Day 299 (25 Oct 2012) Night at the Boneyard

In my town, along a narrow, windy road that leads to the landfill, is a graveyard, a graveyard for the ones that are powered by engines.  To me it’s a sad place; there are many vehicles from the classic car era that are rusting, smashed, and have trees & plants growing out of them.  It’s almost enough to make me cry, almost.

I thought I would shoot there tonight, as the moon is near full, and the sky containing some light clouds.  I exposed for 5 min, ISO 100, f/11 and edited in Lightroom.  It’s been a while since I’ve shot long exposure shots like these, so I didn’t catch that the moon was in the wrong spot to get a good exposure on both the ground and allowing the sky to be shown.  But that’s ok.  I thought about going B&W on all of them, but like the subtle colors that are captured on a night like this.

Day 241 (29 Aug 2012) Playing with Traffic

Not in traffic, but with traffic.  And my camera 🙂

Class started today so it was dark by the time I got around to shooting, and since I was in Manchester, CT, I thought I could try shooting a busy intersection and shooting the light trails from tail/head lights.  After a couple frames I changed things up.  I’ve been a big fan of bokah since I first learned about it, so I flipped my lens to manual focus, and put the camera deliberately out of focus to get these shots:

43 mm, 2.5 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Unfocused Drivers)

55 mm, 2.0 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Focus on the lights)

18 mm, 30 sec, f/11, ISO 100 (Phantom Car)

Day 235 (23 Aug 2012) Sockets

Well, I spent most of the night (from 7 till 11:30) in my garage, most of that trying to replace an alternator on a friend’s car.  After dealing with the typical rust bolts found on New England cars (due to salting of the roads in the winter), I discovered that the last person to install the alternator (body shop after an accident, maybe?), but in one of the bolts backwards.  Unfortunately this was a long bolt and there is no room to remove it w/o removing the axle.  That was more than I could do so late in the evening, so I had to reassemble everything and send them home un-fixed.  I have to admit that I’m really frustrated at whoever did the work last time.  I don’t mind giving up an evening to help a friend, but when it’s wasted because someone didn’t follow the tech manual, well, lets just say I’m not a happy camper.

I did manage, just barely, to get a few shots of some sockets that were laying on my workbench.  But the only reason I took them is so I would not miss a day on my 365 project.

60 mm, 1/30 sec f/2.8, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (Sockets)
60 mm, 1/30 sec f/2.8, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (14mm)

60 mm, 1/20 sec f/3.5, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (After)

Day 215 (2 Aug 2012) Shifting Gears

. . . is something I have not been able to do for a week and a half in my TDI Jetta 😦  I’m in the process of replacing the clutch, flywheel, and other misc parts to get it back to 100%.  For those of you that are car-savy, my throw-out bearing disintegrated!  Not just wore out, but when I separated the transmission from the engine, a bunch of parts fell out: ball bearings, metal pieces, and other stuff.  Because one of the parts that was destroyed was the clutch fork, I had to order more parts to continue.  The first photo is the edge where it has worn agains the clutch housing.

The second photo I took on my way home today.  I had to stop and shoot some photos 🙂

60 mm, 1/60 sec, f/4.0, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (Clutch Fork)

29 mm, 1/1000 sec, f/9.0, ISO 100 (Sun Rays)

Day 197 (15 July 2012) Going Home. . .

So yesterday’s post wasn’t a work of art, that’s for sure.  What you saw was my reward for 4hr, 8min of grueling Tough Mudder!  It was probably the most awesome thing I’ve ever done, and a TON of fun!  I am defiantly going to do it again next year!!  When I posted that photo, I was at some small pizza joint with my team, reliving the glory of the day and refueling our bodies for the drive home.  If you are interested in a physical challenge, I HIGHLY recommend you go to www.toughmudder.com and finding the nearest event, signing up, and training for it!

On my way home from spending the day with my teammates at a post TM hang out, I noticed all the other people headed home after their weekend’s actives.  I got me thinking, I wonder what they all did this weekend?  Did they have to work?  Did they get to spend it with friends/family?  Was it a terrible weekend?  We all probably had different weekends, but we all had one thing in common: we were all going home.  Home to rest, relax, prepare for the up-coming work-week.

