Assignment: Outside My Door

Many of you long time followers know that I love photography.  You may also recall that I left my little point and shoot camera outside, up on the Whaler, about a year ago when I was working on it.    Just as my luck would have it, it rained that night, totally ruining the camera.  Pam convinced me to buy a decent camera to replace it, so I bought a Nikon D3100, which is a basic DSLR.

I love this camera.  I'm always poking it at people and things and snapping away, much to their annoyance.  I've also been "studying" (really, I don't study much of anything at age 62.  I usually just gloss things over and then apply my vast experience.  It really never ends up well this way though.) photography techniques for the past year, trying to improve myself.  I have to admit that, despite my best efforts to resist (hi Waterford-Halfmoon High School!), I've actually learned a few things.

One thing I learned was from an old sailor/jounalist/photographer friend of mine (hi Jon!) who said if  you want to get one good shot, take a hundred of them.  It will be in there somewhere.  So I do.

I also joined JPGMag and studied capable photographers, and Digital Phototography School and studied amateurs like me, seeing the mistakes they, and I made.

Digital Photography School is, perhaps, the most fun.  They post a new assignment every week and your job is to submit a photo taken within a certain date range to submit.  They used to pick the top three winners every week (I finished in the top three once) but have, at least for now, suspended the contest part of it.  Still, it's fun to look at an assignment and then take photographs with that in mind.  Sometimes, it is challenging, and sometimes it is just too easy.

This week's is "Assignment: Outside My Door".  We were asked...

This week: "Outside My Door" This time you don't need to go far. It's easy to be blind to things right under our noses while we look for an "exotic" place to shoot. So this time, look around your yards/gardens for your subject. Try to be creative, take time to think about what you are shooting and the best way to do it. Try to go beyond the obvious. Even if you decide to settle on the blooming flower, is there a way to shoot it differently? Wide angle close-up? Down low? Even if it doesn't work out the way you hoped, it can often give you a new way of looking at things.

Well, what is outside my door is Georgia's Golden Isles.  I submitted this photo, which you all have already seen.

"But is that it, Dave?"  You're asking.  "Another friggin' pelican?  You're in a rut."

Well yes, a pelican.  And actually, several other students picked up on my cue and also submited pelican photos as well.  One was even taken over on Jekyll Island.  The bastard.

But along those lines, the following photos were taken in the course of working around the boat yesterday, a routine day here, while I was playing mechanic (more on that soon).

Yeah, I know.  Another friggin' pelican.

And then, while I was trying to play mechanic in the engine room, I heard the dogs up above going frantic.  As in totally nuts.  All three.  That prompted me to go investigate, and what I found was this very large manatee munching on veggies growing off our dock.

He soon become annoyed with all the racket and decided to move on to other, quieter, dog-free docks.

So back to the engine room I went.  A short time later, same thing.  Three barking, frantic dogs, with Chevy's unmistakable "Hey look!  Dere's a dolphin!!!  Here dolphy dolphy dolphy!" bark.

Yup, just outside dock 13.  But instead of getting annoyed by the barking dogs, the dolphin seemed curious, and swam over to the boat for a look.

I noticed that his back was chewed up, probably by an outboard motor prop.

The dolphin investigated Drift Away, and then swam over to Spirit (my favorite boat here.  It's a really pretty wooden boat!) to see Diana.

So that's a typical day on Drift Away.  Maybe tomorrow I'll fill you in on my mechanical misadventures, both of the marine and antique car variety.  Right now, I'm still too peeved to write about it.