slush waves 1

friday - when it was still cold! - i went further out along the shore towards the bay and found a beach with a slush carpet going out about 20/30 yards from shore.  waves still rolled in under the slush carpet...and the sound when they broke on the beach was of slush being added...very strange :)

in this image the waves are at the top, coming onto the shore, where waves of slush have been deposited already by earlier higher tides.  i used a long exposure to get the wave action of the slush...

flying ice fish

it just looks like that to me :)

taken with my 300mm lens down the side of a dock at the ice pushed up against it...

 

sky in ice

the daytime highs in the 30ºs melt a bit of the top of the ice and pools form, especially along the line where the shore ice and the harbor ice meet.  here the sky and a hint of the shoreline treetops are reflected in this pool...

beach ice

this is a section of beach at low tide.  high tides have stranded these ice pieces...

yesterday's storm...

...as it approached the night before.

seawall reflection

it snowed, then sleet, and finally rain, so i am sure glad i got out a couple of times before this storm for ice photography :)

this was taken about 30:00 after "golden ice", and about 20:00 into the sunset afterglow...

and both were taken with a 300mm telephoto lens.  i'd love to be out *on* the ice having fun with my macro lenses but the ice along the shore looked a bit risky to me - and my camera and tripod - so i spent 2 late afternoon/sunsets shooting from afar with a long lens...sometimes i need to be pried away from those macros lenses and get back to appreciating the fine fine images that can be made with other lenses :)

golden ice

i'm trying to take advantage of the harbor ice before it snows again in a couple of days...a little sun and melting make for some nice fresh ice/water areas along the tide line!  the golden color is the setting sun reflecting off a large granite rock...

seaweed+ice

another example of my obsession with seaweed in the winter :)

snow trees

yesterday afternoon was hazy and cloudy with a few, very few, less overcast moments...so with some hope i set out with my gear...i felt frustrated that the light was magic and i was not using it well.  due to time constraints i had to leave soon after sunset, and when i turned around to go...a snowsquall was about to hit from behind, and the empty winter trees with dead leaves were outlined by the reflecting afterglow on the overcast sky above...when i looked up after this shot i realized it was snowing!

seaweed strands

the colors of seaweed in the winter never cease to amaze me!

pressure crack

here the tidal pressure has cracked this section of ice along the shore into many pieces, and the cold has been enough to start to freeze the newly exposed water!

seaweed in ice

back to my ice images from a few days ago...as i mentioned, the sky was totally overcast and gloomy, snow in a few hours...but that meant no bright glaring reflections to work around and just some neat closeups with the macro lens...

harbor sunset with ice

the word reached me this morning - the harbor was frozen!  i've waited 2 years, since last year it never froze :(  i have fond memories of ice and sunsets from the year before :)  true, the temperature barely broke 20º today but the wind was very light and the skies were full of sunlight...and a couple of clouds hung around for the sunset!!

ice on the half shell

definitely cold...

frozen mud at low tide

a friend in north carolina emailed me yesterday, "are you frozen?" so i replied with this image taken the afternoon before at low tide under the overcast skies of the impending snow+rain that night...i get chilly just looking at it!

moonweed

today i spent some time reworking the red seaweed image...i did it for the exercise.  i usually don't let myself stray too far afield in my images but pushing your envelope edges prevents atrophy :) and it's fun!

red seaweed

i spent the final hour of daylight today exploring the seaweeds exposed at low tide...the tide had turned and was coming in but it was still pretty low - the full moon was just a few days ago!  and because the tide was so low during this hour in which i love to shoot i returned to a place where at a mid-tide 8 days ago i had explored - too briefly - some small patches of red seaweed that caught the setting sun :) the state of the tide today revealed some rocks further out covered with it!  under overcast cloudy skies or even in the middle of the day the color of the seaweed appears much dirtier and drabber and thus makes them harder to spot.  the timing was perfect and the tide was low enough to allow me to get this close in my boots.  the window of time to get a nice long exposure water-over-the-rock-with-red-seaweed-in-the-light image is limited by the speed of, in this case, the incoming tide...a few minutes before the water hadn't reached the rock, and a few minutes later and the rock and the seaweed are submerged.  and, this is obvious but also integral to the shoot, time exposures take time (!!) thus limiting the number of shots able to be taken during that short period.  this exposure time was 2.5 seconds, so the next decision is to choose when in the wave/water action to press the shutter which determines the frame of action caught in the exposure.  waves are complicated movements, and can change direction and size quickly, or not, as the case might be...each wave is different as it washes over the rock and the light travels with it!  this was the second shot i took.  i liked the bubble :)

84 seconds

i'm going through the images i took late in the afternoon a few days ago...i started shooting about 30 minutes before sunset, and worked for the next hour and a half, through sunset and beyond.  often at the computer the first few images of a session get overlooked for a long time as my eye is more quickly drawn to the glamorous sunset shots :) and this time was no exception.  i got to them on this gloomy grey overcast afternoon when i can't talk myself into going out to the shoot during sunset since there is no sun.  two things struck me as i worked the early images.  first, that first shot, taken to start the juices flowing and to warm up the shutter finger, doesn't have to end up being deleted!

here's the first one from that session:

not bad...some nice light, wind, marshgrass, waves, and some bubbles...

i did not stay with this very long, a couple of more clicks, and then a vertical comp to include more surf:

time between shots, 84 seconds...the light has totally changed, much softer here.  so that's the second thought i had this afternoon, that the light can change in an instant!  one must be there and be ready :)

i stayed with this composition for a while trying to get some good surf, but this was the first of that series.

so 2 "first shots", and 2 images worth space on my hard drive :)

friends...

a whelk and a mussel watch the sunset together...

red+green marsh ice

some seaweed and a leaf underneath create some nice color in the ice in the tidal marsh...