I kicked off my Labor Day early this morning by driving out to the ocean and taking some sunrise pics. I went to Salisbury Beach on the Massachusetts side of the MA/NH state line and caught the actual sunrise. After that I drove over to Plum Island. I usually turn left when I cross the bridge onto the island and go to the lighthouse. This time I turned right and went to the Parker River Wildlife Refuge. There is a beach on the ocean there and hiking trails through the salt marshes just inland from the Atlantic.
There were a lot of people at Salisbury watching the sun. More than I’ve ever come across on one of these little trips. It was probably because the sun came up at 6:14am or so. The last time I did a sun rise visit I think the sun came up just after 5:00. Big difference. The only people on the Plum Island beach were a middle aged couple who were clearly on a date. I tried very hard not to draw attention to myself and thus distract them from what I’m sure was a lovely morning. The trails I walked on had a bunch of people too but they were all using binoculars while I was using cameras. They were bird watching.
I took some digital pics with my Z5, I took some 35mm with my N90, and I took some 120 with my Lubitell. I shipped the film out for developing today along with three rolls I shot in August. Will I get the scans back before we leave for California next weekend? Not likely, but I’ll chose optimism and say I hope so.
For now… digital pics.
We start with Salisbury Beach and the start of Labor Day 2026.
The Atlantic Ocean just before dawn
The waves were decent (the big ones were at Plum Island)
Almost time
Almost time
Good morning, everyone!
Nerd boy is about to get artsy with the pier
Fun with symmetry
Seagull photobomb
People. Sorry
Big waves on Plum Island Beach… well… big for the Atlantic at least
I was trying to get the waves as they rolled over. Success!
Crash
This view is from an overlook in the wildlife refuge
The whole trail was on a raised platform
And there we have it. My morning pics. The highlights of the digital pics at least. The full album is here on Flickr. When I get the scans back I’ll add them to the album. Hopefully I’ll have them by the end of the week so I don’t have to rely on a hotel’s wifi to upload them. Fingers crossed.
Before we get to the main story, how about a couple of photos?
First, our house was painted! Doesn’t it look all clean and freshly painted? The doors getting a coat of white paint was… a surprise.
Second, there are wild fires in Canada that are spewing smoke into the atmosphere that are blocking out the sun and turning the sky in Massachusetts into a weird, hazy, orange/yellow kinda thing. It is making our sky look like a Mad Max movie.
Okay, now that that is out of the way I can tell you the story of how dumb I was yesterday.
I have two pairs of glasses. One is a set of progressive lenses. The top half of each lens is for distance and the bottom half is for up close and reading. I wear those glasses most of the time, especially when driving.
The second pair of glasses splits the difference between the two halves of the progressive lenses. They are middle distance glasses. They are perfect for sitting at a computer and working. I wear those glasses while I am working.
When I work in the office I take both pairs of glasses with me. I wear the main specs while driving in, then swap them for the computer glasses, then at the end of the day I swap back to drive home. I put the progressives into a case and put the case in my desk.
Sometimes, rarely, I forget to swap back at the end of the day and I leave my desk with my computer glasses on. Once I made it as far as the car before I realized my error and felt pretty dumb going back to the fourth floor to return to my desk.
Can you see where this is going?
Yesterday I made it all the way home before I realized I had the wrong glasses on. I have no idea how I managed to drive with the middle distance glasses on. I think the traffic was really bad so I never had to look further than the car in front of me and that car was close enough that it wasn’t blurry. I guess?
I felt like a total moron. I drove for an hour and 10 minutes without noticing. What a schmuck! I didn’t want to risk it a second time so I had to dig out my old pair of progressives, which I replaced a couple of years ago. They got the job done, but still… what an idiot.
I did not make the same mistake when I left work today. I am wearing the correct glasses. Moron.
Happy Fathers day to all who are fathers or who play the roll of a father in someone’s life. Whether you are a biological father, a step father (like me), or a single mom who covers both the mother and father responsibilities (a good definition for the word “hero” if I ever heard one), then today is your day. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the one accomplishment I am most proud of in my life is that in September of 2007 a six year old girl and a four year old boy let me be a part of their lives, and in the nearly 19 years that have passed since then they haven’t changed their minds. Frankly I am honored and I hope I’ve been up to the challenge. I’m sure I’ve failed left and right, but over all… here’s hoping I’m doing right by them.
That’s not really the point of this post though, it’s just a nice bonus. The point of this post is photos! I went on another morning photo walk today. This time I hit three riverwalk type things in Lowell, MA. The Wamesit Falls Overlook, the… whatever the riverwalk along the Merrimack River near the Rourke Bridge is called, and a third little thing that I never saw before but noticed as I drove past that was basically a gazebo and a boat launch and a lot of graffiti.
