Six Photos, Six Days, Day 6

The people of the tiny fishing village came out to stare in wonder one evening at the strange occurance. Old-fashioned folks well versed in superstition were very familiar with phrases like, “red sky in the morning, sailor take warning, red sky at night, sailor’s delight”. But what in the world was meant by “striped sun at set”? Should they take a bet?

Real story
After a month of what felt like non-stop activity, July rolled around and my days were suddenly much more free. Not to say I’ve been doing nothing, there’s still been enough to keep me busy, and that kept me from getting back to blogging sooner. A lovely respite arrived in the form of an invitation to visit my sister for a few days on her vacation on Peaks Island in Maine. I’ve been there before and shared it with you. It was a lovely two days of salt air breezes, walks around the island, relaxing on the quiet beach and taking photos like this gorgeous sunset.

And that nearly catches me up to where we are now. The annual camping trip happened about a week ago, and we have plans to head down to the Cape for a couple days soon. I’m afraid summer will pass by in a blur after that – Sarah’s 18th birthday and our vacation to Maine approach in August, and all too soon after that both my little birdies will fly off to college. Let me tell you, this mama bird is no where near ready for that.

Just wanted to share…

One evening this week I was taken aback by the beautiful light and color I saw in the sky.  After running an errand to the grocery store, on what had been an unremarkable, cloudy sort of day, I saw the trees across the street from the store lit up by a gorgeous light, but the light was almost “cut off” at the top if you can imagine what I mean.  Looking toward the west, a dark cloud cut a horizontal line across the sky, but the great, golden orb of the sun was sinking just below that line.  I admired the amazing, golden color before me as I drove home from the market and hoped there would still be some nice color for me to photograph when I got home.

When I got home, color had changed but it was still beautiful.  Surrounded as I am by the things of suburbia, I have no clear view of sunset and the horizon, but I was able to capture these shots.  I haven’t adjusted anything in Photoshop; these are SOOC using my 50mm 1.8 lens.

I’ve never been a big fan of November: no leaves, no flowers, No-vember; however, this colorful sky was a lovely exception to a normally colorless month!

A Piece of my Heart

Each year when I return home from our vacation in Maine, I feel as though I’ve left a little piece of my heart behind.

After this year’s long and unusually traffic-filled ride, I took that much more pleasure in filling my lungs with the salty air and letting my soul settle in to the place where it feels so at home.

The colors of the evening never failed to disappoint…

And the morning light sparkled on the water like diamonds.

Although Maine is far from the tropics, when I put my head on the pillow at night I’d see this pine tree out the bedroom window that for some reason made me think of tropical breezes and palm trees lulling me to sleep.

To avoid overloading you with photos in one post, I will continue with another post this week showing some of my Maine “discoveries”.

A Peek at Peaks

This past weekend, my sister invited me to spend a couple days with her on Peaks Island in Maine. Peaks is a small island in Casco Bay, about 15 minutes from mainland Portland by ferry. Her husband’s family has been vacationing on Peaks for many years. I’ve been to visit a few times in the past, but my most recent trip prior to this past weekend was about 5 years ago, so I decided to take Jennifer up on her offer.

During the ferry ride, I had a view of the iconic Portland Headlight:

Approach to Peaks Island:

Each morning I was there, Jennifer and I and her cute little cavachon, Ozzie

took an around-the-island walk of about 4.5 miles.

I saw many beautiful flowers in bloom:

This cottage had gorgeous climbing flowers (roses? not sure!)

Probably of no surprise to anyone who reads this blog, sea birds also caught my camera’s attention.
Cormorants:

A blue heron:

and I’m not sure what kind of duck this is:

I’ve spent some time on my bird identification site and I’ve been unable to come up with an exact match. Any thoughts?

I also got to photograph a new-to-me bird, a cedar waxwing:

Isn’t it pretty? It turned around and appeared to be looking right at me:

Here’s a sight you don’t see everyday when you are out for a walk:

Don’t ask me, I really don’t know! 😉

Peaks almost always has a lovely sunset to round out your day:

I hope you enjoyed your little tour around Peaks Island!

P.S. Scott has a new photo assignment! Pop on over and check it out!

I’m mooning you!

I’ve been out chasing the moon again.  I know the full moon isn’t until tomorrow, but when I was driving my daughter to dance class yesterday afternoon, I saw a large moon hanging low in the sky.  I drove home right away to get my camera, but by the time I positioned myself in a nice spot for photos, it had risen quite a bit higher.  I took some shots anyway, and I liked a couple, so here they are!

