Huge Photo Walk

I went on an epic photographing journey today. I went to two locations and I walked something like four miles. Who even am I?

I paid for it with chores though. The cellar has been put back together after twice being blown off by a contractor. I won’t say it is “clean” but I will say it is drastically “cleaner” and that’s good enough for me. Speaking of contractors, yet another is scheduled to come by tomorrow to fix a piece of broken furniture in my step son’s room. Along with cleaning the cellar, I got everything ready for that too. Now it’s time to post some photos and then its time to nap.

I had a bunch on my photo to-do list this morning. One, shoot the sunrise (which required me getting out of bed at 4:00am and being on the road toward Hampton Beach, NH by 4:20… yikes!). Two put a roll of 35mm film through my new (to me) Nikon N90. Three, complete the Frugal Film Project for this month. Four, use the crap out of the 70–210mm zoom lens I got with the N90 on my Nikon Z5 via the FTZii adapter that I mistakenly called the F2Zii adapter in a post yesterday. Five, if possible finish off the roll of film in my Nikon FG-20 that’s been sitting there since March or so. In all five cases, mission accomplished.

I did not ship out the film for developing yet. I am planning on taking the N90 to my nephew’s high school graduation party next week (CONGRATULATIONS!!!!) and I might try to sneak in a second photowalk next Sunday too, if the weather cooperates. I’ll wait until after that to ship out the film. As usual, the day of blog post is only digital photos. Unlike all of my previous posts with images shot on my Z5, this one has a zoom lens. Not only a zoom lens, but a 70–210mm zoom lens!

First stop, Hampton Beach where the sky was completely clear and I saw the sun come out of the water. Success!

I love how the sunrise lights up the windows

The huge zoom let me steal a shot of this dude fishing. He was far away but the lens brought him close.

I drove up the coast a ways to get a different view. This time from way up a hill. The tide was so far out you had to walk half way to France to get to the water. It kinda took some of the granduer out of it for me. Oh well.

The next stop was the two Rail Trails in Newburyport, MA. One is called Clipper, I think, and the other is called Harbor… I think. The plan was to shoot film while walking away from the car, and then to shoot digital while walking back. So these first shorts are on the Harbor trail after I turned around. The sun reflecting off the water was kinda brutal. My Z5 and N90 both had fast enough shutter speeds to handle it, but my FG-20 and my Lomo Lubitell were struggling. I’m a tiny bit nervous about how some of those shots are going to turn out.

Zoomed way in on that little boat heading out to sea

See what I mean about the sun reflecting?

Hey look, a lighthouse! I think it’s a restaurant

The new lens managed some blurry background at f/4!

What do you call a boat like this? Is it a catamaran?

The new lens managed some major blurry background at f/5.6! Wow!

I took a lot of pictures of stairs for some reason

And there you have it. A shit load of pointless pics that I had a lot of fun taking. The film version will come… someday… maybe.

Scheduling SNAFU Again

The pricks did it to us again. Yesterday one of the contractors that was supposed to work on our house blew us off. After their arrival window closed they called and said they had to reschedule. My wife booked 7:30–10:00am today and got them to guarantee they’d show up.

They didn’t show up.

My wife called them at around 11:00am to tell them to go take a long walk off a short pier and they put her on hold for 40 minutes then sent her to voicemail. Boy did she let them have it. Both barrels.

In preparation for this work I had to tear one of the kids bedrooms apart and then totally destroy our entire basement. Since we’ve told them to screw, I started putting things right again. The bedroom is back to normal, an one area of the cellar is done. There is still a couple of hours worth of work to undo. I’ll take care of that tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I was sort of planning on taking a bag full of cameras to the ocean for sunrise this morning, but the rescheduling screwed all of that up. Instead, I am going to try to do it tomorrow. The forecast at the coast looks pretty good. The only downside is that sunrise is at 5:04am, which means I have to be out of bed at 4:00am. It should be worth it. I’m thinking of hitting a couple of spots near Hampton Beach, NH and then maybe a riverwalk somewhere. Maybe in Lowell? Not sure yet.

I got ready for this by putting film in all of the film cameras, and like a schmuck I burned one shot on the medium format camera. Dumb ass. I also put one of the manual focus lenses that came with my last eBay purchase onto my digital camera to give it a test drive. It worked great.

The lens is smart enough that the camera can control the aperture but not smart enough to auto focus. I have focus peeking turned on though and that is a HUGE help for an old fart with weak vision like me. I’m not sure if I will use it tomorrow, but I might. We’ll have to wait and see.

Other than that the only news right now is that my step daughter is coming home today. She’ll only be here a couple of days before she’s off again, but that’s fine with me. Any time with either of the kids in the house is time well spent.

Also, as a bit of forewarning to regular readers, once I get the cellar put back together you can expect a barage of music posts. I have five songs in progress right now and I hope to start putting guitars onto the demos soon. Duck and cover, everyone.

Until then, never forget that donald trump is a fascist and a rapist and a pedophile. Release the complete, unredacted epstein files. I don’t care if it brings down the entire US government. If it is bad enough to do that then the US government deserves to be brought down.

Finally, on the Rush 50 Something Tour, is Anika Nilles doing a drum solo?

Easter Weekend?

Easter is meaningless for me now. There was that one year when I was a kid when the Easter Bunny included two Star Wars action figures in my Easter Basket. Damn if that wasn’t like getting a second xmas that year. What does it mean though? It means that when I was a kid my family was catholic but today I am nothing. When it comes to religion, I don’t. None. That’s all. I didn’t even realize this weekend was Easter until about a week ago when my step daughter mentioned she was going to her Aunt’s house for Easter dinner. My response was more or less, “what?”

My in-laws are coming over tomorrow for Easter dinner one day early. We have tickets to see Throwing Muses at the Paradise in Boston tomorrow night as well, but my wife may not be able to go. We’ll see.

Was there a point to this post? I don’t think so. I had a super stressful moment this morning at work. No spoilers, but I had to request a staff member’s emergency contact. I didn’t end up needing it as the issue resolved itself before I got a response to the request, but it was close. I hope to never have to do that again.

In other news, it’s opening day at Fenway Park today. I had meetings scheduled all afternoon and thought I wouldn’t be able to listen to the game, but most of them have been postponed so I’ll be able to tune in to some of the game. That’s a nice little bonus. Granted the Red Sox are 1–5 on the young season. They won their opening game and have lost every game since. Here’s hoping some home cookin’ will straighten this mess out before it gets too awful.

I really thought I had a point to this post but I’ve lost it and forgotten it and now I’ll just leave you with a cat.

Moody

Nerd Family Portrait

I’m from North America so I pronounce it Nykon, not Nickon. That is probably wrong, but I don’t care.

Annoyed

Someone got her nails trimmed today and she doesn’t seem terribly happy about it.

Congratulations!

Harry just told us that he got his first job offer. One month and six days after graduation. Excellent work, Harry! I think I am going to burst with pride!