Camera for a Day

One day in Manhattan. Maybe better described as most of one day in Manhattan.

That’s the plan. Drive to someplace in Connecticut that has rail access to NYC. Stay overnight. Take a train into the city tomorrow morning, early. Stay for most of the day. Sometime in the late afternoon or early evening, take a train back to where we started and then drive home.

That leaves two questions. First, what do we do while we’re there. Second, which cameras do I bring?

To answer the first question, we’ll probably just go where the xmas decorations take us. This trip is an attempt at forcing some holiday spirit onto our grinchy, scroogy selves. To answer the second question… I am not sold on anything yet except that I will not be bringing my new medium format camera. I need to run a roll through it to make sure it works before I bring it anywhere of consequence. I just have to get off my ass and do it. So it’s down to the digital Nikon Z5, and the 35mm Pentax K1000, and Nikon FG-20. Both of the film cameras have partially shot rolls. The K1000 is down to the last handful of shits on a roll of Kentmere 400, which is Black and White, and the FG-20 has most of a roll of Kodak ColorPlus 200.

I think I want to bring the K1000 (my father’s camera) and a couple of rolls of color film. I have a handful of ColorPlus that I could bring. I would only bring one or two. I don’t want to spend all of my time fudging with film. At least… assuming I bring the digital camera too. My thought though… do I want to even bring the digital camera? I mean, I do. I want to bring it literally everywhere I go. On this occasion though? There’s a little part of me that is considering going film-only this time.

I don’t know… I am thinking about it.

Almost There

I am less than an hour away from the end of the work week. Sigh of relief.

We are coming up on what might be my favorite week of the year. Thanksgiving week. One of the kids will be coming over this weekend (and I need to clean the hell out of this house before she gets here). The other will be here on Monday. It’s going to be great. I took a vacation day on Wednesday so my favorite four day weekend is now a five day weekend. Glorious.

We are doing our family Thanksgiving on Saturday, not on the actual Thanksgiving Day on Thursday. That means Jen and I have nothing going on for the holiday. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am thinking a Super Mega Star Wars Marathon. That sounds like a plan to me! How about start with Episode Three, then watch Andor and Rogue One, then watch the original trilogy. Let’s do it! The Star Wars Holiday Special aired around Thanksgiving in 1978, so I think that makes Star Wars as a whole a Thanksgiving movie series. Logic. QED.

For now though. Finish the last half hour or so of the work week, then cook dinner, then eat dinner with the love of my life, then… sleep? Sounds like a plan to me. Book it!

Vermont Bound

We are Vermont bound today. The plan is to have an early lunch, brunch if you will, with the kids. Beyond that? Who knows.

We’re going to leave about an hour from now. Three hours in the car and then some quality time with all three of my favorite people.

Sounds like an A+ Sunday to me!

Lost

I had my whole weekend planned out but now that it is here I just feel lost. I need to vote, I need to go grocery shopping, I need to carve the pumpkin I bought last week, I need to see if I can fix the fret buzz on one of my guitars (though the more I read up on possible causes and solutions the more terrified I am to start tweaking a 35 year old instrument).

I mean, my to do list is nice and full… why do I feel lost today? I was hoping a good nights sleep would straighten out my brain but that didn’t help at all. I’m sure it’s nothing and once I get the ball rolling today I will be out of this fog.

I don’t know. We’ll see. Happy Saturday to all of you, and may your personal to do list be full of things that make you happy while being easily achievable. Let’s all have a day full of completed goals, what do you say!

When?

I want to vote tomorrow morning before work, if I can. The early voting polls open at 8:00am. I think I can pull it off. I’m hoping my wife can go with me. If she can’t then it won’t be Friday because of work, or Saturday because of travel, so Sunday?

I won’t be able to play any guitar before work tomorrow if we go to vote. Friday might work. Saturday is highly unlikely. Sunday? Maybe. We’ll have to see.

I took these this morning after finishing my exercise for the day. I thought I might use one for the photo a day thing, but I went with a cat pic from the previous post.

Guitar noodling on Friday. Two days from now. Make it so.

Hectic Morning

I messed myself up this morning. I overslept a little and then made it worse by not getting into my morning routine for about half an hour after I got out of bed. Ooops. I’ve been all out of whack ever since.

It actually started last night around 11:00pm. I went to bed really late and didn’t fall asleep for about an hour. I made a plan to do some guitar work after finishing my morning exercise. I picked two songs from the list of things I want to re-record and listened through them to remind myself what needs to be done. Then I had a snack and went down a small youtube rabbit hole (videos about Lord of the Rings back stories). (Oooops)

Then I got a really late start and didn’t have time for any guitar. I did open a box that FedEx delivered yesterday. It had some dishes in it that came from IKEA. Almost 50% of the items in the box arrived broken. Damn it. Then I punched into work and it’s been seriously hectic so far. It’s almost 12:30 now and the morning was colored by lots of urgent issues. I actually had a pretty long to-do list for today and I haven’t gotten to any of it yet. Here’s hoping the afternoon calms down.