This was taken at the top of a hill, near where I walk the dogs in the woods along the powerlines.  I wish I had thought to do this a few weeks ago, when there was more color around.  We never really had peak color around here in my opinion, but I’m sure it was a little brighter than this.  Turning around to get back in my car, I noticed some pretty sunset colors.  Sunset shots near my house are generally blocked by trees and wires, but from this hill, there was a little less interference, but enough little something to give it some interest.

I’d like to go back and try again tomorrow for the full moon, but the forecast isn’t great.  Clouds and rain are expected.  I’m glad I took the time to go take these shots; we’ve been enjoying some much deserved temperatures in the upper 60’s after our freak snowstorm and power outage last week.  I imagine December’s full moon night temperatures won’t be quite so pleasant!

Sun and Moon

Hi everyone!  I’m back from Maine.  I took lots of pictures and have lots to say, and was having a hard time deciding where to begin.  So,  I decided to start at the beginning!  There’s an original thought, huh?  I’m still sorting through the 468 shots I took this past week, deciding what I’d like to share, but these are from my first evening at the cottage.  August 13th also happened to be the night of the full moon this month, so I wanted to be sure not to miss it this time around.  I checked the time for moon rise, and headed out about 20 minutes before that to get ready.  Luckily it was low tide, which made for plenty of room for setting up the tripod.  At Hills Beach in Biddeford, Maine, the tide goes way out:

While the sunset isn’t quite over the water, it comes really close at this beach.

I waited patiently for the moon to rise while I set up my tripod and played around with different shutter and aperture settings.  Lots of folks were out walking, enjoying the warm temperatures and low tide.  One gentlemen stopped and asked me what it was that photographers are interested in in this area (he owns a house on this beach, lucky guy!)  I told him I didn’t know but I was waiting for the full moon.  He jokingly offered to “pose” for a full moon!  We ended up having a nice chat about the area – he’s owned his place for about 20 years, I’ve been vacationing there since my parents first took me as a child- and what a wonderful place it is for families.  His daughter and her children were there visiting him that day, and she showed me her lovely sunrise photos.  They were temptingly beautiful, but I am sooo not an up-before-the-sun kind of person.  I’d love sunrise shots but wasn’t sure I could drag myself up that early on vacation.

The moon finally rose above a small bank of clouds.  I took a few dozen shots at different settings and compositions.  This was my favorite of the batch:

After taking my moon shots, I turned my lens around for a few more shots of the beautiful colors left by the sun:

I had a couple more interesting “run-in’s” with the moon during the week.  On Wednesday of last week, the moon came up a bit later, but during the course of the evening the brightness was casting a gorgeous glow on the sand below.  I dragged the tripod out to the little sand dune in front of the cottage and again played with settings.  The brightness of the moon made it difficult for me to focus on, but I thought these two shots came out pretty well:

(10 sec., f10) The dots of light below are lights on the masts of sailboats.  I changed the settings to get a brighter shot here (30 sec., f5.0):

The next night, while we were down on the beach having a campfire and enjoying the distant fireworks of Old Orchard Beach, the moon rose in a bloody red color.  My family urged me, “take a picture, take a picture!!”  I knew I didn’t have the skill to capture that gorgeous color with so little light available, so I hemmed and hawed.  Finally, as we were heading back up to the cottage, it was higher in the sky, still glowing orange, so I gave it a try:

This is but a whisper of its earlier color, and of course now I can’t help but wonder if I could’ve gotten an acceptable shot of the low, red moon.

So did I get up for a sunrise picture after all?  All week long,  I awakened around 5:30 am and took a gander out my bedroom window.  I could see the beautiful color, but I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed.  I considered taking the shot through the window, but I knew the screen in the way just wouldn’t do it justice.  On Friday when I awakened pre-dawn, I told myself it was one of my last chances, so get yourself down there.  I had no idea exactly what time sunrise was, but I walked down to my beach chair and plopped myself there and waited.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed the pre-dawn quiet – only the sea birds and gentle lapping waves making any sound.  I think for the first time in my life I actually saw the full orb of the sun creep above the horizon.  Here it is as it first peeked up:

and again as the whole orb was first visible:

Of course I played around with the settings again, not really knowing what I was doing.  I changed white balance around too, but none of the settings really gave the true view which I find curious.  The actual view surrounding the sun was more blue, and the bright color more limited to the area right in front of the sun, but nothing I tried presented that image.  I’d love to hear from anyone with sunrise-shooting experience about what settings and such worked for you, or about any thoughts you may have about why this picture didn’t show up true to my view.

I’ve got so much more to share with you over the coming days.  The start of school looms in about a week, so I hope to sort through my thoughts and images to present some more blog posts very soon!  Hope you don’t get sick of hearing about Maine!

