Dear Santa - White Sky Poo Was NOT On Our List

Dear Santa - Hi. How are you? How is Mrs. Claus? I hope you are recovering from your trans-global trek to places where people believe in Jesus and you. Thank you for being so jolly, and for all the presents. I especially wanted to thank you for the snow that fell on us down in the Northern Neck of Virginia on Christmas and today. It was white and clingy. When I went out to shoot this picture of the rowboat and pier, I thought it was nice that it was snowing on Christmas.

This morning, on the other hand, I began to wonder about your mood. I mean, Four & Twenty Blackbirds would have been cool, but Four & THIRTY-SEVEN seems a bit much.

But then you gave us cardinals - even a camouflaged girl one, and a hiding one - so we thought "Yay, Santa's still the bestest!"

And the Pier and frozen creek - nice touch, Father Christmas!

It was also pretty cool of you to make sure no one suggested eating outside, this time.

The tree was nice, too. So clever of you to put all the most enticing and breakable ornaments above the Toddler Line, too.

I liked this cardinal the best. I named him Chet.

These two cardinals were feisty. You bring the coolest stuff, St. Nick!

But seriously - enough with the snow. Look how cold those birds are!

And thanks for our own little house, back in the land of Not-A-Flake-Of-Snow. Sorry we forgot to leave you any eggnog- I mean, milk and cookies. Hope you found our tree up to snuff. Maybe someday we'll get a chimney for you to come down. Just please - no more white sky poo when we're trying to drive. Thanks dude. You rock!

Love, Joe and [Maris]

Maine Has Things Other Than Lighthouses!

Maine. It's not just for lighthouses and lobster, you know. It has beaches. During our 2004 trip, most of them were blanketed in fog, but that's cool with us.

This spot was eerie. The photo above was taken looking toward the shore. We could hear the surf - kind of all around us out on this sandbar - but we couldn't see it. The lone seagull in this shot followed us around, looking at us quizzically and without fear.

[Maris] wanted this shot, because "Carnivorous Whelks" is the coolest-sounding thing ever.

Look what else lurks in the fog! Half-built US Navy destroyers at the Bath shipbuilding facility. The big gray piece in the foreground is an entire cross-section of ship, waiting to be moved into place. Massive structures, made kind of ominous in the fog and mist.

Cook's Lobster House in Bailey Island - Bring your Visa card, because they still don't take American Express.

At the border of Maine and New Hampshire, this is the Wood Island Lifeboat Station. I mostly just loved the light on the rusty old roof.

Trains! Old ones! An old switcher, belonging to Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad. Bath, Maine. [Maris] shot this one for me!

Old, old Chevy fire truck in Deer Isle. Photo by [Maris].

Hearse! I don't know. I might have made [Maris] shoot this one, just because it's so old and well-preserved.

My intrepid baby car, chasing empty lobster traps. There really is something for everyone!

More later, including a couple of Maine's most famous lights...

Maine '04 Five: Miles From Sunreturn and Glad I Brought The Long Lenses

I have a correction to my previous post. All of the preceding Maine 2004 shots WERE the "Down East" stuff. I don't know what they call the coast south of Penobscot Bay, but that's where we are now, headed up and down the Kennebec and Sheepscot Rivers, ogling AEGIS Destroyers in the shipyards at Bath and trying to get a fog-free view of the Sequin Island or Pond Island Lights (easier said than done). Here's the first half of those 2 1/2 strange days, starting with a 500mm shot of Burnt Island Lighthouse in Boothbay Harbor.

Had to keep the long lens on the camera for this one, too. This is Ram Island Light.

Hendricks Head Light, near Southport. This one was pretty shy, too.

Down at Newagen, we got this ominous sky (it looked like this a lot through the mid-week, but rarely did much more than drizzle and look New England-y) over Cuckolds Light, again with a 500mm mirror lens and no tripod.

[Maris] captured this fogged-in little harbor and its quintessentially Maine boat house.

Another [Maris] shot, with some of her signature framing - this is Doubling Point Light on the Kennebec River.

One of my shots of Doubling Point. The Kennebec is still an extremely busy waterway, and has seen the maiden voyages of many newly-commissioned AEGIS Destroyers, among other ships built a few miles north of this lighthouse, in Bath.

Tip-toeing through the moss and mud, we crept farther onto this privately-owned lighthouse property than we wanted to, but The Shot is what matters. This is Squirrel Point Lighthouse, on the Kennebec River near Phippsburg.

I'm zooming as hard as I possibly can.

Here's Squirrel Point Light from the other side of the river, 500mm-style. We saw this about eight times in three days, as we returned to the beach over and over, trying to get a shot of the lights offshore there. There was a lot of fog. If we stayed much longer, they were going to make us start paying Maine taxes.

Coming up next, non-lighthousey stuff and oh the FOG... then we'll get to the classic "Nubble" and Portland Head material, post-sunreturn. I know - I'm pretty excited about it...
-J

The Maine Event, Part Four (Yes, four. Don't argue!)

Ah, springtime in Maine. Winter is reluctant to let go. Above, [Maris] got by far the best shot of the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, capturing cloud detail that I, in an effort to lighten the dark structure, missed completely. She rules.

[Maris] also captured this long view, looking up through the drizzle at Owls Head Light. The site is said to be haunted, and one of the pieces of evidence to that effect is this old wooden staircase. When the fog rolls in, the ghost's footprints appear on the damp steps. Cool!

Two of my shots of Owls Head Light. It was misty and we had the place to ourselves, making it just that much more spooky and awesome.

Two frames from a rainy and isolated Marshall Point Light. The weather during the middle of this week-long trip gave us a new appreciation of the need for lighthouses, back in the days before GPS. Some of these things, and the rocks of which they warn mariners, were invisible until we were right on top of them.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse - by [Maris].

... by Joe...

... by [Maris]. Old bell and a seriously still-functioning foghorn (ah say, ah say, ah say)!

... and two more by Joe, who ventured down onto the freezing, slippery and wind-blown rocks below the light. Must revisit this point when the sun is shining. It, like most of Maine's coast, is sublime.

More to come - wait til you see the "down east" Maine stuff - the sun came back...

Maine, Interrupted

Okay, apologies for the month away from pictures and such. National Novel Writing Month 2010 is over (I "won" again!), and I'm attempting to remember what to do. I also have a nice new JOB, so my way-too-long-established "unemployed layabout" routine is being replaced with a new and vastly-improved way of life. First, back to the Maine vacation/photo excursion I took with [Maris] in 2004. Above, Pumpkin Island Lighthouse.

Two shots of Dice Head Lighthouse. We love Memorial Day in Maine!

Church! NO, we didn't go inside. [Maris] shot it because of its funky roof design.

Two more [Maris] shots. The bottom one is a row of real, live lobster pots. We don't even particularly like lobster, but we hear it's kind of a big deal, up there.

We weren't hungry at the time, or we would have HAD to check out a place that advertises this way. Another [Maris] shot.

One more [Maris] composition - Fort Point Lighthouse. Square lighthouses. Meh.

I took a shot from the other side, and it's still kind of meh. But it's a lighthouse and it's in Maine, so it's still cool.

Curtis Island Light. By the time we got home, the spot from which I took this shot had probably become a house. Now, good luck getting anywhere near this one by land. Still - is cute, non?

Thanks for your patience. More to come!