Seeking Sunrises on the Maine Coast (Mornings 4, 5 and 6)

As a follow up to my post yesterday showing sunrises from mornings 1, 2 and 3, I have uploaded here three more images.  These are from mornings 4, 5 and 6.  It makes me tired just looking at all these sunrises!

For those interested in those sort of things, the first two were taken with an Olympus E-M1 with 14-54mm zoom lens, and the third image was taken with a Sony NEX-6 with a 30-year old 35-70mm manual Minolta zoom lens.

Morning 4

Morning 5

Morning 6

Seeking Sunrises on the Maine Coast (Mornings 1, 2 and 3)

We were recently up in Maine for a few days along the coast near Blue Hill.  The weather was beautiful.  Though technically autumn, except for the leaves changing colors it felt like summer.  Shorts and sandals were the order of the day.

I like pursuing sunrises in autumn because the sunrise actually comes at a reasonable hour.  In the summer, sunrise on the Maine coast (when we've been there) is about 5:30.  And because some of the best color comes at twilight, I like to get to my "spot" 30 minutes before sunrise.  Argh, that's hard to do.  But in late September sunrise is at 6:30.  This is great news for me.  The biggest problem turned out to be the mosquitoes, even though temperatures were in the 40s and 50's at that hour.

Below is my favorite shot from morning #1.  Not exactly a sunrise shot, as this was taken about 7 a.m.  The actual sunrise, though beautiful, was rather lackluster for a photograph.  But as I returned to our cabin I spotted this.  The sun was still low in the east and gave some nice color on the starboard side of this lobster boat.  I like the overall soft colors of the background.

Morning #2 was just to opposite.  Instead of an uninteresting cloudless horizon, there was a thick layer of clouds which resulted in now sunrise.  However, again around 7 a.m.  the sun did rise above the cloudy horizon and provided this shot looking south.

A Touch of Autumn

Morning #3 was totally awesome.  I took a lot of pictures over a 10 minute period and don't at this point know which one is best.  But the following is representative.  The scene was absolutely gorgeous.

[Photos from mornings 4, 5 and 6 will follow, in tomorrow's blog post... I'm still deciding which ones I like best.]

A Taste of Maine (Moody's Diner)

We just got back from a trip half way up the coast of Maine, to as far as Mt. Desert Island.  The weather was beautiful, with the "worst" day being an overcast day yesterday, while driving back to Massachusetts.

I've started going through my pictures. As always, I take w-a-y too many.   Even so, I don't think I'm too excited about them. Yesterday (a couple of outdoor pictures are below) was overcast with not enough light to bring out bright colors.  Every other day was sunny and frequently cloudless.  I'm not complaining; but the downside of bright sunny days is that light can be very unflattering for photographs, with lots of harsh shadows and bright highlights.

The harshness of the light was especially true because most of my shots were taken during the brightest time of day, from about 10 a.m to about 2 p.m.  I did get up early (about 6 a.m.) each day for the sunrise, so I think I have some good ones taken during the golden hour.  On the other hand, I've never seen a sunrise I didn't like!

For fun and experimentation, I brought along four old manual focus 35-70mm zooms (two Nikons, a Minolta, and a Tamron) with appropriate adapters for the NEX-6.  I took a bunch of pictures with each of these lenses at various aperture settings and at 35, 50 and 70mm focal lengths.  I am looking forward to doing some pixel-peeping comparisons.  I hope the Minolta has the best image quality, as it also looks and feels the best.  If it is the best performer, I will sell the other three on eBay (where I bought them).

Yesterday being our final day in Maine, we stopped for a late lunch at Moody's, a classic diner in Waldoboro.   It was started in 1930, and is located on Rt. 1.

A stop at Moody's for lobster rolls was a great way to end our trip to Maine.

Lobster Rolls, French Fries and Cole Slaw!

Lots of real Maine blueberries and two scoops of ice cream.

Vermont: A Shout-out to Charity's Restaurant

Three weeks ago Laurie and I were up in central Vermont mid-week taking advantage of a deal through travelzoo.com.  For $99 we enjoyed a perfectly adequate room (I say "adequate" because it did not have a mountain view) for two nights and two breakfasts were included.  That's $99 total for two nights for two people.  You should check out travelzoo.

