After the Fireworks

After the sparklers and the fireworks had all burned out it was time to clean up. I left my camera on long exposure while we gathered up the leftover singed casings. I was pretty happy with a few of these. Do you have a favorite?

This was a shorter exposure where the stars appear pretty crisp.

This was a bit longer and captured two aircraft.

(Also, more lights were on in the house as the little people were scrubbing off the deet and heading for bed.)

Nice Evening

You can see the beginning of star trails in this longer exposure.

The Best Fireworks Nineteen Dollars and Ninety Nine Cents Can Buy

Being that we can't buy real fireworks (legally) in our area I am pretty stingy with the amount of money I am willing to shell out for ground-bound fountains. That doesn't mean we didn't enjoy our little fireworks display. I was a bit disappointed that even the whistling devices were missing from our assortment this year, but my wife and the neighbors did not miss them!

Up close and personal with the *Giant Golden Shower*

Smaller than a AAA Battery...

Ooh, Sparkles!

It looks like the street is spewing lava.

Four AAA fountains

A few more tiny fountains

The *Grand* finale

Graffiti on Fire

As part of our 4th of July celebration we broke out the sparklers and covered the neighborhood in brilliant temporary graffiti!

I asked one of the kids to bring me a flashlight while I was getting set up for sparklers and fireworks. Success!

Ghostly feet all over the street

The flaming swirling vortex of doom!

A 3D signature?

This one *is* a signature

Possibly my favorite of the sparkler set

Stay tuned for the fireworks show!

Don't Rain On My Parade

It was a Memorial Day parade to remember...

The town gathered in the rain this morning in the hopes that the weather would clear enough for the annual Memorial Day parade. This is an event that we look forward to every year. We waited and waited but it was not to be. The parade was eventually called off and we'll hope for better weather next year!

It was raining when we left home so I wrapped my camera up in plastic bags and decided to try getting some interesting pictures, regardless of the weather.

Here is a gallery of the pictures I took, along with a couple of favorites from the rainy morning.

Old Lyme Memorial Day Parade - 2011 See the gallery!

Veterans in the rain

Heading home

Baseball Close Calls

Yesterday evening ominous dark clouds glowered on the horizon as we made our way to the ball field. After two cancelled games last week and what seemed like a week of solid rain we were not optimistic for the evening's prospects. At game time, however, the sun broke through... and we've had beautiful weather ever since!

The sunshine did present some challenges for photographing the game, though. Early on the outfield was cast in shadows while the batter's box and parents' row were still bathed in bright sunlight. So, as I shifted around the field I was constantly adjusting settings to try and get exposures right.

It's a pity the coach pitch league doesn't allow instant review of some of the calls, 'cause I captured some pivotal plays where the call on the field may have been overturned under review!

Here are a few of my favorite shots from what turned out to be quite an exciting game. These kids are really coming along!

 
There was no question that this second baseman edged out the runner in a clutch play.

Same runner. Same call. But didn't he really beat the shortstop to the bag?

Here the runner took a ball to the helmet to avoid the out!

This was a close call. If the 3rd baseman has a foot on the bag then the out called on the field stands!

This was a close play that turned out not to be once the ball was discovered in the dirt instead of in the 1st baseman's glove. Our first base coach hasn't spotted the ball yet here...

 
Runner called out. Is the ball in that glove?

 
Here's an amazing play shaping up. Until...
(See next photo)

 
Noooooooo! The luckiest base runner of the game got away with one here when they bobbled this ball. We'll work on this next practice.

Now for the artistic shots. This may well be too many pictures for one post... What are you gonna do?

 
Hit it to me.
IF YOU DARE!

 
Stealing bases. Fine.
Stealing the base ball? Fun!

 
Two good-looking parents, too good-looking to leave out.

 
The aftermath.

Scenes from the Ballpark

Do you still shoot in Auto mode? Up until recently I shot almost exclusively in my Nikon D-90's 'P' mode. 'P' - It's like Auto mode only for cool kids. The Nikon has such good automatic settings that it turns out consistently good results.

Then my friend Amy (who happens to be a fantastically talented photographer) challenged me to shoot my son's next baseball game in fully manual mode. She speculated that once I really tried to teach myself to use the manual settings I would never go back to auto. I was a bit skeptical and more than a little bit intimidated but I embraced the challenge.

That was fourteen days ago. Several hundred (thousand?) photos later I can definitely say I will never go back to shooting in Auto mode. I actually find that I ruin a lot more pictures this way but I really like the ones that I get right.

Here are a few captures from my first foray into full manual mode.

 
How many Rangers does it take to open a bucket of balls?

