos I took when I went to the ocean and Plum Island. At the time I said there would be a film edition of the post to follow and this is it.

Sort of.

I shot two full rolls of film. One 35mm and one 120. I also finished off the last few shots from an old roll of 35mm. I got them all developed and the scans came back the other day and last night I uploaded them all to Flickr and now it’s time for another post here.

Sort of. I am saving the 120 shots for another post. These are just 35mm pics. I’m also thinking of trying to sort of mirror the previous post. This plan probably won’t last for long, but let’s see.

The sunrise view sort of sucked, but I got a little glimpse of it. This is my Nikon FG-20 shooting my first ever roll of Lomography 800. I like the way the sun flares. At least the tiny bit of the sun we could actually see.

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I think my plan to follow the first post is already dead… maybe not. I think this is from Salisbury Beach but I’m not sure. This is from my Pentax K1000 shooting Kentmere 400.

(note: on second look, I’m pretty sure this is Hampton Beach when the digital post was still at Salisbury Beach. Let’s not worry about that now though)

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This next picture is crap, but speaking of sun flares! Woah!

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Here’s one that I took on both film and digital. I can’t tell which is better. Maybe the film?

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Another that I can’t tell whether it is better or worse than the digital version. This was with a 50mm lens and the digital was with an 85mm so the crop is different. Is crop the right word? I don’t think so.

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The digital version of this is way better. Oh well.

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Shooting black and white at the beach seems sort of silly, but I kinda dig it.

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That moment when the sun came out… nice.

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I thought maybe the light was better at this spot when I was shooting film than it was for digital. Maybe not.

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Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. Please don’t explode, m’kay?

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For the birds, at Hampton Beach.

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More birds. I don’t think I have enough bird-centric film pics to stay on track with the previous digital post. Sorry.

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Plum Island airport.

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Why do I always stop here on the way out to the lighthouse? I haven’t a clue.

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The Merrimack River from Plum Island.

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Dig that blue water.

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And by this point both 35mm cameras were out of film and I was not going to take the time to reload so this is where this post ends. There will be another post from this day that will have the 120 film shots. That’s going to be grouped with some pics I took in Boston last week. I’ll explain later.

Photos

It’s been a while but I did something mildly creative this morning. Not really, but a little bit.

For the first time since August I filled up a back pack with cameras and went outside a-shootin’. Digital, film, the works.

More often than not when I start feeling the photo-takin’ need I head to the ocean at sunrise. That’s what I did today. As sunrises go it sort of blew chunks. The forecast I read last night said it would be clear skies at sunrise today. It was not. Not even close. There was a little gap between the horizon and the cloud cover that sort of let me see the sun when it rose, but it was a pretty underwhelming view. Thanks to our friend the Nikon Z5 with the cheap-ish 85mm Chinese made lens I can show you what I’m talking about…

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At least the waves looked cool. They were about as high as this little corner of the Atlantic Ocean gets.

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There’s our friend, Mr Sun. It was trying its best to break through.

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My sunrise stop this morning was at Salisbury Beach which is on the Massachusetts side of the state line. I was planning on starting at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire, but I needed to stop for gas and I knew there were a few stations on the way to Salisbury so I wouldn’t have to go out of my way. Also, Salisbury is closer to home so it gave me more time to take care of things before the sun came up.

After a few minutes on the beach I wandered around the area a little bit looking for things to shoot… and I ended up more or less shooting the same things that I almost always shoot when I go there. Oh well.

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Someday I will be there when these lights are actually on.

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Artsy chair pic alert:

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Lame life preserver pic alert:

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Every now and then the sun would break through the clouds and we’d get a few seconds of glorious golden hour light but the clouds kept getting in the way and blocking the sun. It was a little frustrating.

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After a few minutes of wandering around I got in the car and drove up to Hampton Beach. That’s two towns North across the New Hampshire state line. I stopped at a usual fishing boat view. Again, the sun kept breaking through and going away. I think I got some good light here using one of the film cameras, but not so much using the digital.

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As usual, let’s all say hello to the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plan before it blows up and melts everyone.

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Out on the beach itself, would it surprise anyone to learn that this pic was a total accident? It probably shouldn’t.

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The seagulls were my friends today. They mostly didn’t run away from me.

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Again, when the sun cooperated the view was fantastic.

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I left Hampton Beach and headed South to Plum Island to say hello to the Merrimack River and the Plum Island Lighthouse. I made the obligatory stop at the airfield as well.

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By this time the sky was pretty blue. The clouds were losing the battle.

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Is the water at Plum Island the bluest water on Earth? It’s gotta be in the running, right?

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I mean… seriously… just look at that.

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I don’t know anything about this boat except that I shoot it every time I come here.

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And in closing… the Plum Island Lighthouse… which has to be the most underwhelming lighthouse in the world. I mean it’s not even as tall as the trees that surround it. It’s also not even on the water. It’s a little ways down the street from the river. How effective can it be?

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There you have it. A few highlights from this morning’s wanderings. I also shot some film. I had a black and white roll in my FG-20 that was loaded back in August and still had a few shots left (Kentmere 400). Last night I put a roll of Lomography 800 into Dad’s K1000 and a roll of Kodak Gold 200 into my medium format camera. I finished all three rolls and mailed them off to the lab to get them developed. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long to share the film version of this masterpiece of a post. Be on the lookout.