The hotel was the "Inn on Six Mountains" along  the Killington Ski Area access road.  I was pleased to see that the nearby Charity's Restaurant was still in operation. I frequented Charity's in 1972 when I lived most of a ski season in the neighboring town of Mendon.

I met the restaurant owner in the afternoon and was pleased to find out that he is the son of the original owner who build the place in 1971.  The owner was outside building this wonderful hay sculpture, of which there were many in front of businesses along the access road.

Charity's owner is on the left, armed with a can of spray paint.

The Pink Panther made with hay

That evening when we had dinner, it became quickly clear that Charity's formula for success was unchanged from when I remember it some 40 years ago.  The music was even the same:  Van Morrison, the Doors, Jackson Brown, etc.  And when I saw the menu with its list of burgers it reminded me that this was the first place I'd ever eaten a burger on an English Muffin.  We both couldn't help ordering burgers, though I decided I would be better off with a side salad than with fries.  (Fortunately for me, Laurie was happy the share her fries.)

Our food was excellent.  The fries were hot and crispy and the burgers were cooked the way we asked for them.  The bacon on my burger was cooked perfectly for my taste.  The only "con" as far as we were concerned was that the service was on the slow side.  Our waitress was very nice but disappeared for long periods in a restaurant that was far from crowded at the early time we were dining.

But, oh boy, did it bring back nice memories.

Burgers on English Muffins

Car Photography: My new interest - Part 2

In my Part 1 post, I reflected on how I used a standard zoom lens (Sony 16-50mm on a NEX-6) to introduce myself to car photography at my first Larz Anderson lawn event in Brookline, MA.  As I walked past all the beautiful cars during that first show I quickly began wondering what I might do with a shallow depth of field lens like my Olympus 75mm F1.8.  On an Olympus camera with its 2x crop factor, this lens give a field of view equivalent to a 150mm lens.

So, to the second weekend event I brought not only the Sony but also an Olympus E-M5 with its ugly but awesomely sharp silver 75mm lens.  I really like the creamy background I was able to get with these shots.  Out of focus areas can really make the subject of the image "pop".

Car photography: My new interest - Part 1

The last few weekends I have been attending automobile "lawn events" at the Larz Anderson Automobile Museum in Brookline, MA.  Each Sunday for six months there is a different theme; for example, "Swedish Day" or "Triumph Day".  At each of the four events I have attended so far this year, by the time you walk in the gate at 10 a.m. ($10 admission fee or $30 annual membership) perhaps 50 cars are parked and "displayed" on the lawn in front of the museum.

The museum doesn't own the cars.  They are privately owned and come from all over.  I saw one car with Ontario plates.  Many of them are show cars.  For example, last weekend I saw a 1959 Mercedes 190SL with 230 original miles on it.  Others, like some of the muscle cars I saw on another weekend, are definitely "driving" cars.  This was made obvious at the end of the show as muscle cars drove off into the sunset to the sound of screeching tires and deep-throated engines.

Anyway... I knew very little about car photography when I attended my first event.  I still don't know much.  I do recall starting out by taking documentation or record shots using my Sony NEX camera and the 16-50mm kit lens.  I was taking wide angle shots of the entire lawn area and images of single cars.  But I soon thought it would be more interesting to take pictures of people looking at cars (I secretly want to be a "street" photographer) or pictures isolating small closeup pieces of cars, like a wheel or name plate.

Starting with the second show, I added my Olympus to my gear and affixed a long lens with fast aperture.  The shallow depth of field pictures I was then able to take will be included in my next post, Part 2.

Wide angle shots at the top; closeups at the bottom

Sony NEX 6 with 16-50mm

 

A few more from our Maine Coast vacation

In two prior posts I included many of what I thought are the best images from our week's vacation in Maine.  After the fact, I determined that I like these five too:

[My full set of 18 images from the trip are posted altogether in one folder, and can be viewed bigger, on my Web site at: http://www.peterfraileyphoto.com/p385069449 ]

These seven images were taken in the neighboring towns of
Blue Hill and Surry, between 10:30 and 1:30 on Aug 23

Locking east from the base of Blue Hill in the town of Blue Hill

This is actually Blue Hill itself

Town of Surry

From Surry looking southeast toward Mt. Desert Island

I love small rural post offices.
(But it is no wonder that the USPS is running in the red)

View from East Blue Hill Road