Hampton Beach Non-Sunrise

I got up and out of the house in time to get to Hampton Beach for the sunrise. The whole drive up I didn’t see a single cloud. Perfectly clear skies. I was feeling pretty optimistic about getting better results than the last time I went to the ocean.

Nope. It was an even worse fail than last time. There was one thick, ugly, narrow band of clouds sitting exactly on the horizon. It blocked the sunrise completely. Fail Fail Fail. I also set my ISO really high when I took the picture of the cat I posted last night and I forgot to lower it. That screwed up my long exposure attempts. I was just winning left and right.

This is when I remembered to fix my ISO.

All in all… a waste of a trip… again.

Cloudy Sunrise

Usually I don’t go to the ocean for sunrise pics unless the forecast calls for nothing but sun. I don’t want any risk of driving all that way and then not being able to see the sun break the water. After a few successes though, I wanted to try going on a day with some clouds in the hopes of seeing how the sun makes the clouds change color. Sunday’s forecast called for partly cloudy.

It was almost a bust. “Partly” turned out to be “almost completely” except for a little band of sky right on the horizon. If not for that, I would have been screwed. As it was, I only had a few minutes with a visible sun before it hid behind the partly=completely.

Sunrise Windows

I may have mentioned it before, but I want to live in one of those houses that the windows light up when the sun rises. I’m sure that once I move into one of those houses it will not live up to expectations as the first time I walk into an East facing room during the sun rise I will have my retinas burned to a crisp and never see light again for the rest of my days.

Still want to live there though.

Another Sunrise

My afternoon is turning into a pain in the ass. Here’s another ocean picture to calm my dumb ass down.

Denied

The whole point of the sunrise pics is to see the sun rise over the water. Just the water. Nothing else. In that respect, today’s trip was a complete and total failure. Stupid rocks sticking up out of the ocean directly due East of where I was standing.

Hampton Beach – Long Exposures

I took a bunch of sunrise pics at Hampton Beach this morning. Not my best, but not disgusting either. Here are my attempts at long exposures. Anything from one to 30 seconds.

These used my newer lens, the AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G

We have a winner!

We have another winner!

At some point I switched lenses to my AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED, which I usually consider to be much better, but today… I think the wider lens did a better job.

Stupid huge boat couldn’t keep still for 10 measly seconds.

Sunrise

I feel like I say this every Friday during the Spring, Summer, and Fall, but I want to try and get up early so that I can shoot the sunrise tomorrow. I keep saying it, yet I haven’t done it since November.

So I want to get up super early tomorrow morning (4:30am-ish) and at the same time I want to stay up super late tomorrow night (1:00-2:00am) so that I can try to catch the last Rush show on Periscope (if someone is nice enough to stream it for us). I also want to mow the lawn, clean the bathroom and the kitchen, and take the cat’s litter box outside and hose the ever lovin’ hell out of it.

Could be a super busy day tomorrow.

I might need to take a nap in the afternoon.

That actually sounds like a super awesome idea! Nap time, kids!

Is it Time?

The weather and the timing are appearing to line up tomorrow… might there be a sunrise photo shoot up at Hampton Beach? I haven’t shot a sunrise since November. I’m due.

Happy Thanksgiving

I would like to wish a happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the United States. We broke with tradition this year. The kids were with their father today so my wife and I went to a restaurant with her mother and step father. We went to a place called The Breakers, which is part of a hotel called Ashworth by the Sea (is that the right name?) in Hampton Beach, NH. The turkey dinner was excellent, the stuffing was excellent, the company was excellent, and the waves crashing into the beach across the street were the biggest and meanest I’ve ever seen on the East Coast. They looked down right Californian.

Tomorrow we will have the kids so we will have Thanksgiving Part II – Electric Turkey Boogaloo, which consists of another turkey dinner. Yum, babie. Yum.