I was expecting the Shawsheen River to be super low, but I guess the rain we had over the last couple of days filled it up. It was actually a little bit over the bank at this spot.
You get to this spot from the parking lot of the K of C hall where we had our wedding reception. Romantic, eh? The bridge is route 38, which is the road the house I grew up in is on.
There are a couple of other spots on the Shawsheen that are accessible. I’ll save those for another day. Up next is more Merrimack River, this time in Lowell.
I went out to run an errand and snuck away to a few spots to snap a few more pics. These are Long Pond in Tewksbury. This is just down the street from the house I grew up in, but the parking area and the nice, neat little park is new.
I messed around with a polarizing filter. Here we can see it removing the reflections off of the water…
…and here it is not removing the reflections…
DUCKS!
DUCKS!
Up next will be the Shawsheen River, also in Tewksbury.
I went to that park near my mother’s facility after leaving her today. It’s a nice open space with a little garden with a stone bridge and a gazebo and a couple of war memorials and lots of park benches and one huge ass cannon.
I took a bunch of pictures and didn’t like any of them. I felt the same way when I saw the film shots I took there a few weeks ago too. Just… blah. Then I converted today’s pics to black and white and now they are almost okay. Here’s a few…
Footbridge over nothing.
Footbridge and tree and bushes
Hello, bench
Gazebo pic #1
Gazebo pic #2
Great big fuckin’ gun
Here are a couple of color pics too, just for the record.
More benches
Why does the house across the street have those stone things, and what are those stone things supposed to be anyway?
We are supposed to get some rain tomorrow, but the morning weather forecast looks good. That means another morning of picture taking goofiness.
Where should I go?
No idea.
I need to put an office chair together and I need to do some grocery shopping and I need to visit my mother. Does any of that help me come up with picture taking ideas? No, not even a little bit.
I have two days off coming up. A Friday and a Monday. One of those days (weather permitting) will include some time in Boston and/or Cambridge. I’m going to try to recreate this little bastard again:
I also want to go to a few places I don’t think I’ve ever visited with a camera. It’s all dependent on the weather, of course, but it really just means that I don’t want to go to the city tomorrow.
Tewksbury? Lowell again? Billerica? Concord? Who knows. I’ll tell you once I figure it out.
Hello and welcome to the third and final post dealing with pictures I took this morning. This time we returned to Raymond J Martin Riverside Park on Riverside Drive in Methuen, MA. The last time I came here it was with my Nikon film camera, also known as the ebay camera. Today it was all digital, babie. Nikon D90 like a boss from 2010.
When I first arrived the water was perfectly still. It was like a mirror, except for the mist. I am so happy most of my shots came out okay. At first I couldn’t figure out what the two crossed lines in the water were, but then I realized they were reflections of the contrails in the sky. Awesome.
Dig that crazy mist!
This one is a little crooked. I was leaning over trying to get under the tree and I should have just used the LCD screen. Oh well.
Ducks! Even though they ruined the perfectly still water. Still, ducks!
Now we come to the lesson part of our journey. Using Manual mode instead of Auto means that when things come out of the blue you can’t just point and shoot. You have to set things up. When I suddenly saw a mist-spiral cruising along the top of the water I had to be quick, but in Manual I wasn’t quite quick enough and this is the best I could get. Had I been in Auto I would have nailed this before it hit the trees. This is the best I could do under the circumstances, I guess.
I was trying to get another misty shot but the birds flew in out of nowhere and it looks like they were the point all along.
Just look at that!
I wish I had the polarizing filter. I would have seen right through that glare to the bottom of the river.
I need to find out what that building across the water is. Pretty sure that’s Andover, MA.
Did Robert use exposure compensation on this puppy? Yes, Robert did use exposure compensation. Almost like he knows what he’s doing, babie!
Album cover?
No, this is the album cover.
I took a few of the park itself too, including some pics of the places I got all of the previous views.
Blurry background AND blurry foreground. Nice.
Gazebo pic #1.
Obligatory flag pole pic.
Gazebo pic #2.
Warning!
And that, friendly readers, brings my three part post journey to an end for today. If the weather holds I might do my original idea of visiting three bodies of water in Tewksbury tomorrow. Long Pond, the Shawsheen River, and Ames pond. We’ll see. Tewksbury is only 15 minutes away but it seems like a long drive for some just-after-sunrise goofiness. I haven’t checked the weather since last night. If it holds, I might give it a shot. I’ll let you know.
Part two of this morning’s photo adventure is Forrest Lake. I’ve been here a few times and the pictures always disappoint me. Not today. Not really, at least.
There were a lot of people at the boat launch area so I walked a little toward the closed beach to keep plenty of social distance. The mist coming off the lake made the stop worthwhile.
Dig how still the water was.
Is it really a lake, or is it more like a pond. Seems pond-esque to me, but what do I know?
The public beach closed at the end of August.
Dig that crazy mist.
I should have brought my polarizing filter but it doesn’t fit on the lens I was using.
Next stop is the final stop, at the Merrimack River.
Did I go out shootin’ pitchers this morning? You know it babie! The air was cold but the sun was bright and the sky was perfectly clear. I thought about going to Tewksbury and checking on the Shawsheen River and Long Pond and maybe Ames Pond but we had people coming to pick up the couch we donated and I didn’t want to go that far from home. Instead I visited the three biggest bodies of water in Methuen. The Spicket River, Forrest Lake, and the mother of them all, the Merrimack River.
I took a few pictures at each location, going slightly overboard at the Merrimack, but we’ll get to that later. First, some shitty pictures of the muddy and gross looking Spicket. It’s super low, but not nearly as low as it was the last time I checked on her.
The Mighty Spicket has seen better days, but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. This is on Hampshire Street, just a few minutes after the sun came up.
The sun wasn’t getting through the trees to the water, but it was pretty freakin’ glorious out on the road. Is this why they call it golden hour?
Crossing the road for a different view…
The next post will be Forrest Lake and after that will be the Merrimack (where I went a little overboard).
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.
Inside the Red Head's Head 