Plum Island

Sunday (July 14, 1013) – The Newburyport Photowalk group held a Meetup at the Plum Island Lighthouse. E & I headed up there after our afternoon at the Butterfly Place. About 20 members of the group attended. We spent some time down on the beach photographing the water and the pier. Then everyone headed over to the lighthouse.

It was nice to have other photographers around to share ideas with and to give and get advice on camera settings and composition. However, having so may people in such a small area made for some difficulty setting up shots. Someone was always wandering into someone else’s frame.

It is a very beautiful area and I will probably find myself up there again someday, but I could have done without the Noseeums and Greenheads. Below are a selection of my photographs. Enjoy!

Butterflies

Sunday (July 14, 2013) – E & I went up to the Butterfly Place in Westford, MA. It isn’t a huge place, but worth the trip, especially if you are able to buy your admission through LivingSocial or Groupon as I did.  There are butterflies fluttering all over the place. If you stand or sit still they will occasionally land on you. Once landed on E’s leg for a short bit and another on my pants. But don’t try to catch them yourselves. They are extremely fragile and doing so will get you kicked out. It has to be relatively warm for the butterflies, but they have the a/c on to keep it from getting overwhelmingly hot.

One of the complications of taking butterfly pictures is that they don’t like to pose. They are constantly flitting about and don’t stay still for long unless they are feeding. The iridescent blue one was constantly on the move and the few times he did stop, he tended to keep his wings closed. There were a couple whose wings flapped so fast they were nearly impossible to capture. Below is a sampling of the many different butterflies that we were able to photograph. Enjoy!

Fun with Glowsticks

Saturday (July 5, 2013) – What to do with leftover glowsticks from the 4th of July festivities. Experiment with extended exposure, of course!!! A couple of 13 year olds, a 10 year old, a 7 year old and I had some fun. I used a varying range of exposure lengths – from 2, 4, & 8 seconds all the way up to 15 & 30 seconds. I played around with the results a bit with post-processing as well. For some I used the invert colors function (white background) and others, I applied a tint other than the original glowstick color. However, most are the original colors. Here is what we came up with.

Sharon Fireworks over Lake Massapoag

Wednesday (July 3, 2013), was the Annual 3rd of July Party at Casa de Campbell followed by the Sharon Fireworks. They always do a fabulous job. This year was no exception, although the trees at the clearing that we watch from need to stop growing. Each year our view gets a little more obstructed.
I am working on my Fireworks photography techniques. Below are a sample of the shots that I took.