Tag: iphoneography

Paid Our Respects

Jen and I went to the Apple Store tonight to pay our respects. We were returning something so it wasn’t as happy a visit as it could have been. We were the only people in the store with masks on, but we weren’t the only ones in the mall. I’ll take that as a win. A very lame win.

Fail City

What a waste

The sun came up at 5:10am today. I was out of the house at 5:05 and heading to Greycourt Park to see if I could take some first-hour-of-sunlight pics of the castle courtyard up on top of the big hill. I got there just after the sun came up and there were already people there. What the hell? No covid exposures for me. I didn’t even stop the car.

Next I headed for a public parking lot in our tiny little downtown. You know, the place with the clock that I post pictures of 100 times a day (be patient, there’s one coming)? It was full. Oh, come on. I could have parked in a business parking lot. There is exactly one of those. No, I was annoyed. I left.

I headed for Walnut Grove cemetery and it’s 1800’s family monuments. There was no one there, which is normal in my tiny bit of experience. I got out. Took a few pictures. That’s when it turned into the epic fail.

I had a roll of 24 exposures. I was on shot #12, I think. The camera wouldn’t wind. At first the mechanism felt stuck, and then it felt like there was nothing there. No resistance from the film moving along the track at all. Safe to assume the film is off the track again? How could that be? Everything was working fine? It was wrapped around the spool and everything was good?

To hell with it. I got back into the car and tried winding the film back into the canister. Yeah, I’ll waste half a roll, but maybe I can salvage a few pictures. Remember the first few were already burned when I fixed the roll the first time. Rolling back up was difficult though. Was it difficult the other day? I don’t remember. I feel like it was fighting me the whole time, but eventually it finished.

I am pretty pissed off. My first try at this and everything fucks up. I’ll try again, but I am not pleased with this situation at all.

I took one picture with my phone while I was driving around, just so I would have something for my photo a day thing on Flickr. Here it is. Blah fucking blah.

At least I was able to stop at the gas station and top off the Kia’s tank so Jen won’t have to worry about it when she drives to the office today. That’s me looking at the bright side and shit.

Photos Coming

I took my Nikon out for a stroll this morning and the results are probably terrible. I went to Salisbury Beach and even though the weather reports said the sky was clear, there was pretty heavy cloud coverage. I got there with less than 15 minutes to spare before the sunrise and I dicked around, thinking I wasn’t going to get anything, and then poof the clouds on the horizon cleared and there was the top tip of the sun. I scrambled to get back on track and I am sure I screwed it all up. On an unrelated note, the waves were the biggest I’ve ever seen in Massachusetts. There must be a storm out there somewhere.

I drove back to Methuen and decided to hit a couple of spots that I have hit in the past. I remained water-focused and went to the city boat ramp on the Merrimack. The sky was gloomy (too early in the morning combined with some clouds, I bet) and the river was dead still. Nothing special will come out of that.

Next I went to a little park on the Spicket River on Osgood Street, but the damn was closed and there was barely any water to speak of. Also, the river bank is massively overgrown and I really couldn’t get anywhere near it. I gave up and went home.

I tried using manual settings but I think everything I did was garbage. I haven’t unloaded the camera yet, but just judging by the tiny little view screen I think all of my manual stuff is crap. I tried to use a thing Larry clued me in on, the Sunny 16 Rule. You set the aperture to F/16, then set the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO speed. I was set at either 400 or 200 ISO so I set the shutter speed at 1/400 or 1/200 and I got a smidge above black. Apparently the rule doesn’t apply to the light conditions I was seeing. I wish I had seen this page before I left today. I might have had better results. Next time.

Anyway, while I unload the memory card, here’s a pic I snuck in with my phone.