Annie was right

Despite Penn State and Northwestern losing their games Saturday, the sun came up this morning along the Sheepscot River in Maine.  Temp in the bedroom was 63, outside 59.

Sunrise along the Sheepscot

Sunrise along the Sheepscot

This its an HDR (High Definition Resolution).  Three exposures merged together to get the full spectrum of highlights and details.  A bit of this post-processing can turn a good photo into a jagged cartoon.  A little dab'll do you.

Hurricane's a photo op

In Maine, when there's a hurricane passing by lots of folks watch the roiling waters.  So, that's what happened Tuesday along the mid-coast. 

I drove to the Pemaquid Peninsula and its all-time great lighthouse.  I was not alone.

Getting shots of the pounding waves was not very rewarding.  The day was gray, and the light was flat.  To get contrast in the shot, I had to turn to tweaking and post-processing in Aperture (Yep, I'm still using it.)  Some sunlight would have been helpful in focusing, too.

Still, it's a gift to stand on the shoreline and see the ledge below, the powerful waves turning and rolling and cresting and crashing.

"The days grow short ...

... when you reach September."

So says the song, but these fewer days in Maine are still Spectacular.

Saturday was one, and we were gifted with the opportunity to sail on Casco Bay with friends.  There were a few other sailboats on the water, plus one lobster boat that came kinda close to our stern as it raced to check traps.

We are in a 'shoulder' season now.  Our days are glorious - cool nights and crisp mornings. The family vacationers have returned to home and classrooms.  The 'leaf peepers' are still a few weeks away.  

It's vewy, vewy quiet. 

Now that's good eatin'

             Marbled Rye toast, hash browns, and a sausage
                       and cheddar cheese omelet$8.50

    Had some business to do in Portland this morning, so before our meeting we stopped at Becky’s Diner, on Commercial Street. Breakfast served 4am-4pm, besides lunch and dinner.

    Becky’s has become a roll-up-your-sleeves basic breakfast experience for 25 years.  The menu is what you’d expect  - eggs, omelettes with sides, hash, pancakes and waffles.  It’s all bargain-priced.  You can eat and fill-up for less than $10.  

    Becky’s has been called an iconic diner, and I’m  a sucker for diners.  A few years ago, I did a photo project on these special eateries.  In this one, Gardiner, Maine’s A-1 Diner is the focus

Orange lemonade at Coastal Botanical Gardens

For more than a week, the weather forecast for today was gorgeous.  Sunny and 83 degrees.  But at 9am, as we leaving to meet our friends and their sailboat, the heavens opened up.

Voyage canceled!

But, of course, light appeared in the eastern sky and by Noon I was shooting in "shadow" mode.  The sun was peeping thru, and but when we began our visit to the Coastal Botanical Garden, the sun came out and the color was rampant.

There's no moral to this story, nor any photography lesson to be absorbed other than to be at the right place at the right time.  Instead of lemons today, we got lemonade.

 

Remember records?

A few years ago, I focused on Maine diners.  I love the design of the real old ones, hopefully I caught some of their 'flavor' in photos I took.

Since then, I've been thinking about 'projects' and one that's been kicking around in my head is Used Record Stores.  Never having been in one, I ventured to Brunswick, Maine to visit Vinyl Haven. (The name is a pun ... one of the islands off the midcoast is the lovely Vinalhaven.)

The store is owned by David Hunt. For nearly 40 years, he's been buying and selling records and equipment.  Today, if you have a cassette recorder, a Garrard turntable of a Kenwood stereo amplifier and you want it repaired (???? really?), he's your man.

Mark, the manager and a former professional musician, greeted me when I shuffled in, not sure what I would see or what sense of the place and the business I would get.  Now, I want to go back and visit a few more such stores.

Before I went to Vinyl Haven Records, I was also thinking about visiting Bull Moose, a chain of music/book/video stores that's flourished in Maine.  Some folks credit the owner's computer programming skills for devising software which greatly aids the business' inventory and supply chain. But enough biz-talk.

The benefit of going to Vinyl Haven, and then seeing pix of Bull Moose on the Web, is to realize there is a difference, even though both stores sell music.  The Moose is a retail chain.  Promotions, new releases, promotion.  Vinyl Haven is an experience born of a love of music and LPs and hifi gear from the '60s and '70s. I hope I can capture some of that flavor.

Day 4 at Maine Media Workshop

Day four with Jay Maisel ...

barnako_frank_20.jpg

Jay is not a fan of what photographers call post-processing.  That’s when we take an image from our camera, wrestle it into a program like Lightroom or Photoshop, and tweak it so that the lighting is better, the con,or is better, and the composition is better. Jay would say “F-that!”  He wants photographers to concentrate on getting the shot right in the camera, when they take it.

That’s why he says pay attention to the corner, avoid the triangles, get closer, look at every square inch of the scene: get it right sooner rather than later!  Any time pushing pixels own our image is a waste of time, and at 80+ years - Jay’s time is very valuable..

One of the techniques he uses to improve the chance you’ll get it right the first time is to brackets your shirts.  You set your camera to take three shots at a time at different exposures.  The is the :”right” balance of light and speed, the second is a little lighter than ‘normal’, and the third is a little darker.  So, you push the button and you get three clicks of the shutter. (Consult your camera’s Owner’s manual for details.)

It is remarkable that this technique can have a marked impact on the colours in your shot. 

Well, whadya know?

Well, whadya know?  Jay LIKED that picture of two people eating a Red's Eats lobster roll, the picture I thought was a nothin'-burger.  

Jay liked it for its color balance, but wished I'd moved more to the left to get rid of a picnic table on the right.  He also would like not to see the umbrella pole growing out of one woman's head.  This week he's noticed things like that that I, and others as 'we', just don't see in our stuff.  Jay is adamant about 'owning every pixel and every square inch" of the shot and thinks we ought too look at our work carefully.  :)

It occurred to me today, driving up to Rockport, that I've really spent a lot of my photographic life doing street photography.  Jay said his favorite thing to do these days is street work, but his career includes great work including travel, portraits, landscapes, and so on.  

I also noticed that the name of this class I'm taking is "Light, Gesture and Color".  It is not "street photography".  So I spent this afternoon doing something other than street work - candids of people and moments.  

That means I came back tonight with pictures of boats, in the water and in dry dock; a Robert Indiana sculpture in Rockland, people walking in an alley, and a few shotsof bicycles (an inside joke for the class) and a dog.  

Jay's having small success in nudging me into new ground.

Fish in the right pond

Lesson one when you're trying to be a photographer: show only your best work.  If you show everything, hits, misses, maybes - well, you'll be like everybody else. Of course, if you're trying to be a photographer, then you should have more good ones than 'regular' people.

The point here is that yesterday, Day 2 with Jay Maisel, was a bust.  My fault.  What I've got to show at class this morning is lame.

Yesterday, after class, I went shooting along the coast of Maine, concentrating on finding people/street photographs.  First I went to a sculptor's garden, then the economically-limping downtown of Waldoboro, then onto Damariscotta and Wiscasset.

Slim pickings.  No people in the garden, no people in downtown Waldoboro (I mean, no people).  Tourists were in Damariscotta and Wiscasset.  Which doesn't mean there weren't people pictures to get. Since they were all visitors, there weren't many 'moments' - where life was happening.

Sorry to say that for my afternoon's work, in class this morning I will show a picture of two people and a dog sharing a lobster roll by the river.  Pretty damn limp.

Moral: Where you fish makes a difference in whether you catch fish.