55 mm, 13 sec, f/20, ISO 100 (Going Home)

55 mm, 13 sec, f/20, ISO 100 (Tail Lights)

55 mm, 13 sec, f/20, ISO 100 (Coming Home)

Day 172 (20 June 2012) Bone Yard

Today I took a side trip down a road to an area of town where there are countless abandoned vehicle of all types.  It’s an interesting place; It’s not your typical wrecking/bone yard where you can go buy parts.  All these vehicles are just sitting, rusting, having tress fall on them, and all along the road are painted “Keep Out” signs.  There are also signs warning of video surveillance.  To me, a car guy, it’s confusing and sad.  I can see many classic cars and trucks just rusting more and more each year, and it pulls at my heart strings.  I don’t know why someone would want all these vehicles and not restore or sell the parts from them.  Or at a minimum sell them for scrap metal.

So today I found a spot that didn’t have any signs and shot a few frames.  I could have spent hours, broken out the macro lens, but I didn’t want to risk any more than I had.

This first image is a submission to the photo scavenger hunt I’m participating in; this one is under the entry, “abandoned”.  They all could fit that title.  The last one may be submitted under another category, depending on what I can think of for it.

36 mm, 1/200 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Abandoned)

55 mm, 1/400 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Fire Truck)

37 mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Chuck Noris?)

Day 135 (15 May 2012) Bank Street, New London, CT

Tonight I was down in New London for the first session of Work and Learn, where I will be teaching a class on personal finance in a couple months.  Work and Learn‘s mission is to, “… help unemployed and underemployed adults develop their mind, body, social skills, and spirit[i] to be able to contribute to their families and community.”

It was raining all day and night so I took the opportunity before I left for home to shoot Bank Street (during a brief break in the rain).  On the weekend, this street is packed with people visiting the reasutraunts and bars, but on a rainy Tuesday, there were few people out.

Part of my reason for wanting to shoot here was to scout it for a photo challenge hosted by artbycamila.  Keep a look out for that post coming up 🙂

18 mm, 25 sec, f/11, ISO 100, 18-55mm kit lens (Bank Street)

18 mm, 30 sec, f/11, ISO 100, 18-55mm kit lens (Bank Street)

Day 101 (10 April 2012) Drive By Sunset

Sunday evening as I was driving home, turning off the highway for the last stretch of country road, I looked up and saw some bare trees sillueted against a deep blue sky.  Something in me told me to pull over and shoot.  But I didn’t listen.  So this evening I set out to capture it.  However, halfway to that point, I looked in my review mirror and saw the orange sky and a big, knarley oak sillueted against it.  This time I did stop and spent some time shooting from different spots near where I parked.  If this looks familure, it’s because it’s the same area I shot “Life and Death” back in January.  This is a different tree, just across the road and down about 20 yards.

I’m still going to try for the other shot someday. . .

18 mm, 2.5 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, 18-55mm kit lens (Drive By Sunset)

18 mm, 13 sec, f/8.0, ISO 200, 18-55mm kit lens (Reaching for Venus)

32 mm, 4 sec, f/8.0, ISO 800, 18-55mm kit lens (Venus)

18 mm, 6 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, 18-55mm kit lens, cropped (Lebanon Sunset)

Day 94 (3 April 2012) Rings of . . .

Ford. Not Saturn. These ‘rings’ are from a brake job I did tonight on my friend’s Ford station wagon. You may not know much about cars, but when the brake rotors get grooved and warped like these ones, they need to be replaced (because they don’t stop your car very well).

I’ve been working on cars since before I knew what a car was, handing my dad tools as a little kid and then learning and doing more as I grew older. Now one of my hobbies is working on cars and restoring my 1973 Chevy El Camino. I also do work to earn a little money and help out those who can’t afford it. Or in this case, trading auto work for some hair cuts with a friend who is a stylist. This is what I call a win-win situation 🙂

60 mm, 0.8 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60 mm macro lens (Rings of Ford)

60 mm, 1/4 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200, 60mm macro lens (Brake Rotor)

Day 70 (10 March 2012) Mooween Park

Today I decided to have a low-key day, slept in real late, took a short hike, and had a good evening w/ a bunch of guys at church watching the movie Courageous.