Chasing the Moon

sunset at Smuggler’s Beach, South Yarmouth

This past Thursday evening I was driving to Cape Cod to visit my mother.  As I made the familiar trek over the Bourne Bridge, along the Cape Cod Canal and on to Rt. 6 or the Mid-Cape Highway at approximately 8pm, I was struck by an outrageously gorgeous full moon hanging very low in the sky.  The Mid-Cape travels east until you get to the “elbow” of Cape Cod, so I had an amazing view of the rising moon and bemoaned the fact that a busy highway on a famous vacation pennisula would probably be a dangerous place to pull over and take a picture.  The conditions would have been perfect (except for the fact that I left my tripod at home) – low in the sky, full, beautiful color, not too dark out.  No matter, I said to myself.  I’m here for two more nights, I will certainly get another chance.

Friday came and I spent the day getting LOTS of other fun pictures such as:

pink hydrangeas,

amazing sand sculptures, and

interesting negative space – do you see the “dog biscuits” my daughter spotted?

It was such a lovely afternoon at the beach, we decided to bring some pizza to the beach to eat for dinner and await moonrise.  Certainly I’d get a lovely shot right at the spot where Bass River runs into Nantucket Sound.

The light of day was fading.  Around 7:45pm I couldn’t see the moon anywhere despite a mostly clear sky and wide-open landscape.  I didn’t think moonrise would change all that much in 24 hours, but to be on the safe side, I called hubby, who wasn’t able to accompany me on this trip.

“Hon, could you do me a favor?” I asked.

“What’s up?”

“Could you go on that website with the moonrise data for me and check the time of tonight’s moonrise?”

“Uh, okay… hang on… the navy’s site says 7:22pm for the Cape Cod area.”

Okay now I was really confused.  It was nearly 8:00, the wind was getting really chilly and my daughters were getting really impatient.  No moon anywhere.  At 8:10, we gave up and went back to Mom’s place.

Frustrated by the lack of moon, I looked up moonrise information myself on this site.   Apparently, the U.S. Naval moonrise information does not take daylight savings time into account!  The moonrise was actually 8:22 pm.  I missed what was probably a gorgeous moon.  According to the Cape tides site, the next night moonrise would be nearly 9pm.  **sigh**  The picture was not mine to have this time around.

August Photo Hunt

Yes, I know it is still July.  And I know that right now it is time to be working on Scott’s assignment, but I had an idea for my next photo hunt that I thought you might like to keep in mind as you are going about your summer activities.  I would like you to show me summer in a rainbow of colors.  Some of you may remember Scott’s assignment from the fall about showing autumn.  I chose to do my assignment by posting a photo in each color of the rainbow.  I hope that you all, especially Scott, don’t think I am copying Scott’s idea – although it was definitely inspired by him.  I’m still calling this a photo hunt even though I am not assigning you specific items to hunt for; I am asking for a photo for each of the prominent rainbow colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.  Each photo should show something specific to summertime.

Bonus: a self-portrait of you in the summertime!

Just like with the past photo hunts, leave me a link to your photos in the comments of this post. I will leave a link to this post available on the sidebar over there on the right side of the page, and I will post a reminder come August as well, since some folks might not be looking for my hunt until then.  I will also post a re-cap of all the results. The purpose of my hunts is to get you out shooting and having fun, so new photos are preferred, but if you have the perfect shot a couple of the photo hunt  items in your archives, feel free to use them.  I’m giving you LOTS of time for this one – due date of Sunday, August 28th – so I’m hoping to get lots of participation.  As always I’d greatly appreciate if you helped me let people know about the assignment by blogging, tweeting or Facebooking a link to this post.  Let me know in the comments if you plan to participate and if you have any questions.

Pleased as Punch

I know I said I wasn’t going to blog again before the weekend was over, but as I turned down my street last evening, I was taken with the color of the sky.  I decided I wanted to get outside and try to capture it.  My nifty-fifty did a nice job of recording just how the sky looked:

That’s SOOC.  Since the light was so beautiful, I decided to poke around the yard for signs of spring.  I found one that really pleased me.  I was going to save this for my photo hunt, but it was just so pretty and I was so happy with how it came out, I just had to share:

I normally don’t like to toot my own horn, but I just love this picture.  It was mostly a happy accident.  I was, as I said, poking for signs of spring when I noticed the lilac buds had turned purple.  I was having issues focusing on these sweet little buds, so I decided to grab my tripod to see if I could get a sharp picture in the fading light.  As I moved the lens around looking for a pretty angle, I caught sight of the lovely orangy-pinky glow of the fading sun behind this bud.  Auto-focus was arguing with me again, probably due to all the greenery around, so I took my chances with manual focus.

Settings for those who like that info: 1/25, f5.6, ISO 800, 250mm focal length, 0 EV.