PAW 2005 - Wk 35 - York

We spent much of Sunday in Portsmouth, NH and then wound our way up Rt. 1A through York, Wells and Ogunquit. This is a shot of us in front of one of Tracey's favourite gardening shops. I'm wearing a Utilikilt. This one is my sage green "survival" kilt, but I also own the khaki "mocker" and a black "original" kilt. I don't wear shorts in the summer any more. Utilikilts rock.

No my little SD300 doesn't have a fisheye lens. This was shot in a garden reflection ball and then I played with the perspective with the shareware PTLens filter in photoshop to mostly undistort most of the image. I cropped square because it fit the image better.

(SD300, manual mode, QuadToned, cropped and perspective play in PS.CS.)

PAW 2005 - Wk 34 - Boston

I did some portrait and magazine work during the week this week so our parents did us a grand favour and watched the grrrls while Trace and I took some time for ourselves. We spent all day on Saturday in Boston on our way back from the Rolling Stone's concert in Hartford on Friday night.

On a side note, it amazes me that Jagger may be older than my dad, but he can still run about the stage with more energy than most guys my age could for three solid hours! I honoured my ticket contract and didn't take a camera into the concert. The band ended up 20 feet from us dead center as the stage moved down the field during the concert, so I kind of regretted not being able to even take a snapshot. C'est la vie.

It is fun to be able to play tourist in Massachusetts when we spend so much of our time putting up with Massachusetts tourists in our own state. Here are a few shots of our stay in Boston...


Sam Adams, brewer, patriot...hell raiser... Mr Adams' statue is here front of the "Cradle of Liberty" aka Faneuil Hall where he and his fellow 'rebel insurgent' types planned out much of the mayhem that they caused the occupying British military prior to and during the American Revolution.


This is the other side of Faneuil Hall with some of it's more recent neighbors in the background. Boston is nothing if not a very interesting mix of hundreds of years of old (in American terms) and new buildings. I saw Libertarian Presidential Candidate Harry Browne speak at Faneuil Hall many years ago. The inside of the building made for an impressive backdrop for a speech that wasn't much different from that which one of Mr. Adams' own compatriots may have given.


We didn't see 'Charlie: the man who never returned' of Kingston Trio fame still riding the T...but this platform on the Green Line smelled like he might be still living there!


Just down the street from where Benjamin Franklin was born (on the Milk St. site is a modern building that is undergoing a face lift) sits the very tranquill Post Office Park with this beautiful stone Arbor. Trace stopped to smell the flowers as is her want in life. I took her photograph doing so, as is mine.

(all SD300, manual mode -2/3 stop exp. crop and quadtoning in PS.CS)

PAW 2005 - Wk33 - Woods Pond

(SD300. Manual mode -2/3 stop exp.)

Summer is winding down. It is now possible to go to any of the nearby ponds and it is not full of tourists cramming in the last bit of fun into their all too short vacation time. This is Woods Pond a few miles down the road from us. It is one of my favourite places to photograph because it has so many wildly varying moods.

PAW 2005 - Wk 32 - Cross Process

I purchased a Zeiss Ikon 6X9cm camera this week that takes modern 120 film. I had a little fun with it in Portland's Old Port. This is the US Customs House that was built here on Fore St. between the years of 1867 and 1871. I shot this with a roll of Provia 100F slide film and had it cross processed in C41 chemistry. I've scanned it (on my flatbed as my local lab can only handle up to 6X7 negs) and taken some of the dust out.

The strange colour is from processing it in negative chemistry instead of reversal chemistry.
Sometimes it is fun just to play like this.

I like it.

(Antique Ziess Ikon, 1/100 @ f/11, Provia 100F, cross processed.)

PAW 2005 - Wk 31 - Casco Bay Music

My Aunt "Moo" and her partner Joyce invited the whole family out to their house on one of the Islands in Casco Bay for a Saturday afternoon unplugged jam session to celebrate Joyce's birthday. Now when I was a young kid, we were of pretty modest means and so huge family jam sessions were a major source of entertainment. Though everyone is doing much better than we were in the 1970s, another of my Aunts, Sandy, started these sessions up again a few months ago and today I find that I'm enjoying making music even more than I did as a kid and and I dearly hope that my grrrls have memories of family music making that are as pleasant as mine are when they are my age.


This is a view of two kayakers paddling past Ft. Gorges in Casco Bay with the city of Portland in the background on the way back from a long hot fun day of music. I made this from photos shot in colour and converted this image to infra red in PhotoShop with a new Fred Miranda IR action.

Here is a photo of the grrrls looking at the Fort as we cruised out to the island on the ferry...

I've always been fascinated by the Fort because it is said to be designed exactly like Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor of Civil War fame. I still always confuse Fort Sumter with Fort McHenry, the battle over which inspired Francis Scott Key to pen our National Anthem during the war of 1812. My mind is funny like that.

(Both shots were taken with a Nikon D70. the IR shot was sith a Tokina 12-24 and the shot with the grrrls with the Nikon 24-120VR and a popup flash for fill.)

PAW 2005 - Wk 30 - Storm Spider

"Come in," she said "I'll give you shelter from the storm..." (-Dylan)

Along with the stunning sunsets of late July early August brings us sudden storms that dump millions of gallons on us all in a rush and then are gone as quickly as they come up. This is one of our many spiders who works tirelessly under the deep eaves of our screen porch keeping the mosquito and deer fly population down.

(Nikon D70, 24-120 VR)

PAW 2005 - Wk 29 - Some Favourite Things

Here are three of my favourite things...Beth, Nicole and a beautifully lit sky over our field.

The hot hot days of late July provide us with some truly stunning sunsets but not much respite from the huge amount of work from the wedding and family portrait season. I will do my best to keep posting something here each week through the remainder of the season.

(Nikon D70 with 24-120VR and popup flash.)