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.

Seven Rolls

Seven rolls of film. All downloaded, sorted, cleaned up, and uploaded to Flickr. Here are a few randoms from the haul.

From Burlington, VT. I don’t remember the name of the bookstore.

From the Atlantic Ocean in Hampton Beach, NH. Splash.

From the happiest place on Earth.

From Animal Kingdom… unless it’s from The Last of Us.

From the lake surrounded by the Beach Club, the Yacht Club, and the Boardwalk hotels in Disney World.

With Kylo Ren at Galaxy’s Edge in Hollywood Studios.

From Rockefeller Center in New York, NY.

And in closing, my new favorite photograph.

Good Family Weekend

From a family point of view, this weekend was wonderful. From a creative projects point of view though this weekend didn’t happen. No music, no photo projects beyond just snapping a few with my phone.

I literally would not change a thing, but maybe over the next week I’ll do some creative stuff. Just to balance the karmic scales, you know?

Here’s a film photo to hold me over for tonight.

This Morning’s Photo Adventure Part 1/3

I stopped in three places this morning. I will post each stop separately, though almost all of the pictures I took were at this first spot.

Stop number one was the same spot as last week’s cloudy sunrise failure. Hampton Beach. Just a smidge north of the main beach area. Last week the tide was out and the clouds were in. This week the tide was in and the clouds were nowhere to be seen. I got there about 10 minutes before the sun came up. I only had a short stretch of very rocky beach between me and the sea wall. It was enough.

This next photo is a very happy accident. I had put my digital camera (Nikon Z5) down to take some pre-sunrise film pics (Dad’s Pentax K1000). It was getting very close to sunrise time so I switched back to digital and just put it up to my eye and focused on the horizon. I was looking due East (totally by accident) at the exact moment the sun broke the water. Like, the exact moment. I saw it through the view finder. I did not see a green flash though.

This photo is from about one heartbeat after the sunrise started. Can you see the little guy off in the distance?

This photo demonstrates my one screw up in a very positive way. When I am at home taking pictures of the cats I keep the ISO on my Z5 pretty high. 1600, usually. When I go outside I lower the ISO to 100 or 200, depending on how much light there is. I just like the way things look when the ISO is way low. Today… I forgot to lower it. All of these are at ISO 1600, which means the camera takes in more light (ISO is supposed to be like film speed, the higher the number the more light) which meant I could use a way faster shutter speed, which means the birds who randomly photo bombed me are not blurry at all.

I know I already posted this next photo, but it is my favorite of the day by so many hundreds of miles that I am posting it again.

And there we have it. The first of three posts from this morning’s photo fun. I am very pleased with how these came out, even if the ISO is way too high. The next post will be from the side of the road (route 1A) a few miles north of this spot. The second post is from a few miles south at a little beach spot in Seabrook, across the water from the nuclear power plant and where there is a little marina or something with lots of boats tied up for the night.

I just hope all of the film shots came out okay.

Success

I’m sure I will post a ton of pictures later, but for now let’s just say that this morning’s sunrise goofiness was a success.

Failure

I drove to Hampton Beach this morning. I left way too early and got there half an hour before the sun came up. It was 45 degrees out. I froze my ass off.

It was also a waste of time.

The sky was perfectly clear all the way there. Just before I arrived I saw a band of clouds moving in… right at the horizon… completely blocking the sunrise. Damn it.

I was going to stop at a few other places on the way home but I was too annoyed by mother nature. I did finish a roll of film though, and I just placed an order with thedarkroom.com and I packaged it all up and it’s all ready to go. I just need to get to the post office. That probably won’t happen until Tuesday.

For now… here are some digital pics of the cool waves and the no sun. Sorry.

See what I mean about the clouds?

The sun was up at this point.

I had the entire Atlantic ocean to myself before this guy came along. There was probably room enough for both of us… probably.

Sunrise

Jen never goes with me when I go out to chase the sunrise. Well… I can’t say she never comes with me because she came with me today!

We went to Salisbury Beach for the sunrise this morning. On the way home we took a detour… sort of. We just pointed the car North and didn’t stop until we were up in the White Mountains. We left the house at 5:30am and got home after 4:00pm. What a day!

Here are some sunrise at the beach pics.

I should clarify, these are digital photos from the ocean. There were film shots too but you have to wait for those to get developed. I hope to ship them out to a lab tomorrow, along with the three rolls from our Florida trip back in May that have been waiting patiently.

There were also some pictures from a quick stop on Lake Winnipesaukee in Alton, NH as well. You’ll see some of those later tonight, I think,

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.

So Close, Yet So Far

Today has been an okay work day for a last day before a vacation kind of day. I still have one hour and 42 minutes to go before said vacation, but I will get there.

I’m starting to sort of chomp at the bit though.

Today has been busy without being stressful. I have had a lot of things to do but none of them have been high pressure or high profile or anything like that. Just a bunch of administrative type things. The customers have been quiet so I have been able to focus on things that need to get done. I am thankful for that.

The Great Pink Floyd Reverse Order Playlist is now back to Animals from 1977. Great record with some absolutely outstanding guitar playing from David Gilmour.

Endless River – Complete
Division Bell – Complete
A Momentary Lapse of Reason – Complete
The Final Cut – Complete
The Wall – Complete
Animals – Currently playing track two, “Dogs”
Wish You Were Here – Up next
Dark Side of the Moon – On double deck but I probably won’t get to it today.

What else should I mention for the benefit of some future version of me looking back at Friday the 13th of September 2024 out of some sense of boredom or a this-day-in-history kinda thing?

The weather at the ocean for the next week looks excellent, according to the long range forecast I just checked. I think a sunrise photo session is a given. I hope to finish off a couple of rolls of film while I’m at it. I still have three rolls from Disney back in May that I have to get developed. I’d really like to spend a day in Boston if I can, but who knows if that will work out.

I am also going to my Dad’s place tomorrow morning to fill up a few boxes with books to donate to the public library in Tewksbury. They are having a donation drive tomorrow and they can have whatever they want from Dad’s book stash. If there is anything they won’t take (why?) I will bring them to Goodwill or something.

Those things, plus some music, plus spending a ton of time hanging out with the love of my life, plus helping the kids out with something next weekend… I think I have my staycation pretty much planned. 86 minutes to go until it starts.

Sunrise Forecast

Forecast

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