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Yesterday, we learned the first lesson of How To Hide If You’re A Moose. Since our friend’s technique wasn’t very effective, he decided to try a new tactic – hiding behind a big pile of road sand.

I hated to tell the poor guy that it still wasn’t working very well. The antlers were a sure giveaway.

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(Note: In all seriousness, we were just tracking the moose’s activity from a safe distance as he wandered around the location, browsing and looking at these two-legged creatures with idle curiosity. All moose images were taken with a 300mm lens.)

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Another Little Piece of Us

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Early on, I was going to title this something really boring, like, “Kayaks at Cape Lookout.”

While not the most outstanding of images, it does reveal a bit more about our lives and interests, and I don’t suppose that’s a bad thing to do at this point. In fact, only yesterday, Barbara Youngelson wrote a comment on my blog that seemed interestingly coincidental: “It’s so cool when we learn a little about the photographer/artist through his work.” How could she have known I was going to post this?

Following up on the last two images of the wild ponies at Shackleford Banks (NC), I thought I’d put up a picture of the boats that take us to the places we love so well. (Well, you can’t see Susan’s kayak, but it’s much like mine, only firecracker red and yellow.) These kayaks have taken us through many interesting adventures, visiting the Okefenokee Swamp on many occasions, the Florida Everglades, Key West, the Gulf Coast, as well as many more local trips along the rivers and sounds of NC.

In the background is the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, one of nine lighthouses and two light towers that grace the shoreline of North Carolina. They’re fun to visit, fun to climb, and serve as impressive backdrops to a day on the water. It’s also challenging to try to time the light for the picture… 12 seconds.

For those interested in such things, the boats are both made by Perception (now Harmony, I believe), and are gel coat over Kevlar with solid bulkheads, about 17′ long. The ‘Shadow’ in back is just a bit shorter than the ‘Eclipse’ in front. I think one of the best things about them is that they can take you places where other boats can’t go… we can still navigate even when the water is only about 6 inches deep. You’ll… umm… see that coming up soon.

Hand-held single exposure, Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 70mm, ISO 100, f/11, 1/200s

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“Speak softly, but carry a big stick. You will go far.”

It’s a phrase coined by Theodore Roosevelt, although it is possibly a proverb from South Africa. Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis.”

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I’ve always found portrait orientation to be difficult. Our monitors all tend to be wide-screen, and that makes sense, as that’s how our eyes are conditioned to view the world. I’ve never heard of a “tall screen” monitor, after all. Perhaps that’s why scroll bars were invented. [Correction: Dave Wilson tells me that he has a portrait-orientation monitor.]

For a larger view (and more scrolling), visit this image in a new window on the Waterscapes gallery. Just click the image.

HDR from five exposures at 1EV steps. Photomatix Pro 4, Shadowmapping, and NIK Color Efex Pro filters.

As always, thanks for looking, and for your kind comments.

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And sometimes, “bad” is bad.

That must have been one serious downer for the owner of the truck. Being that it’s on a remote peninsula, I have to wonder how they got home.

This poor, unfortunate ride is now a permanent fixture at Cape Lookout, North Carolina. Fully covered at high tide (and hence the barnacles on the engine block), at low tide it bakes in the sun. We appreciate it being there, as it serves as a distant landmark for beaching our kayaks at this particular spot where there is a cut-through to the ocean side of the hook.

You can see this extra large in a new window on my Transportation Gallery

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This is an HDR image from three handheld exposures, processed in HDR Expose and 32 Float from Unified Color.  (Discount Available Here.) I had a circular polarizer installed that day, but it was a brilliantly clear day, i.e., no blue saturation was added. I used a little bit of Darken/Lighten Center, and Sharpener Pro, both from NIK Software.