The Sun

You see, this is all I wanted to do…

The sun rises in the East:

The sun sets in the West:

Get it?

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/the-sun.mp3%20

Sunrise at Salisbury Beach

Every weekend night at bed time for the last few months I’ve been checking the weather forecast for Salisbury Beach. Any time it called for clear skies I would tell my beloved wife that if I found myself awake about an hour before the sunrise I was going to make the half hour drive to the beach and take a few pics. The idea was to have sunrise pics to complement the sunset pics we took at Mission Beach in San Diego last year. Because, you know, I am a total dork like that. It never happened. I even set the alarm clock a couple of times, but I just never got myself out of bed.

This morning I woke up at about 3:30am and never fell back to sleep. The forecast called for clear skies. At 5:20 or so I figured, I’m awake anyway… what the hell, right? I also needed to be up early to take the Nissan to the dealer for some routine work. So I just did it. I went to the ocean and snapped some pics.

Here’s a good chunk of them.

I was there with about 20-25 minutes to spare, and the sky was bright enough to see without any trouble. I killed time by snapping waves and sand and everything.

Check out that sky. I mean, right?

I wasn’t the only nerd on the beach. There was a couple to my right who were posing a stuffed animal in front of the ocean. There was another group of three people hanging out to my left who were just visiting and waiting for the sun to arrive. There were also some folks out on the water, apparently.

I mean, the sky, am I right?

Even though the sun still hadn’t come up yet, I was digging the way the sky reflected off of the wet sand.

The Atlantic may be a total wimp compared to the Pacific, but she still snuck in a few decent waves.

The birds are flying South for the Winter. The jerks.

This guy doesn’t seem to be in a rush to get down South.

I guess there was stuff behind me too.

There’s one little spot on the horizon that’s getting brighter…

…Is that the sun I see?…

…Yes! There she is!

The guest of honor.

Good morning, Massachusetts!

One thing I remember about our Pacific sunsets is that the sun was not too terribly bright when it reached the horizon. You could look right at it, no problem. That was not the case today. It got really bright, really fast. I put the neutral density filter on not long after the sun first poked it’s head above the water. Sunglasses for the camera, if you will.

The farther out I zoomed, the less light made it in.

At this point the sun was well and truly up, and it was time to head to the Nissan dealer. Check off another of the goofy ideas I have for photo shoots. Done and done.

30 Seconds at the Ocean

I finally did it. I’ve been living in Massachusetts for my whole life and I’d never watched the sun come up over the ocean. I’ve seen it go down over the Pacific ocean, but I’ve never seen it rise over the Atlantic.

Until today.

Sunrise was at 6:37am. I was standing on the beach with the camera on the tripod at about 6:15. What to do while I wait? How about play with some more 30 second exposures? Okay!

The sun was still below the horizon, but it was bright enough that I needed the neutral density filter. Without it, the pics were a white washout. With it, they were too dark. Oh well.

I was just goofing around, so I didn’t bother leveling the tripod when I changed the direction it was pointing in. That’s why the next too are a little like the old Batman TV show from the 60’s. Forgive me.

More pics to come…

Camera Accessory Acquisition Syndrom

I had the bug again today. That mean old camera accessory acquisition bug. I had to feed it. I had to scratch the buy-stuff-for-my-camera itch.

I bought a remote shutter switch and a tripod. I went el cheap-o on both of them. I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy. The remote is a Rocketfish wireless, and the tripod is a Dynex 60″ Universal.

I set the tripod up in the dining room and took a few pics, including one where the shutter was open for more than a minute. Droooool.

I then took it outside, just around sunset.

The remote didn’t work outside. It worked inside, then I took it outside and it didn’t work, then I took it back in and it did work. ummm… I need to figure that out. It was really cheap, so if it’s an indoor toy then so be it. I pointed the camera at the woods and took some blind shots without being able to focus well.

Zoomed out

Zoomed in

I don’t see any camera shake, do you? I also pointed it at the sky for a half minute and it seems pretty steady.

So far so good.

