No Boston photo walk tomorrow. Where to instead?
I was thinking of trying the ocean again after the bust last time. Then I did some Googling and found there is a lighthouse near Salisbury Beach. That’s something to think about, eh?
There are lighthouses in Gloucester and Portsmouth too, both less than an hour away from home. Those might be in play in the future, but Plum Island, near Salisbury is closest and I was thinking of being in the neighborhood anyway.
Very interesting.
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.
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.
So based on the previous post you may know that I went to the beach this morning to shoot the sunrise with Dad’s camera. How did it go? Did I learn anything new?
Last night I checked the weather forecast for Hampton Beach, NH on weather.com. It said the skies would be clear and the sunrise would be at 5:13am. The first part of that was accurate. The second part… not so much. The Dark Skies app said that sunrise in Methuen would be at 5:13. I wonder if somehow the weather.com app got confused and gave me local sunrise time instead of the time for the location I was viewing?
I got out of bed at 4:20 or so, which was 20 minutes later than I planned. I got dressed quick, grabbed my stuff, forgot the bottle of gatorade I put in the fridge last night, and hit the road. Waze was telling me I should get there with a few minutes to spare. It was almost right. There’s a draw bridge just before you enter the Hampton Beach area and the bridge went up just as I was getting to it. That plus the inaccurate sunrise time did it. I was late. The sun was breaking the horizon at about 9:10 or so, and I didn’t get down to the beach until a minute or so later.
It was also high tide, and my usual spot was both under water and crowded with people. In the post Covid world, a crowd of people is three. At least it is to me. I boogied down to the next beach entrance and had a nice spot all to myself. I took a few pics and then attempted some long exposure fun.
The most the camera can do is one second, but it also has a bulb mode where the shutter will stay open as long as you hold the shutter release down. Unfortunately for me, actually holding the thing down means the image will be shaky because my hands will be shaky. That’s why I bought a cheap little shutter release cable. You screw it onto the button on the camera, and then you can control the shutter without actually touching the camera. It also locks itself so you can push it, let go, wait for as long as you need, then release it.
I made one super dumb ass goof in this process. I tried three long exposures. About 30 seconds, about 15 seconds, and a ridiculous three minutes. Unfortunately, with the sound of the ocean a few feet away, the sound of the cable triggering sounds pretty similar to the camera triggering so after the first shot I didn’t notice that I forgot to advance the film. Same thing happened after the second shot. I only noticed the third time because I took the camera off the tripod and tried to use it normally. Sooooo I set it up again (after moving back a few feet, the tide was getting close to me) and did it right.
I finished the roll with some shots of the waves and the sun hitting the wet sand. I will be completely shocked if anything I did today looks decent, but I finished a roll of 24 and unloaded the camera without any problems, and setup a new roll (Kodak ColorPlus 200, 36 exposures) and I am ready for whatever is next. Probably pictures of the cat.
I think I am done with film projects for a while now. I’ve shot three rolls successfully, including the one that was in the camera when I took possession of it, and I haven’t seen a single image yet. Two rolls were dropped off at CVS and the third just went into the desk drawer that I use for photography stuff. This whole lack of instant feedback thing is actually stressing me out a little. If I had a digital camera with me today I’d already be posting the results. Now? Who the hell knows if I’ll ever get anything useable back?
Film man… film.
We drove up the coast to see if there was any residual wave activity left over from the storm yesterday. There was a little. We saw a few big waves. Much bigger than we usually see in our little sliver of ocean.
I took my camera to the beach this morning and shot some pics of the sunrise. After the events of this week it’s hard to believe that the sun still gives enough of a shit about us to come up in the morning, but there it was.
It was a little too dark for this, maybe about 25 minutes before sunrise. Also, it was pretty windy. Windy enough to shake the camera on the tripod just a teeny tiny bit.
And here’s the little pier without the long exposure.
The forecast called for clear skies, but I think the strip of clouds is the best part of any of these.
Another 30 second exposure. The first one was a touch too dark, but now a few minutes later it’s a touch too bright.
Again, the clouds are the best part. Am I right, or am I right?
Does this look like a future album cover to you? It does to me.
And at long last, there she is! The star of the show! (hehe, get it? I kill me!)
Four second exposure. Do I need to clean my lens or my ND filter? Or both? Probably both.
I love when the whole world changes color.
Okay, the sun’s up. Back to 30 second shots of the pier.
For some reason I had a hard time getting pics of the water glowing in the sunlight. At one point a wave actually threw a shadow over the sand… and these are Atlantic waves… like, tiny suckers.
I was on the beach for maybe an hour. This bird hung out with me for most of that time. Good times, good friends.
Last but not least, the camera was set to auto but the ND filter was on… I thought neutral meant it didn’t change the color of the shot?
I seriously want to go sunrise chasing this weekend but the damn weather isn’t going to cooperate. Salisbury Beach has mostly cloudy in the forecast for the next two days. If I go way up North to Old Orchard Beach it improves to partly cloudy, but that’s not good enough if I am going to drive an hour and a half.
Weather.com doesn’t have hourly forecasts for Monday morning yet, but that’s the day we’re supposed to get what’s left of Hurricane Hermine (or whatever it’s called). Maybe… maybe the storm off shore will be adequate compensation for not being able to see the sun through the clouds. Probably not. Waves are awesome, but it’s the sun breaking the water that I want.
Crud.
It was April 27, 2012. That was my last full day in San Diego, CA. Three years and slightly less than eight months. That is way too long. I’ve been there three times. On my honeymoon in June of 2009, then with the kids in August of 2011, then with the kids and Jen’s folks in April of 2012. We haven’t been back since. No wonder it feels like it’s been an eternity since last I dipped my toes into the Pacific… it has been an eternity!
See the dude with the guitar? Just make him a lot taller, a lot heavier, give him a mop of glow in the dark red hair, and give him a much, much cooler guitar. That is what I’ll look like when I’m living on the beach, busking for change, and playing music to the largest swimming pool on the Earth.
Make it so!
Is it too soon to start showing signs of cabin fever, or seasonal affected disorder or whatever it’s called?
I’m getting that time-to-move-to-California-and-spend-my-days-busking-on-the-beach frame of minds. The traffic, the weather, the feeling run down, the cold and flu, and general blah are all conspiring against my sanity right now.
And it’s not even officially Winter yet.
Just photoshop a picture of me sitting on the sand strumming my 12-string.
Please?
Usually I don’t go to the ocean for sunrise pics unless the forecast calls for nothing but sun. I don’t want any risk of driving all that way and then not being able to see the sun break the water. After a few successes though, I wanted to try going on a day with some clouds in the hopes of seeing how the sun makes the clouds change color. Sunday’s forecast called for partly cloudy.
It was almost a bust. “Partly” turned out to be “almost completely” except for a little band of sky right on the horizon. If not for that, I would have been screwed. As it was, I only had a few minutes with a visible sun before it hid behind the partly=completely.
Inside the Red Head's Head 