Mourning dove in the orange light of sunrise.
There isn't much narrative to present - it was the usual Pine Point vacation: walking on sand bars in the morning, supervising the tide in the afternoon, and convening the family and friends for a communal dinner in the evening. Everyone free to do their own thing. It was wonderful!
Mourning dove in the orange light of sunrise.
The path to the beach.
Jonathan approaching the water.
A couple of gulls engaged in a shouting match.
A tern over the surf.
Jonathan examining the shallows.
A tern with an unidentified morsel.
Reflections of light through the water on the sand below. Used as background for this page.
A tiny sand dollar - as I recall about the size of a quarter.
Sea gull with a crab breakfast.
A surf clam - if you look closely, you can make out its foot which it will use to help burrow into the sand.
I always take photos of this silhouetted pine tree on Prouts Neck.
When the jetty was installed/extended when I was young (late '60s/early 70s) the outer most half extended into the water even at low tide.
At the tip of the sand bars opposite Prouts Neck, looking back up the Scarborough River.
Common slipper shells (Crepidula fornicata), a variety of snail.
Jonathan walking back towards the Point.
The tip of the jetty.
Flowers on the bushes along the parking lot. No idea what they are.
Maddy tries out a paddleboard in the tidal marsh.
Maddy.
A well earned rest.
Maddy and Cindy testing out the marker set.
Clam digger. I've never seen one so skimpily dressed.
Sand peeps, or least sandpiper (Calidris minutilla).
Snowy egret (Egretta thula).
Snowy egret (Egretta thula).
Mom and Dad supervising the tide.
Double crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus).
Double crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus).
Double crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus).
Fishing in Jones Creek - I've never seen anyone catch anything.
Drive-up to the Bait Shack.
Cindy on paddleboard.
M'lyn in a kayak.
Maddy and M'lyn in kayaks.
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias).
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias).
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias).
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias).
Maddy and Devlin at cocktail hour.
Clair, Mason, and Mike at cocktail hour.
Sunset.
Sunset.
Sunrise reflecting off the wet sand at low tide.
The boats moored off the sandbar with Old Orchard Beach behind them.
A young gull with a clam breakfast.
Another young gull, this one with a crab breakfast.
Cindy used blueberries to landscape the little house after it was raised to a higher foundation.
Sunset.
Sunset.
Sunset.
Still-life. The blueberries that Cindy used for some still life drawing after dinner.
Possibly a variety of gull.
Baird's sandpiper (Calidris bairdii.)
The Downeaster on its way from Portland to Boston.
Very little grass showing at high tide.
Three flavors of hummus: plain, beet with blue cheese and pecans, and carrot/cumin.
Clouds over the marina.
The cousins (Mason, Maddy, Harris, and Devlin) out in the sailboat.
A row of ducks just this side of the marsh grass.
Devlin trying out the paddleboard.
M'lyn and Devlin on the paddleboards.
Devlin out in the marsh grass.
Devlin and Maddy on the paddleboards.
A confab out in the marsh grass.
Maddy.
Jonathan contemplating the tide and marsh.
Brenda enticing a seagull with a morsel.
Gull in flight.
Little gull (Larus minutus).
Devlin eats a lobster.
Cindy returning from the cottage (82JCD).
The little house (81JCD)
Lauralee and Celeste's tuxedo cat, Chuck, surveys the world.
Jonathan takes a shot in the shallows.
Jonathan escorting Dad across the street for dinner.
The Milky Way over Saco Bay.
The Milky Way shot above is actually four shots layered on top of each other using the app StarryLandscapeStacker. Each shot was a 15s exposure at ISO1000 with apeture f/2.8. The lights at the bottom are a group of beachcombers exploring the shallows.
The background on the webpages for this trip is a shot taken while walking the sandbars on the morning of August 2nd. The waves in the shallow water reflecting light on the undulating ridges of sand just below. I've altered the color, but not the pattern, to match the color scheme of this site.
The images on the site, unless otherwise noted, were taken using an Olympus Stylus 1 (3968×2976 pixel RAW file, ~13 MB). I occasionally had a telephoto supplemental lens attached to the Stylus 1, especially for the wildlife shots.
I've whittled the image size down to two sizes - a thumbnail I use on the page for the day, and a 960x720 pixel (or 720x960 pixel, assuming I haven't cropped or altered the size) image that I've saved optimized for web usage.
A lot of the images I doctored using Photoshop Elements, a trimmed down version of Adobe Photoshop. My most frequent adjustments were: "Crop", "Adjust Light & Shadows" to cope with the extremes of light and dark, "Auto Contrast" and "Auto Levels". I’ve also occasionally run the image through an app called “Noiseless” which degranulates the images I’ve had to really lean on to bring out.
The night sky images were processed using an app called StarryLandscapeStacker that I bought from the AppStore for $5. The program aligns the star field and creates a mask for the landscape that is then edited in Photoshop Elements.