 

 

 
Fans, young and old, enjoy an evening at the ballpark

 
Safe or out?

 
You make the call!

Lyme Academy - Senior Exhibition 2011

 
Our favorite sculpture of the exhibit

 
A painting by our friend, Nathan Perry

 
A composition by our friend, Carlin Felt

 
I was digging this curly vine

 

Duck Through a Window

Driving around Old Lyme I see lots of things that make me think, "That would make a nice photograph." Fortunately for me, I often have a camera so I can test my theory. Here are a few shots I snapped from the window of my car. I pulled off on a side road and shut the engine off for a few minutes as I watched a couple of ducks enjoying a seasonal pond created by Spring rains, some of which began to fall while I was thus engaged.

 

 

 
This hen is a bit tougher to see than her mate.

 
This drake was holding a stick in his bill and using it to preen himself when he wasn't shaking water from his back.

Inflatable Turkey

I took a day off work a couple of weeks ago and I picked the kids up after school. On the way home we saw this tom turkey chasing one of his lady friends through the forest off of Whippoorwill Lane. We see turkeys all the time, but we don't always see them puffing themselves up like a toasted marshmallow. We took a small side trip to photograph the display of puffed plumage.

 

 

 

 

 

Play Ball!

Spring is here. So, oil up the glove, dig the cleats out of storage, and grab your cap 'cause its baseball season!

Here are a few pictures I shot while watching my favorite team this evening.

 
Great coaching

 
Unfortunately, not everyone that wanted to play got picked for a team...

 
Uh, he's out, right coach?

 
Sprint!

 
No place like home

 
Sportsmanship!

 
The dugout

From My Car Window

Here are three pictures taken from my car window this afternoon.

 
Jordan Cove, Waterford, CT

 
Creeping Plox or plox subulata

 
Scratch That Itch!

Spring Blossoms

 

 

 

A Fresh Crop of Photos

The way you choose to crop a photo can dramatically change its overall balance and feel. For me, a successful crop of a photo can sometimes take an otherwise boring picture and turn it into something noteworthy. Finding that right crop is often a process of trial and error for me.

I took this photo on at Bluff Point State Park the other day. While trying to find the best overall crop for the photo I came up with several different versions. Each is pleasing to me in its own way. I thought it might be interesting to demonstrate a little bit of my process and how I think about the pictures I decide to keep. I throw away a lot of pictures. However, there are some of them that I end up keeping in multiple different crops and treatments.

I often use my wife and kids as a sounding board when trying to find the ideal version of a photo. They are usually helpful and quite patient with me, however, my wife has on one occasion informed me that she has had enough of trying to choose between seemingly identical photos for a given evening!

As you look at these nearly identical shots, do you have a favorite?

 
1 - Here's the original photo, un-cropped.
This one fits the rule of thirds on the horizontal axis (the road vanishing point is kind of along the right third of the frame), but I thought I might improve it...

 
2 - I cropped it down to shift the horizon down to the lower third of the frame... I like the balance of this one. It makes me think about what's around that bend.

 
3 - Then I shifted the horizon up to the upper third of the frame... Both of these are interesting in their own way. This one puts more focus on the lines of shadow on the road. It's more about what's right in front of me than where I am going.

 
4 - Here's an 8X10 ratio with the focus still on the road.

 
5 - This 8X10 draws your eyes up into the trees a bit more as they follow around the curve in the road. Again, it's got me wanting to see whatever's around the bend.

 
6 - Flipping the 8X10 to a portrait layout yields a shot that might look good framed on a wall as a large print.

 
My Final Pick - After spending way too much time sampling all the above crops, I finally scrolled to the next photo in line (which I hadn't even looked at yet) and decided what I was really looking for was this un-cropped photo which I think may have a better over-all balance than all the others. Incidentally, I ended up cropping this several times, too, until they all started to look exactly the same to me... Sometimes it's just tough to decide!

Ultimately, I have to just make a decision with each photo and move on or I'd never get any of my pictures processed!

Weeds, Bridges, and a Boardwalk

Here are a few more pictures of weeds, water, bridges, boardwalks, and a train. I even threw in a self-portrait for good measure. I may stop posting pictures from down on the boardwalk for a while, now. Maybe.

 

 

 

 

 
Father and Son: Self-Portrait

Perspective: Kid in Foreground

A few weeks ago I posted some pictures that played around with the differences in perspective down on the boardwalk in Old Lyme. The comment was made that the closer-focused shots would be more interesting if there were something more interesting to look at in the foreground. I happened to be back on the same boardwalk again last week and I just happened to have a good-looking kid with me. So, I threw him in the foreground of some similar shots... Yeah, I think the claim might be made that they are more interesting than the empty boardwalk shots...

