04-JUL-2009
Day 185 - Fly a kite
My son made this kite at our campground. There was a husband and wife "Professional Kite People" in the field over the weekend of the fourth. They were flying these huge 8' kites in the field. They had this real simple "Sled Kite" that you could make in about a minute on their table. We tried with little success to launch it from the field that afternoon. We joked about taking it up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain with us and decided to do just that. It flew right from our hands with no problems and my son had a ball for about 15 - 20 minutes. It was easy to bring in too.
03-JUL-2009
Day 184 - Acadia Fog
While driving down to Northeast Harbor for dinner (at Docksiders) we noticed this scene at Upper Hadlock Pond. I had to bushwhack through some high grasses to get to the shore to setup the tripod and gear for this shot, but it was worth it. I have a feeling this shot will wind up as a print on one of our walls somewhere. The fog has just rolled in. On the island, you can have beautiful sunshine and warm weather one minute, then a few minutes later be engulfed in this cool fog. The fog is hell on camera gear though. I have to do some work to my 17-44 f/2.8 IS.
02-JUL-2009
Day 183 - Biking Trip
We hit the Carriage Paths today in 'so so' weather. First year for me on the paths without anyone in tow (no child seat, no child trailer, no tag-a-long). Even with the younger ones having to walk up some of the hills, we still made real good time. My oldest (passing me here) and I are thinking about taking the longer route next year.
01-JUL-2009
Day 182- Balls
If you can see the spray from the waves off to the right, you can get a feel for how close I was to the waves. I had one hand on the shutter release and one on a tripod leg, ready to yank the gear out to safety. Within a nanosecond of this shot, I was yanking the tripod and camera out of the way. During Post processing, I found that the two shots following this were highly blurred and the horizon line severely tilted as I continued to shoot while pulling the tripod and camera out of the way. No salt water actually landed on the lens, though the tripod legs and camera body had some on them.
30-JUN-2009
Day 181 - Hiking
I pulled my camera out and changed the lens only to reveal a serious fogging of the rear element. The temps were rising rapidly and the humidity was extremely high. The camera gear was well insulated and still at a much cooler temp. I should have known better, I do live in New England after all. The first hour of our hike I was assaulted by very foggy images. I decided to play the fogginess in an attempt to give the whole scene a bit of fog. The photos cleaned up real nice in Lightroom, almost too nice, most of the fog has been removed while adjusting the blacks. That is my family in the background waiting on Dad to take his photos and try and catch up. Most of our hike went that way.3
29-JUN-2009
Day 180 - Empty
The theme for the trip here on the island so far. We are here a week earlier than we've ever been, arriving the week before the 4th versus the week of the 4th. With the economy bad off and a month straight of rain, this campground (and all the others that we've seen so far) is very vacant. There are normally 5 campers blocking the view of these picnic tables in the field, there are none to be found today. In fact, the entire field has something like 45 or 50 sites, there are 3 campers in it, one is empty (possibly seasonal on a water/electric site). I snapped this right before we jumped on our bikes and took a short ride. We are trying to make the best of the situation this week.
28-JUN-2009
Day 179 - Jacob's New Bike
More of an 'artsy' view of Jacob walking his bike up the hill. With our Tahoe out of commission, we were unsure of whether we'd be able to get our son his 'new' bike today. His old bike was too small for him and he did not want to ride on the Tag-A-Long for our annual bike trips on the Carriage Paths. We were going to surprise him and tell him that we forgot to pack his bike and the Tag-A-Long so we'd have to buy a bike. He and his sister figured it out before we left though. This bike and this trips marks a passage of a very long chapter in our family's life. When we hit the trails this week (provided the weather cooperates) it will be the first time as a family that I (or my wife) have had to either carry or tow a child. Basically it has been 14 years since we've hit the trails on our bikes without a child in tow.
27-JUN-2009
Day 178 - Jumping Wizard
We made it to the campground. What should have been an uneventful four hour ride, turned into a desperate hope to arrive event. Just outside of Bangor (land of Stephen Kind) we picked up a high pitched whine in the front end of our Tahoe. After about 10 miles of it not getting better, I used our OnStar (The service we pay $20 a month for an *almost* never use). They ran a complete vehicle diagnostic (while we were driving) and pulled up nothing. They patched us through to another person who thought it might be a belt. While that kind of set us at ease, I began to realize it wasn't a belt. With about twenty miles to go, the whine lowered in tone and picked up a bad rattle on deceleration (we were towing our camper too). We somehow made it to the campground and left the vehicle parked in front of our site today. Luckily the island has a very nice network of buses to get us just about everywhere we want go. In the theme of nothing working right, I tried to set up my off camera flash and the freakin cheap eBay trigger wouldn't work. This was after trying to get the umbrella mounted to a camp chair. I finally gave up and put the 580EX2 on the camera as the available sunlight (well, cloudy overcast) was fading fast. In the spirit of "June is for Jumping" my son is levitating with his funky Wizard hat that he got earlier in the day before we left at the local Strawberry Festival. We really are roughing it. While the campground has WIFI, we have to hoof it to the main office for the only access point. There is no place to set the laptop and it is raining out. Not sure when this will get posted.
26-JUN-2009
Day 177 - Not a Turkey
This is not what I intended to post. For the past three or four days, I have noticed this wild turkey in almost the same spot by the road each day on my ride home from work. This evening I pulled around and decided to capture it. The sun was in the wrong spot, I was sweating in my motorcycle gear, and I almost stepped on her babies (they kept running through the tall grass, I couldn't see them but could see the grass moving). Before I left, I snapped a few shots of these daisies "Just in case". It was a good thing, all the shots of the wild turkey basically sucked. I might have to try an early morning expedition when it is cooler. I'd like to get a shot of her and her babies, if possible. Hopefully they will still be around in another week. We go on vacation tomorrow up to "God's Country", our annual trek to Mt Desert Isle, Maine. Let the photo's roll!
25-JUN-2009
Day 176 - Deep
On the way home this evening, I pulled into a construction company site to try to capture these curbs. I was on my bike, in full gear in the humidity and even walked up an overgrown hill to get a better shot. I think it might have been worth it. It was so bright out and I actually still had my helmet on, I didn't realize there was as much detail inside the the pile until just now while post-processing. I have to go mow the lawn, it's rained so much lately that we have had very few "lawn mowing days", its supposed to rain again tomorrow too.
24-JUN-2009
Day 175 - Header
After waiting 3 years to move our rear garage door, I finally got in gear and have someone doing it for me. He got the header in today. The old door sits level with the garage floor which is nice, but it also sits level with the backyard. In rainy weather (like we have witnessed for the past three weeks), water tends to flow quite freely into the garage. In a short period of time this will no longer be a problem.3
23-JUN-2009
Day 174 - No Birds Today
Shot off the same deck from yesterday, different subject. I could probably find a week's worth of PaD images from my deck alone. I'd rather have decent weather though. I didn't notice the spider webs until I was in Lightroom, we've not had bird seed in this feeder for some time, apparently the spiders aren't finding much use for this either. I did dial in a little negative Clarity on top of a stock Lightroom "Selenium" preset.