After a discussion at work about rivers drying up due to the drought, I paid a visit to The Mighty Spicket River in Salem, NH today. It seems a little better than the last time I checked on it, but still super, crazy low.
13/365
Not 13/365 but an extra just in case.
I put the kit lens that came with my D90 when I bought it in January of 2010 back onto the camera for the first time in years. Of the three lenses I own it is by far the worst, but I figured if I was going to go camera nuts I might as well go nuts with all the toys I own.
After my less than stellar sunrise trip to the beach (get it???) I drove over to Lowell, Massachusetts, the former home of the Lowell Lock Monsters, to wander around their rather depressed down town area in search of Cobblestone streets. I found two off of Market Street. I took pics of other things too though, so don’t worry.
Exposure compensation set to -2.
I tried to keep the homeless guy out of the shot. I failed miserably.
Cobblestones, babie
Park
I took a handful of shots outside of the Trolley Museum. I was there to get a shot of the clock tower across the street (city hall?) but I got a few train-related pics while I was there.
That’s city hall, isn’t it? Pretty sure it is.
Pretty sure I’ve eaten at Cobblestones before. I think it was good enough to live up to it’s reputation, but what is the building with the columns?
Train with a bonus archway.
The second of two cobblestone streets.
Cobblestones, babie
Outdoor dining. I was wearing a mask too.
Mill buildings. One of Lowell’s other main attractions, along with canals and cobblestone streets and economic depression and (at one point in the past) crack cocaine.
Back to the first cobblestone street
And one final shot of the sun.
There are a lot more things to see in Lowell, even just in the downtown area. I’ll go back. Next time I will try to focus on the river more, and maybe some bridges.
I guess we can call this an upside of digital vs film. I don’t have to wait to see that this morning’s sunrise pics look like shit. I’m not sure what the deal was, meteorologically/atmospherically speaking.
The sky was super hazy. Everything looked like it took a bath in white out. I was expecting that the sun wouldn’t break through. I took a couple of long exposures and ended up with blank white images. I don’t know. I’m just glad I didn’t waste any film. If I had a film camera with me I wouldn’t have used it. I knew these were going to suck.
The good part was that the waves were much bigger than I usually see. The additional bad news was that there were WAY more people than I usually see. The metal detector dudes kept getting in the shots.
Fortunately the sun did break through the haze, even if nothing else did.
I kept fighting the urge to switch back to Auto mode to see if it made any difference. I also kept turning around and shooting stuff behind me and to the sides.
I said I was going to take a couple of pics of the surrounding area, and given the number of people I tried to take a weird, winding, stealthy route back to the car.
10/365
After I left the beach I went to Lowell and spent half an hour or so walking around Market Street. Those pics are coming soon. I think I’ll have some breakfast first though.
Ever since we had the garage remodeled into a bedroom suite I have been wanting to get a comfy chair in there to give us a little reading nook. As of today it has finally happened.
I put my f4, 55-200 lens back on the D90. It already had the polarizing filter on it, but I put the warming filter on it too. Two filters at once? Crazy. (the warming filter will likely be removed shortly)
Flickr has been acting up since I uploaded these at lunch time. Hopefully the worst is behind us and these will embed into the post. Fingers crossed.
I bought a bunch of filters once many years ago. I think I wanted a polarizing filter and the only inexpensive one I could get was in a set. I never really looked at any of the other filters though. Last night I thought, what the hell and checked out what I had.
One of them is called a warming filter. What the hell is that, I thought. I put it on the camera this morning and gave it a go.
First, no warming filter…
Second, with a warming filter…
8/365
Yeah… okay.
I read something about it having an effect on skin tones. We’ll see. I’ll keep it on for a while and let it change my life for a while.
Inside the Red Head's Head 