 

 

 
We call this one his guapo pose.

 

 

 

Going, Going, Gone

So, Blogger has been broken for three weeks -- or, more accurately, the Blog This! feature from Picasa has been broken. The problem first manifest itself to me when two of my posts ended up showing up with blank pictures the next morning. It has taken a very long time for the Google team to "fix" the problem. I saw on the message board this evening that they have a fix in place and it appears that, at long last, the problem is, indeed, fixed! In addition, I can now post more than four photos directly from Picasa, which is a nice feature that should have been added long ago.

I posted these pictures as a 5-minute test. I didn't take time to sort, edit, or crop; rather, I just grabbed group of photos out of an old folder and hit Blog This!

These were taken from White Sand Beach on February 1, 2009. That was my first Sunday evening living in Connecticut. I had worked a grand total of one day at my new job in Groton. That's just over two years ago in human years (which converts to roughly 10 PCC years)! There are actually two lighthouses visible in these shots. In the first picture you can see the Saybrook Breakwater Light to the left of the sun. In the rest the Lynde Point Lighthouse is visible to the right.

 

 

 

 

 

Lyme - World War II & Korean War Memorial

Right across the highway from the Lyme Town Hall (Lyme is not the same as Old Lyme) is this unique monument to the men and women of Lyme that served in World War II and the Korean War. I couldn't tell what I was seeing from a distance but I was drawn to the sweeping curve of the stone steps and as I got closer I was fascinated by the texture of the stone, lichen, and moss.

The washed out color palette of this photo looks like I applied some sort of photo effect, but this is pretty much how it looked right out of the camera.

Night of the Super Moon (Continued)

Here are a few additional shots from March 19, the night of the Super Moon. These pictures do not necessarily feature the moon so here they are in their own separate post! Do you like any in particular?

The crane on the left was in constant motion as it dredged the bottom of the harbor bringing up bucket after bucket of dripping mud.

Similar to the first shot but a much closer crop of the yacht club light house.

Steel water

Lynde Point Lighthouse over the reeds.

I left this exposure open long enough to capture a few stars and quite a bit of light flare. Blurry or interesting?

Super Full Moon

The Super Full Moon or Perigee Moon was the huge and bright over the Connecticut River

On March 19 the full Moon was rumored to be closer to the earth than it will be again for the next 20 years meaning it was going to look bigger than normal. I did a little research and learned that the giant Moon was going to rise shortly after 7:30 PM on Saturday the 19th. We found a spot on the shore of the Connecticut River in Old Saybrook to watch it. There was a bank of low clouds on the horizon so we didn't see the Moon until it was a little higher in the sky than I was hoping but it was still pretty large and impressive.

Several other photographers had the same idea as we did. As I was perched with my tripod at the end of a long dock I enjoyed listening to the bantering of an older couple set up only a few steps away from me. There were grumblings and expressions of frustration as he snapped picture after picture with his huge telephoto setup. They would peer at the digital display and I'd hear her say, "Oh, that one's blurry again." "That one was too long, it's blurry again!" My favorite was her muttering under her breath, "I can just see tomorrow's headlines, dear: Old Couple Found Frozen to Death On Dock in Old Saybrook! Can we just go now?" I was sort of sad to watch them pack up and shuffle back to their car and I wonder if any of their photos turned out.

Of course, none of the pictures I took of the Moon itself impressed me much. The Moon is usually so bright that I find it pretty difficult to capture in any detail. This night it was particularly bright. In most of these pictures the Moon is just a too-bright spot in the sky but I still like the overall results, particularly with all the docks at the yacht club and the glassy water of the Connecticut River.

The long exposure created a unique mirror effect on the water

The lights of Niantic and New London reflect pink on the clouds on the left side of this shot.

May Day at Florence Griswold

This afternoon I noticed my daughter was scrapbooking photos from last summer. I was impressed with a few of them and since I didn't post them before, here they are.

Each Spring the Florence Griswold Museum has a Community Free Day on the first Saturday in May. This past year I took the kids to enjoy the art, to bask in the warm weather, and to partake liberally of the free ice cream!

This shot of the great tree leaning out over the river is the one that really caught my eye today. It's no wonder this was an artists' retreat.

You can tell that this kid was thrilled to be out in the sunshine.

The Rambles is a site specific stickwork sculpture.

Guests are encouraged to wander around and through the sculpture.

Outdoor portrait.

We found a fuzzy dead bee.

We took turns petting the fuzzy dead bee... Which led to problems that were later discussed in our private family blog here. If you happen to want access to the family blog and you don't already have it just let me know...