A few recent Nickerson photos - summer 2017

 The morning of the big eclipse I was at Nickerson and shot some skimmers and terns...

 



There was a shipping container on the beach, I assume it is used for storing Life Guard and beach maintenance supplies, but IDK...



The paintings on it were pretty cool, I had to shoot them.

-Jon

Where I go to Reflect

Some of my favorite recent landscape photos are shot in Lido along the first jetty.

My "trick" is to either go bare foot and stand in some water, and use the wet sand and receeding waves to create my mirror for a reflection.  Or I run in and out of the remains of the waves while wearing shoes and wimping out on getting wet.

Here are a couple fairly recent photos (all HDRs from 3 images).




 


 And here's a long exposure that looks relatively normal, but it is in fact a night shot done under a nearly full moon.  The recent rain helped.



-Jon

Home by the Sea

I grew up in New York, and I like to visit often.  This year I went in February and shot a lot of sunrise and sunset images at the beach.

This is an HDR from 3 source images shot with D4 and 14-24mm f/2.8, on 1 of my 2 new and favorite tripods (Really Right Stuff - extra tall 4 section series 2 and 3).  I'm probably going to get a 3rd one that's a series 4 XL 4 section.  After years of skimping on tripod and spending on lenses and bodies I've taken the plunge.

Last year right before going to Florida I got a 1000$ Gitzo and it broke on my second day shooting there when it was only around 3 weeks old.  One leg became wobbly and lose.

When I got back from Florida I returned the tripod and ordered an even better and only slightly more expensive Really Right Stuff series 3 tall 4 section one.  It is great.  I have absolutely no complaints.  And then I bought a second one that was a series 2 and as such a little smaller and lighter for a ball head and short lens use.

I have had a few other tripods (crap 1, small Gitzo, and large Fiesol) and really I should have just spent a thousand bucks on the best when I started and been done with it.  Everyone makes that mistake so I guess I had to as well.  You're probably reading this and have done it too, or will in the future.  It's like a right of passage all non-millionaire photographers have to achieve.



-Jon

Catching up in late 2016 - 3 photos from 3 locations

I was posting regularly and then well I wasn't.  I did it for a bit, but then fell back in to my old ways and got busy doing other things (but still shooting mostly).

As 2016 is winding down, I was thinking about using December to catch up and post a new photo a day, but that didn't happen.

So today I just posted 3 images, each from a different day and locations.

(In chronological order)

The first images is of some oystercatchers, an adult and chick, feeding in New York, in late August.  I grew up just down the beach, literally, from this spot where a bunch of different birds nest (common terns, black skimmers, oystercatchers, plovers, etc).

The oystercatchers can be a little hard to shoot if they get weary and react to being watched.  This day I tried to notice when they were watching me and then looked away and didn't eyeball them.  It mostly worked and I shot them from a fairly close distance as they went around hunting and feeding their chicks.  There were a handful of adults and chicks.




Next I shared an image of a Green Heron from Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington DC.

This year I went as many times as I had been in all previous years combined. Earlier in the year I photographed the lotus flowers a bunch, experimenting and doing some macro stuff in the last few visits.  By September when I got the heron the flowers were past, except for a few lotus, and for some water lilies in the back ponds.  Most of the busy summer traffic is over and I saw just a few other people there this morning.  Everyone comes for the lotus - so by September it is much more peaceful and low key.  And even if your thing is flowers there were enough water lilies to make it good.



Finally from later in September, I shot some stars at Cape May along the beach.

I've only experimented with star photography a little bit, I think all this year.  It can be a challenge.  Getting good focus is hard because it is night out and the stars are small and far away - I used manual focus on nearby lights and tried to chimp and adjust but I need to work on the night focus techniques...  With the cold nights, it can be hard to keep the lens from fogging up (but I plan to use hand-warmers to keep the lens warmer than the ambient air temp and some special lens coating/spray to prevent fogging next time).  I also wonder if shooting from sand (ie not solid ground) contributed to softer images.



2016 has been an amazing year, I've seen and done a lot.  I've changed a lot of things I needed to change (in 2015 and 2016).  I've been meditating for a little more than a year, and chalk up a lot of the movement in my life to that slowing down practice.

-Jon