Morning Photos

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.

First Time in Ages

I just did something that I don’t think I have done since before Covid came along and mussed everything up.

As previously mentioned, it’s snowing today. Not a lot. We have about an inch on the ground. We might get another inch on top of that, but by no means is today’s storm anything to be worried or upset about, other than the fact that snow is always a pain in the ass. We are New Englanders. This is nuttin’.

However, I needed to go out and do the grocery shopping. My wife has been eating super healthy lately and she was out of all of the healthy things she needed for lunch. I had to go out and restock so that she could have a good lunch. That means I had to go out to the store before the snow stopped. Not only that, I had to go out before the snow removal crews started working. In other words, I had to drive in the fresh, untreated snow.

As previously stated, that was not a big deal. There was enough snow to make the roads a little slippery, but not enough to cause any real troubles for an experienced snow-driver. It made me think though… when was the last time I went out before the plowing started? I can’t remember. It’s been a long, long time. The last time had to have been pre-Covid lockdown. There hasn’t been a time since then that I had to be somewhere bad enough that I couldn’t wait for at least the plows getting one whack in. The only thing I could think of that would have made me go out right away was if one of my parents were in the hospital. If that happened I must have blocked it out of my memory. There was the drive home from Vermont a few weeks ago… does that count? I think the side roads might not have been hit yet, but the main roads had. I don’t know.

So I guess all I did today was spiritually renew my New England Winter Driver ID card. Yeah. I can still drive in the snow. Yippee for me, babie.

Lake Winnipesaukee

Lake

Home Again

We are back home. We did the annual leaf peeping drive. Success. It was a little past peak everywhere we went, except for around the lakes region. It still looked pretty fantastic though.

We didn’t pull over very much so there aren’t a lot of pictures. We did stop for gas and bathrooms a couple of times, and one stop was at The Willey House on route 302. I have a few pics from there, both film and digital.

It was a nice drive. I enjoyed spending the day with my wife, the love of my life. Any time we can just be together is a thrill for me and time very well spent.

Road Trip

Get ready for lots of pictures of gas stations today. We’re going on a day trip up to the mountains to look at colors on the trees. It’s probably past peak where we’re heading but that’s okay. It’s the journey, not the destination.

Safe travels, internets.

Head for the Mountains

I didn’t think we were going to try to do any leaf peeping this year, but after talking to Jen a few minutes ago I think we are going to head North and try to do some leaf peeping tomorrow.

I just put the digital camera’s battery on the charger. One of the film cameras is loaded with a roll of black and white film. That won’t do. I need to put some color film into the other camera and then maybe take them both. Two films and a digital make three cameras. Yeah, that works for me.

Chances are we won’t stop anywhere and all of our peeping will be from inside the moving car, but that doesn’t matter. Turning a day trip like this into a photo-trip is nice and all but the real point of it is to just spend some time with the love of my life. That’s the real treat.

Past Peak?

My question for the universe…

And by universe I mean one tiny sliver of New Hampshire:

How’s the foliage situation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire today? Is it too far past peak to make the drive up tomorrow?

We didn’t go last week because we heard the crowds and the traffic were beyond unbelievable, but this week is probably too late… so should we go or not? That is the question that troubles my soul this morning…

And by troubles my soul I really mean that it doesn’t trouble my soul at all, I’m just curious and overly dramatic at 6:26am on a Friday morning.

This Morning’s Photo Adventure Part 3/3

I headed in the direction of home… south. I stopped at a little marina type place right across the water from the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. At this point in time I am not glowing in the dark.

And this is the point where I realized that my ISO was set to 1600. I changed it to 100 but I was almost done for the day so there aren’t many low ISO pics. Oh well.

And there we have it. All of the pics (well, most of them at least) from my morning photo fun experience at the ocean. I shot a whole roll of film to go along with all of this. Maybe I’ll get it developed at some future date in 2025 or something.

This Morning’s Photo Adventure Part 2/3

I drove North from Hampton Beach looking for a place to pull off that had a nice view. There were a bunch of potential spots, but they all had no parking signs. This spot had a no parking sign too but I was a total rebel and pulled over anyway. If you know this area, you’ll recognize the spot.