Maine Travel Day - Let the Adventure Begin

Posted from Big Al's Adventures: http://www.bigalsadventures.com/maine-travel-day/

Heading Out

Today we started our trek to Maine for a nine-day vacation. Now granted when I go on vacation I am looking to do some photography on top of relaxing.

Maine at this time of year can be even more amazing with the changing of the season. I have already seen tons of beautiful red and yellow leaves on the trees along the road.

We were planning to leave around 7:00am, but as normal, we did not leave till around 8:00am.

It was pretty smooth sailing till we hit Connecticut. There we hit some major traffic due to some construction. They had two lanes go down to one for about a mile.

The best part was the construction zone was only a tiny section of a bridge. The backup was many, many miles long. Though it is funny since last time we went through the same area we had traffic without construction.

Maine Reststop

We did pretty well on gas while heading up here. We made it almost to the hotel but decided to stop to fill up on gas before arriving so in the morning we could just go.

The rest stop we went to was one that we have visited before. They have this big Moose statue by the building that has the restrooms and food services.

I decided that since we were going to be a few minutes I would go take a few pictures of the Moose statue. Again another snag. There was a maintenance guy cleaning the mulch around the Moose statue.

He did say if we wanted to take a picture with the Moose that we could. Since I just wanted to get a picture of it I did. I took three shots, but one had a tanker truck in it so I did closeups of the Moose's head.

We will probably go back at some point to get a better shot of it later this week.

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Moose Statue

Arrival

We finally arrived at our hotel around 4:30pm. By the time we moved everything into the room and got settled it was around 6:00pm.

We decided to head out to get something to eat. We ended up going to Longhorn Steakhouse that was maybe 10 minutes down the road.

I got the Bison Meatballs for an appetizer and the Chicken Parmesan for my meal. Overall not bad at all. The 30-minute wait did drag out to about 45-mintues. Other than that I would give my experience a 4 out of 5 stars.

Bison Meatball

This Week

Here are some of my ideas for this week.

  • Try to make some small video blogs for my YouTube Channel
  • Look for and photograph some Moose and other wildlife
  • Write a post for every day that we are in Maine
  • When we go to Acadia try to get some good astrophotography
  • Take pictures of the changing leaves
  • Have fun

We are on a nine-day trip. Half in one section of Maine the other half in another.

What I Brought

The Gear I Brought

This is some of the gear I have brought along to take photographs.

  • Nikon D800 (Amazon)
  • Nikkor 24-70mm F/2.8 (Amazon)
  • Nikkor 300mm F/4 (Amazon)
  • Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 (Amazon)
  • Sony A7R (Amazon)
  • Sony 50mm f/1.8 (Amazon)
  • Canon 28mm f/2.8
  • GoPro Hero 4 Silver (Amazon)
  • Marrex Geotagger GPS for Nikon (Amazon)
  • K&F Concept Lens Mount Adapter FD-NEX For Canon FD FL Lens to Sony (Amazon)
  • Lens Mount Adapter, K&F Concept Nikon G Mount Lens to Sony E-mount (Amazon)
  • Waterproof Nylon Camera Backpack Bag Case Rucksack Daypack (Amazon)
  • Formatt-Hitech 100mm Resin Travel Filter Kit Elia Locardi Signature Edition (Amazon)
  • MeFoto Roadtrip Travel Tripod Kit commemorative Limited Edition (Red White Blue) (Amazon)
  • Luxebell C200 Aluminium Alloy Skeleton Thick Solid Protective Case Shell with 52mm Uv Filter for GoPro Hero 4 (Amazon)
  • Neewer Shoot Digital Intervalometer Timer Remote Control (Amazon)

  • Think Tank Photo Retrospective 30 Shoulder Bag (Blue Slate) (Amazon)

Plus I have other things like lens cloths, extra batteries, and camera straps.

End

Make sure to check back for the tomorrows adventures!

Source: http://www.bigalsadventures.com/maine-trav...

My First Experience With A Hasselblad Medium Format Camera

Recently I was lucky enough to pick up a Hasselblad 500 EL/m from eBay. Surprisingly I only paid about $180 and it works perfectly. The only damage is has is some of the chrome parts are pealing, and the focus screen has some marks on it. Thankfully those do not effect the final images the camera produces.

The Hasselblad 500 EL/m for those who are not familiar with this type of camera is a Medium Format film camera that has a motor to move the film to the next from after an exposure

Read More

New Lens

So last night I decided to get a new 300mm lens. I had to choose between the Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF Nikkor Lens and the Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 Di LD Macro Zoom Lens. This is for my Nikon D800 which is a full frame camera. The lens I had been using up to this point was the Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Len which I bought with my Nikon D5200. The price of the Tamron was a little more ($10) but one feature it has over the Nikon was a macro feature which I am interested in seeing how that works.

This will be the first time I have used a third party lens and I will post a review about it after I get to field test it. Its suppose to arrive on Wednesday 12/3/14 which is tomorrow and I hope for good weather the next day so I can go out and use it.

Below I have provided links to the items I talked about for you to so you can check them out. If you decide to purchase them please do so through those links it will help me keep the site running for another year thank you!

The Judgment Altar and Witches Well (2 of 2)

(I have made a post about the Altar and Well over at my new adventures blog http://bigalsadventrues.com. It has more info and story in it then these older posts. You can go check out the article at http://www.bigalsadventures.com/r/judgmentaltarwitcheswell or go to the main page of the new blog.)

So after spending some time at the Judgment Altar I went off looking for the Witches Well. One person online said it was only a few hundred feet from the alter.........ummmm no. I went up the hill behind the alter and on the other trails and yet no Well. So I was about to give up and on the way out I spotted another entrance to the trails with a trail leading up the side of The Mount.

Before we move on to the pictures let me tell you the two tales I have heard about the Well.

The first one is that there was a witch (some stories say many witches) in Mount Holly that was tried and thrown into the well. She did not die and started screaming, clawing and punching the wall of the well. After a few days the noises stopped and they figured she finally died. Not to long after that they started hearing it again but it was more of a ghostly sound so they built the structure around the well to keep the sounds locked away.

The other story is that the towns people of Mount Holly caught the Jersey Devil put him in chains and threw him down the well and build the structure around the well to keep him in it.

So back to the story!

I followed it and saw a blue water tower that was fenced in and came across this....

I know from watching some youtube videos that there are cameras watching the Well.

Also came across this sign that says White Oak. Must have been for people hiking the area that wanted to know what type of trees they are.

I followed the fence around and FINALLY saw this popping out from the trees. There are two houses really close by to the Well so I didn't know if I was on their property or not so I took a couple quick shots and moved on.

Its hard to see but there is a small fence leading to the one house below so I couldn't get to much closer so I got one shot of the whole building before leaving. Might go back in the fall so I can try this shot again without the trees covering up so much of it.

Film project update

So I am almost done my first roll of film. 4 more shots then off to get it developed. Funny thing is my mom found 4 rolls of film in a drawer that we didn't know we had. Should be intresting to see what's on thoes. 

Found film