Time to Buy a Chain Saw

On Wednesday or Thursday night we had a nasty little thunderstorm come rolling through town. The wind was really high and the rain was coming down in buckets. It didn’t last long, but it was pretty tough while it was here. At one point my wife and I were sitting next to each other and I heard a loud crack. I said to her that I think a tree limb just came down in the back yard. When morning came there was nothing.

Until yesterday morning.

It must have hung on as long as it could and then came down when no one was around to notice. I saw this for the first time shortly after waking up on Saturday morning. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to move this one on my own. I might have to invest in a chain saw (and then be too terrified of it to ever use it).

Nerd boy tries to get all clever with his macro setting.

This is the spot it broke off of.

Bird with Horrible Table Manners

Check out this pig of a bird.

At first he was all calm and cool. Sitting there with a seed in his beak.

Then out of nowhere he gets all rude and flings a seed off of the feeder, onto the ground. How uncivilized.

Then he just goes nuts and flings a whole pile of food to the ground. He’s just doing it to piss me off at this point.

Now he’s just sitting there all smug, trying to act like he’s innocent or something. What a jerk!

Yeah, you better run away. Don’t let me catch you acting like a sloppy pig at my bird feeder again!

Merrimack River Pics

I took my camera with me when I dropped the kids off this morning. I had a couple of hours before I had to punch into work, so I went to a little park along the Merrimack river so that I could play with some more 30 second exposure pics. There wasn’t much to work with as I don’t have a real tripod (the thing I have is only about 18 inches tall or so) and the river bank sloped down pretty severely on the few places that were clear of brush enough to get a pic through. There was also a lot of dog shit everywhere, sad to say. There was one spot with a set of wooden steps that formed a sort of boat launch. I sat my fat ass there (after checking to make sure it was feces free) and snapped off four pics. That’s it. I wasn’t really feeling it today.

Here they are…

Nothing special. It probably would have looked better if the sky weren’t clouded over. Maybe partly cloudy, blue sky with big puffy white clouds. Maybe it would have looked better with something like that reflecting off the river. Who knows. Maybe I’ll get a real tripod and try again. Who knows.

Scariest Thing Ever

I took my camera with me this morning when I dropped off the kids. I wanted to go to a spot on the Merrimack River and take a few long exposures. More on that later.

When I got home I had a little bag of trash in the car. I took it over to the side of the garage where the trash barrels currently live. I saw the scariest thing in the universe. It pretty much guarantees that no one in my family is ever going to go outside again.

It is HUGE!

It’s just hanging there, seemingly in mid-air. I don’t know how I’m going to kill it. Maybe I should cave in on all of my personal convictions and go buy a gun. I think that might do the trick… maybe.

I’m not afraid of spiders, but I sure did a double take when I saw this monster.

Random Flickr Pic

I like candles. Wanna make something of it?

One More from the Concord River

Yesterday I posted the long exposures from my two stops on the Concord river. Here’s the best of the rest.

Under the Old North Bridge.

Up stream from the bridge.

A spider web that I couldn’t really get focused on.

There was a tour group there as well as a number of other people visiting. I tried not to get them in the shots, but I sometimes failed.

This is a 30 second exposure that I missed yesterday. I was hoping the tour group by the British monument would have moved around more. Oh well.

Again, some damn tourist got into my shot.

The “Shot Heard Round the World” was fired over that bridge.

I’m not sure how much, if any, of this bridge still remains from 1775. Let’s just pretend it’s all original, shall we?

The Minuteman monument.

The… other monument. I have a picture on Flickr somewhere that includes the inscription. It’s right next to a memorial to the fallen British soldiers, so I assume that’s the side the Redcoats were on when the shooting started. The Minuteman is on the other side of the bridge, so that must be where the colonists were lined up.

I saw a few kayaks, but they were kind enough to stay out of my damn shots.

I like the look of the water here.

And now we move on to the Middlesex Canal in Billerica, MA. My phone rang twice as I was standing here and I didn’t hear it at all. It’s a pretty loud little water fall. I don’t recall there being so much debris here the last time I visited.

The water dropped over the falls and hit something right there that made it spray straight back up again. I couldn’t tell what it was.

The North Billerica train station on the MBTA Lowell line is right around the corner from here, and there’s a renovated mill building with a bunch of businesses. There are a couple of abandoned buildings too.