These photos were taken at Mooween Park on Cedar Lake in Lebanon, CT. The park used to be a campground up untill the 60s, so there were lots of ‘ruins’ from it which were interesting to explore.

Old Abandoned Car Rusting Away

Rocks Piled, marking the trail

Abandoned Tree Fort

Day 47 (16 Feb 2012) The Commute

This afternoon was a rainy afternoon here in CT.  And as such, everyone on the freeway decided that they couldn’t drive more than 35 mph.  So I decided If I was going to crawl along at a snail’s pace, I would detour and parallel the highway on city streets.  My thought was that I probably won’t lose any more time, plus I’ll get to see an area of town I normally don’t get to see.  And maybe I would see something worth shooting.

55 mm, 1/30 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 18-55mm kit lens (Red Lights In The Rain)

But alas, the surface streets were crawling, too.  It took over 30 min to less than a mile.  As I’m sitting at a light I’ve watched turn green many time, I let my mind drift from my predicament and my focus locked onto the red dots in the rain drops on my wind shield.  And since my camera was near by, I grabbed it and was able to improve my mood a bit 🙂

But as I continued to crawl, all I saw was red.  Not anger (ok, maybe a little), but the sea of red tail lights stretched out in front of me like a slow-moving ribbon.

49 mm, 1/8 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 18-55mm kit lens (Ribbon of Red)

Day 30 (30 Jan 2012) Windsor Sky

As I was leaving work this evening, an hour later than normal, I glanced up from the road and saw a beautiful sky!  I drove a little out of my way to get away from the business park and found an open field where I could pull over, set up the tripod, and capture the sky.  Then I turned around and pointed at the traffic circle (round-about, for those from other parts of the country/world).  The surrounding towns put these in, most of which don’t have any other roads off of them, to keep the semi-trucks from taking a short cut through residential areas.  I’m not sure how well they work, ’cause I’ve seen tracks go over the top of them, or cutting the corners.  Problem not solved, and everyone has to deal w/ driving around these.  Gotta love government solutions (stepping down from my soap box, now).

18 mm, 30 sec, f/8.0, ISO 200, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Dusk in Windsor, CT)

18 mm, 30 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Windsor Sky)

18 mm, 30 sec, f/8.0, ISO 200, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Dusk in Windsor, CT)

Day 20 (20 Jan 2012) Sunday River Day 1

Good evening!  Today was a great day; shredding the slopes up here at Sunday River in Newry, Maine!  Thought I’m feeling my age and lack of gym use 😦  But it’s worth it!  I did take my camera out on the slopes today but it was so cold that to take it out meant my hands about froze almost immediately.  But I did brave it once but nothing really good came out (was on the chair as dusk was falling).  But when I returned from getting dinner, I took a drive to the main resort building and shot the slopes lit up for night skiing.  Tomorrow I’ll take more photos from the slopes with a borrowed P&S camera.  I may brave the elements for a sunrise, but we’ll see 😉

23 mm, 5 sec, f/8.0, ISO 800, EF-S 18-55mm IS ‘kit’ lens (Sunday River Night Ski)

On the way up, I did stop and try to shoot the sunrise from the side of the road.  I think it looked way more amazing in person, but here it is:

21 mm, 1/20, f/8.0, ISO 100,  EF-S 18-55mm IS ‘kit’ lens (Sunrise in Maine)

Day 3 (3 Jan 2012)

Today you are get a special treat: 2 photos!

55 mm, 0.3 sec, f/8, ISO 800 (Hartford, CT, as shot from I-91 Southbound)

The one above was my planned shot for tonight, one I’ve been wanting to get for a while, now.  However, since it was 14F out, and I only had a light jacket, I didn’t want to get out of the car, set up the tripod, and get a properly stabilized & exposed shot.  So, this is what you get.  I will re-attempt this shot once it warms up a tad (Thursday, maybe?)

50 mm, 1/20 sec, f/2.2, ISO 400 (dinner, as shot by a hungry man)

So, because the first/planned shot wasn’t so great, I decided I would shoot something else.  And since I was eating dinner when I discovered that my Hartford shot didn’t come out very well, I though I would try turning my camera into a “salad shooter” 😉

P.S. None of the photos on this blog are on my Facebook page, I reserve them especially for this blog (they are on my Flickr site for storage/posting, though)