Will there be another photowalk tomorrow? Depends on the weather. I am off work again on Tuesday too so there could be something then, again if the weather cooperates. Hopefully it will be better than today but who knows.

It felt good to just go outside and shoot stuff, even if it was really cold on the water. Summer is coming. Maybe some day soon I’ll be able to repeat this experience without wearing a winter jacket. That would be sweet, huh?

Morning Photos

Finally! The sky was clear at sunrise on a weekend. I took four, count ’em four, cameras out with me. My digital, Nikon Z5, my two 35mm, Dad’s Pentax K1000 and my Nikon FG-20, and my new/ebay medium format experiment, Lomo Lubitel 166 Universal.

The 35mm cameras each had a roll already started. My goal was to finish them off. The Lubitel… what the hell, Robert. I’ve had the camera for months and had not completed even a single test roll. I had already messed up the first roll by over advancing it once and blowing a shot, and then flashing the film when the camera back popped open on its own once. My goal was to finish that roll and then put a second roll through and hope that something worked on one of them enough to let me know if the camera actually works or not. Besides all of that film fun, I just wanted to take a bunch of pics with my Z5 because it’s super fun.

I completed all of those goals. I now have four rolls of film to develop. I’ll place an order today and ship them out tomorrow. The two 120 rolls were fucked up even more than I already knew. I didn’t have any trouble with the second one… or so I thought. The camera can be setup to shoot in 6×6 format or in 4.5×6. I was using the 4.5×6 numbers for advancing the film after each (well… most… there are going to be a bunch of double exposures because I am too stupid to operate a manual camera, I guess) but upon further review, the camera is clearly set up to shoot a square format… so every single shot is going to overlap. Moron.

Anyway… here are a bunch of digital pics.

Hampton Beach, NH at sunrise!

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These are from a spot in North Hampton, NH, just a little north of Hampton Beach.

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These are from a little spot on route 1A just south of Hampton Beach. I don’t know if it is in Seabrook or in the town of Hampton Beach, but you can see the Seabrook nuclear power plant from here so… kaboom.

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After that spot I drove home, but didn’t go home. I went to the Spicket Falls Dam in downtown Methuen. We’ve had massive rains over the last week so the river was roaring.

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At this point I still had a few shots left in two of the film cameras so I went over to Greycourt Park where I got my brand new sneakers soaking wet by walking around in the grass. It was nice.

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What is that baseball doing there? Who left that behind?

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And there you have it. Finally, a photography kinda morning. You would think this would hold me over for a little while at least, but nope. I want to go out again right now. Right Freakin’ Now.

Seven Rolls

Seven rolls of film. All downloaded, sorted, cleaned up, and uploaded to Flickr. Here are a few randoms from the haul.

From Burlington, VT. I don’t remember the name of the bookstore.

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From the Atlantic Ocean in Hampton Beach, NH. Splash.

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From the happiest place on Earth.

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From Animal Kingdom… unless it’s from The Last of Us.

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From the lake surrounded by the Beach Club, the Yacht Club, and the Boardwalk hotels in Disney World.

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With Kylo Ren at Galaxy’s Edge in Hollywood Studios.

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From Rockefeller Center in New York, NY.

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And in closing, my new favorite photograph.

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First Day of Winter

Well… it’s winter again. Again. Literally winter, as opposed to the last three plus months which was figuratively winter. Literal winter runs from December to March. Here in New England, figurative winter runs from September 1st through sometime in late June. The upside of the first day of winter is that from now on the days start getting longer. The downside is that it’s going to get colder and more awful with each passing day, and it’s going to take so long for the days to get longer enough that it matters that it won’t make any real difference for months.

I hate winter.

December 21st puts us in the home stretch for xmas. I am still waiting for the amazonians to deliver a couple of things so the wrapping is still not complete. I have to go out and pick up a few things today as well. That includes some food supplies for xmas eve, xmas dinner, and our slightly delayed annual xmas eve party which happens on the Sunday after xmas this year. I also need to bring my work-holiday gift to my sister’s today so we can have it with xmas dinner.

I need to play guitar but there probably won’t be time for it. I need to go out and take pictures of stuff but the weather likely won’t let me. Ugh.

Lots to do, but I can’t do anything until I clean the tiny amount of snow we got yesterday off of the cars and the driveway. Ugh.

I hate winter. Remember that time a few years ago when we went to Florida in January and the weather was warm? Can we maybe do that again?

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Dad’s Camera

I took this with Dad’s camera last summer. Or was it the summer before last. I don’t remember. It was at Nubble Lighthouse in Maine.

I took Dad’s camera to New York this past weekend and with the exception of a couple of pics with my iPhone it was the only camera I used. It’ll probably be years before I get the film developed though, so you’re just going to have to be patient. You and me both.

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Good Family Weekend

From a family point of view, this weekend was wonderful. From a creative projects point of view though this weekend didn’t happen. No music, no photo projects beyond just snapping a few with my phone.

I literally would not change a thing, but maybe over the next week I’ll do some creative stuff. Just to balance the karmic scales, you know?

Here’s a film photo to hold me over for tonight.

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