Jonathan sets out the cheese for cocktail hour.
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. Even the pictures are repetitious! Everyone free to do their own thing. It was wonderful!
Some nomenclature - 81JCD refers to the “Little House” that Cindy and I bought in 2010 at 81 Jones Creek Drive. The “King Cottage” or just “the cottage” refers to the shack that my great-great-grandfather Cyrus Shaw King bought in the 1880s. The cottage is across the street at 82 Jones Creek Drive and overlooks the tidal marsh. The “Big House” would refer to the house now owned by my cousin Sally that was purchased by my grandfather Howard King Sr some time back in the 1950s (I'm guessing).
We drove again, about 1,530 miles by Google Maps. We swung wide around Chicago, going down I-39 then east on I-80. Like last year, we stopped in Erie PA on the way out, but stayed at a better motel (if there is such a thing along the interstate in Erie PA). We arrived in time for cocktail hour on Sunday.
Wikipedia link:
Jonathan sets out the cheese for cocktail hour.
We opted for dinner at the Bait Shed, taking this shot of the Cottage from our table.
Three of the four glossy ibises foraging on the mudflats.
Glossy ibis (Plegadis falcinellus). I was fortunate to get a good angle of the setting sun to show the colors.
Another spectacular Pine Point sunset - shot with my iPhone.
Zooming in with the Olympus Stylus catches some sunrays through the clouds.
A jet, probably on its way to Europe, and the waxing moon.
Devlin arrived late Sunday evening, having a few days off from her summer job. She joined me on the morning walk on the sand bars, bringing her camera.
Wikipedia links:
A family walking the sand bars looking for sea shells.
Sea gull with breakfast.
Northern moon snail (Euspira heros), see also moon snail.
Devlin regarding the pine tree at the tip of Prouts Neck.
A family habit - taking pictures of other family members taking pictures.
Checking the result.
A sand dollar in the shallows. Common sand dollar (Echinarachnius parma), see also sand dollar .
Documenting the sand dollar.
Fishing the river from the sand bar.
Channel buoy - Dad taught us the 'right on red returning' mnemonic.
Blueberry thief. Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus), see also chipmunk.
Diane and Harris arrived late the previous evening, then Diane left to head up towards Winterport to see if her sister-in-law Brenda could be persuaded to come down to visit. In the meantime, we had our Ice Cream Breakfast at Len Libby’s.
Sunrise rivaled sunset for color this morning.
A family of ducks in the creek.
Harris and Devlin at Len Libby's.
Capturing the cone.
Lenny the chocolate moose with his nose in my ice cream. Lenny turned 20 this year.
Breakfast.
The family portrait.
The tides were running high this cycle.
Reflections across the low tide. I think the bird to the upper right is a glossy ibis.
Back in 2015, I had attempted to take some nighttime photos of the Milky Way, having been impressed with many examples of sky photography I had seen on the web and in books. So, with the advice of my co-workers, Joe and Marty who do a fair amount of astrophotography, I tried it. I got one image which was photo-bombed by flashlight wielding beachcombers the result of stacking several exposures, but the light pollution from Old Orchard Beach makes the task challenging. Well beyond the capabilities of a hacker sky photographer like me.
But because we have a trip planned to Tasmania in November which is an excellent dark-sky location, I wanted to try again. This time I also borrowed Marty’s iOptron Skytracker device. The iOptron is mounted on the tripod, and aligned with the pole star (Polaris in the northern hemisphere, Sigma Octantis in the southern), and will move the camera to match the earth’s rotation. This is important if you want exposures longer the 20 seconds with my camera – longer exposures start to produce tracking because of the earth’s rotation. The two images below are single exposures demonstrating this. The left photo (30s) was taken without the iOptron, the right photo (60s) used the device.
I was also having focus issues – I had the camera set to manual, but was controlling ISO, f/stop, and exposure through my iPhone, but could not figure out (if it’s even possible) how to control the focus remotely, which I had set to infinity (∞), but the images were not in focus. So, I had to disconnect the camera from the phone (a Wi-Fi connection) and manually use the focus ring to back off the maximum a notch, take a test shot to confirm, and reconnect the devices to get the proper focus in the left hand shot below.
The images below are single images, with a zoom-in below, the details of each are described below. Mars was in opposition to Earth at the time (i.e. about as close as they ever get), so it was bright in the sky. There was a waxing half-moon (setting around midnight over Old Orchard Beach, to the right of these images) to avoid also.
30 sec exposure, ISO 3200, f/4.0 (13.2mm) - not using iOptron.