I finished three rolls of film. One roll of Phoenix II 200 in 120 in my Lubitell, a roll of the new Kodak Ektacolor 400 (that is supposed to be just Portra 400 under a different name?) that I loaded in the Nikon N90 yesterday to use at my nephew’s graduation party (but only took a few shots), and another Phoenix II 200 (this time in 35mm), again in the N90. I took those three rolls and the four rolls I shot on last weekend’s photo walk adventure and shipped them off to The Darkroom Lab earlier. Give them a couple of weeks and then I’ll share any of those that don’t suck… assuming there are at least one or two that don’t suck. We’ll have to wait and see.
The rule on these little jaunts is to shoot film while walking away from the car and then digital while walking back to the car. The twist on the digital last week was that I used a lens that came in the kit with the N90. I used the other lens from that kit today. It’s an AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8. I got a lens with exactly the same specs when I bought my broken Nikon F401 last year, but despite the identical specs it is definitely a different lens. I have dubbed this one 50mm f/1.8 number two. I actually used it on all shots taken on both Nikon cameras today. The N90 and Z5 (with the FTZii adapter, of course).
But enough of my yappin’, here come some pics!
First, a bunch from the Wamesit Falls Overlook, which is a riverwalk along (and in two places, across) the Concord River.
Concord River
Expect lots of white water through the trees pics
Told ya
Would I lie?
Not sure what that concrete wall thing is doing there
Fun with reflected sunlight
The view from one of the bridges
Same bridge, looking in the opposite direction
I saw the sign
Lowell, MA has old mill buildings everywhere. I don’t know what this one is now, nor do I know what blew that hole in the wall
Falls through the trees. Yes that is a mattress on the left
I’ve heard of going over waterfalls in a barrel, but on a mattress?
Ducks!
Above the falls
This is probably my favorite view
Now we skip the second stop, which was the boat launch with all of the graffiti because it was such a short visit that the digtal camera never made it out of the bag. So instead we move on to the VFW Highway and the Merrimack River.
The Merrimack River and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the United States
The Roarke Bridge and UMass Lowell Crew’s dock
How do you spell buoy?
The dock through a fence
A 40 something year old temporary bridge
Ducks!
More ducks. No geese, thankfully
I had never walked right up to the bridge before, but today is the day!
Bridge
I’m just tryin’ to find the bridge. (Led Zeppelin joke, thank you very much)
The Roarke does include a foot bridge but you couldn’t pay me enough to step onto it
Under the bridge
Please don’t feed the animals
So there you have it. Another couple of hours on another Sunday morning, wandering around like a nerd with a bag full of cameras. I am thinking the next time I do this will be just after the 4th of July. I have an idea about going to the Esplanade in Boston and seeing the aftermath of the Pops concert and the fireworks. We will see.
Today is a holiday in Massachusetts. Patriots Day. Did I get the day off from work? Nope. I live in Massachusetts and I work in Massachusetts but I did not get the day off.
Bummer.
The Red Sox played their annual Boston Marathon Monday 11:00am game. As the leaders were crossing the finish line I had a break between my nearly endless string of conferences calls that was long enough for me to put the game on the radio for a couple of innings.
The very first word I heard from the broadcast was, “disaster.” Uh oh. It was the third inning and Sonny Gray had just been pulled due to an injury. Disaster, indeed. Crud.
On one of my endless conference calls today a coworker from another group mentioned that she is about to go on a trip to Bermuda. I am so jealous. My parents went to Bermuda on their honeymoon. Based on that it’s practically required that I go someday, isn’t it? That’s how it works, right?
I was running a little late this morning. I wanted to work in the office and I had a meeting on my schedule at 9:00am. I had to be certain I could get to my desk before that meeting started. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get in on time. As I was packing up my shit to leave the house I told my wife that I would plug my work address into the GPS and if it gave an estimated arrival time of after 8:50am I would work from home. Note: this conversation happened at 7:15am.
I got into the car, opened up the Waze app and pointed it at work. The ETA was 8:41am. Okay, I should be all right. That was when I saw the snow flake.
WTF? It’s April 7th… snow? By the time I got to the end of my street there was a light flurry. By the time I was about 10 miles down route 93 South it was full on snowing. By the time I got down to the route 4 exit off of route 128 South the snow was sticking and it was snowing heavily.
Up yours, mother nature. Up yours.
I parked my car at 8:56am and practically ran up to my desk on the fourth floor. I was in the meeting one minute late at 9:01am.
It is April 7, 2026 and it is still fucking winter in New England. Bite me.
The forecast called for clear skies at Salisbury Beach at sunrise today. The forecast was wrong. I was there and I took a bunch of pictures, but the clouds covered the horizon and there was no photo of the sun coming out of the water. It was a wasted effort on that front, but I went to Plumb Island after and got a nice pic of the lighthouse.
When the sun eventually did break through, it made the Merrimack River look nice.
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!
These are from a spot in North Hampton, NH, just a little north of Hampton Beach.
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.
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.
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.
What is that baseball doing there? Who left that behind?
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.