I had to have a snack at about 11:30 and I over did it. Now I need to wait until my stomach empties out a little (no bad issues, I am just a little too full) before I can have any lunch.

We don’t have any plans in place for the weekend yet. I am still on the fence as to whether or not a leaf peeping drive to the mountains would be worth it or not. Maybe I’ll just take Dad’s camera and a roll of black and white film out and be faux artsy around town. Maybe.

Five hours to go until the weekend. Duck and cover and get through it, folks. Good luck.

Weekend: So Close

It is 2:25pm on Friday afternoon. I just finished lunch and am about to get back to work. I have been having a very productive day at work so far. I am pleased. Of course I probably just jinxed myself and the proverbial shit is going to hit the theoretical fan any minute. For now though, I feel like today has been a good day on the job.

The weekend starts in three hours (approximately) though and I don’t know what the plans are. We are going to do some family stuff on Sunday. There is a birthday. There is also a birthday today that I have to send off a happy birthday text message for. Very important. Outside of those two things? No clue.

After failing to get sunrise pics last weekend I am thinking about trying again tomorrow. The weather forecast looks excellent, though too cold for my taste. I wanted to grab the sunrise on the beach in my usual spot, then drive North up the coast a bit and get some ocean pics from the hills overlooking the coast. Then I could stop at a few of the usual spots on the way home. I would like to do that, but it all depends on how much sleep I get tonight. Well… that and the clouds, of course. I learned that the hard way last weekend.

I have yet to play my guitar during the month of October. Today is the 11th. I’ve taken pictures of guitars, case in point…..

41/365

(that is today’s photo a day picture)

…..but I haven’t actually played at all. I have a bunch of old songs I was working on re-recording a few months ago. There are a lot of things left to do for that little project, and I also picked a bunch of this summer’s project songs that I want to see if I can improve on. Maybe I’ll get back to it this weekend.

I don’t see us going to the mountains for fall foliage this weekend. It is definitely THE weekend to go, but the traffic is often nightmarish and I don’t think we have the oomph to deal with it. Maybe we can day trip/road trip somewhere down South here in Massachusetts. Go someplace interesting before the weather gets too cold and the ice starts piling up.

Maybe I’ll just stay home and watch the Bruins tomorrow at 1:00pm when they play the L.A. Kings.

Too Early

What day is it? Who knows. It’s Thursday, right?

Is it too early to start thinking about plans for the weekend? It is the height of leaf peeping season here in New England. We thought about going up to the mountains for a look last weekend but we decided against it. If we go this weekend the traffic will be insane. I checked the weather for our area and Saturday looks great while Sunday looks rainy and crappy.

I don’t know. We’re trying to plan a visit to the kids but that won’t be for another couple of weeks. We have a couple of work days to get through before we figure anything out and maybe we will just hang out at home. I don’t know. After a bunch of day trips on our week off/staycation last month I just have the road trippin’ bug.

We will figure it all out soon enough. Stay tuned.

Film

All right, red head. It’s time to get off your ass and shoot some film. Enough procrastinating. Enough saying you’re going to do stuff and then don’t. Damn it!

I have four rolls of film ready to develop. Most of it is from our Disney trip back in May/June. There are a couple of shots that are actually from Fathers Day and they are likely the last pictures I will ever have of my dad. It’s time to get the friggin’ things developed.

But…

I have a roll in my Nikon that is nearly finished. I should shoot the rest of that first and then get five rolls developed, right? I also have a roll in my Pentax. I should shoot through that and then get all six developed, right? Right?

Damn it! I am procrastinating around my procrastination! Get off your faux-photographer ass, red head!

Sunrise at the ocean tomorrow is 6:47am and the forecast calls for mostly clear skies. That does it. I’m going pitcher shootin’ tomorrow. Go to the ocean, bang out the roll in the Nikon, take some digitals, come down the coast to the usual places like the Plum Island light house and bang through the roll in the Pentax along with some more digitals. Then if I still have film left, hit a few places in my town and work through the rest of it.

I am working in the office on Monday so I won’t be able to get to the post office. Tuesday I am working at home though, so by Tuesday morning we’ll have an order placed at some photo lab and I’ll drop everything off for shipping before work.

I have spoken. Make it so. This is the way.

In closing, here’s a shot of the Spicket Falls Damn in Methuen that I shot on Kentmere 100 film with my Nikon FG-20. Just because film is cool in a nerdy retro faux artistic bullshit way.

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Sunrise Plans for Tomorrow?

The sun will come up over Salisbury Beach, MA tomorrow at 6:24am and the forecast for that time is for nothing but clear skies.

Will tomorrow be a sunrise photo shoot?

Maybe. We’ll see. That would be a nice way to kick off my work week’s worth of staycation.

I’ll let you know.