The lights, reflection off the sand, abd silhouette of Prouts Neck are in focus - you can even make out the pine tree at the tip of the peninsula. The dashed line is a plane flying up the coast.
60 sec exposure, ISO 2000, f/5.0 (13.2mm) - using iOptron.
Despite the shutter being twice as long, the stars are pin-points; the lights and silhouette of Prouts Neck are now “fuzzy” as a result of the controlled movement of the camera by the iOptron apparatus.
You can see tracks/movement as shown in this zoomed-in image (Mars and the star to the right).
If you zoom in on the lighter stars in the image above, you’ll find a central bright pixel, with four lighter pixels surrounding it, demonstrating excellent tracking with the movement.
A stack of 4 exposures, each is 20 sec exposure, ISO 1250, f/5.0 (9.8mm) - using iOptron. A plane's lights have been edited out of the image.
The orange glow in the lower right is Old Orchard Beach; the prominent star at the center-top of the image is Saturn: the fixed lights on the horizon shift with each exposure as the iOptron is moving the camera; and the green light on the left side of the horizon is the Wood Island Lighthouse in Biddeford.
When I started processing the images, I read up on a number of recommendations (which I have not followed yet) to get the quality image I want. I've been making notes to take with me to Tasmania, so I think I will probably borrow the iOptron to take with us, and give it another try.
I assembled a bulletin board for photos of Ice Cream Breakfasts, with Dad's portrait and Madison's fanciful remembrance. The graphics I printed off the web are place holders until the photos take over the space.
The Ice Cream Breakfast bulletin board.
Friday - a very impressive kite demonstration on the beach.
With the good weather, the Bait Shed was doing a good business.
Fishing off his lobster boat at sunset.
Snowy egrets (Egretta thula) flying off the marsh in the evening. I suspect they nest on the islands.
Cobwebs catching the setting sun.
Jonathan silhouetted against the evening sky.
Cocktail hour and a fire with neighbors Lauralee (seated) and Celeste (standing).
My view tending the fire pit.
"I tweaked up the vibrance on this shot.
My perfect Manhattan makes its debut at cocktail hour.
Amber light across the marsh.
A thin rose limned cloud.
The Cottage with light in the window silhouetted against the sky and water
On Sunday, Nancy and Ellen joined us for a few days.
The weather systems put a lot of seaweed into the waters at the beach - the dark wave of full of red algae.
The red algae sea weed in the shallows look like red cotton balls.
Zoom-in shot.
Sea gull flying with its catch.
Getting down to lunch.
Gull antics - "my clam".
Nope, my clam.
Sail boats out in Saco Bay.
The Litte House.
Snowy egret prowling the shallows.
A fishing boat anchored in the river with light fog - the lighting on the vessel attracted our attention.
A caterpillar of the milkweed tiger moth (Euchaetes egle).
A whole bunch of caterpillars; 'They skeletonize whole leaves gregariously, leaving lacy leaf remnants.'
Larkspur (Delphinium).
Blueberry.
Not sure which variety of daisy this is.
My sister loves me; VA Tech's orange and maroon echoed in the flowers planted at the driveway entrance.
Jonathan taking snaps of the caterpillars.
Best restaurant on Pine Point; swordfish with fennel, roasted the beans and butternut squash.
Thursday's sunset.
I got up early, as usual, and walked down to the town pier to take some shots in the early morning light.
The town pier seen from the Cottage.
I was trying to capture the low mists in the distance with this shot.
Start of the day for the waterfolks.
Sea gull stands sentinel on piling.
A view of the Cottage from the pier.
Another pair of watermen head to their boat.
And again (same pair).
Boats moored in the river - looking inland.
Looking seaward.
A gull gets an early breakfast.
The pigeons have to wait for theirs.
A pair of cormorants gliding over the water - snowy egrets on the far shore.
More sunrise on the river.
The pine at the tip of Prouts neck.
Lobster boat with a cargo of lobster pots heading out into the bay.
Sun rise.
Maddy was able to claim a couple days, and arrived Friday.
Driving back home, we stopped in Ashland OH to visit Natalie Johnson, retired from the Brown Math Department. Unfortunately, she had suffered a series of falls, but luckily had not broken any bones. She was in a rehab facility where we visited her, and she expected to go home later in the week. The remainder of the journey was uneventful, and we got home about 3pm.
The background on the webpages for this trip is a shot of the surf on the sand bars at low tide. 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 1280x960 pixel (or 960x1280 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 Lightroom, 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 occasionly tweaked up the vibrance on some of the shots to emphasize the color - I usually try to flag those images.
