Mathers Bridge, Indian Harbour Beach, again

Nikon D90, Nikon 18-200mm lens at 28mm, f/16, 1/2sec, ISO 800

As I walked back to my van yesterday evening, I looked back at the bridge and had to stop for a couple of extra shots.

I love the deep blue sky at dusk.

Mathers Bridge Lights

Nikon D90, Nikon 18-200mm lens at 105mm, f/22, 1/30sec, ISO 800

One "corner" of a local drawbridge; Mathers Bridge in Indian Harbour Beach, Fla. 

I arrived just before sunset yesterday (Fri. 12/7/12) and in only a few minutes the sky turned from so-so to amazing.

I'm so glad I stopped and got out with my camera.

I was able to get some really good sunset shots but also some really interesting ones of the bridge's structure.

I liked the light in this shot and did a Photoshop Elements approximation of the Orton process on it.

After Sunset, Sebastian Inlet, Florida

Nikon D90, Nikon 10-24mm lens at 10mm, f/16, 1/40sec, ISO 800

After sunset one day at Sebastian Inlet State Park.

Sebastian inlet is on a barrier island and is the nearest water access from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean from where I live in Palm Bay.  This is about fifteen miles south of our home.

In the photo I'm standing on the south shore of the inlet, and the camera is facing west and a bit north, back toward the mainland.

I could barely make out that wood stork there on the left, so I turned on my flash and held it up in my left hand pointed toward him.

My aim was a little off, the light from the flash hit mainly just short of of the stork, but the flash startled him and he flew away.  No chance to re-aim my flash for a second try.

I like this shot anyway, though it's not great.  The deep colors in the photo really bring back to me how pretty and peaceful it was there that evening.

Sunset in Palm Bay, Florida - Friday, Nov. 23, 2012

This afternoon (Friday, Nov. 23, 2012) Lovely Wife and I went out to a park at the western edge of the town we live in.

There weren't but a couple of wispy little clouds in the whole sky, but the colors of the sunset and afterward were very dramatic anyway.

Usually a partly cloudy sky really helps make sunsets more colorful as they catch the colorful light, but clouds weren't really needed today.

Good times.

Max Brewer Causeway - Titusville Florida

 

This past Saturday evening, Daughter Number One and I drove up to Titusville, Fla. and went to the ocean at Canaveral National Seashore.

The sunset was good, not great, but as we headed home from the park I saw the Max Brewer Causeway lit up and very pretty in the fading blue light of the sky.

We pulled over and tried for some time exposures of the bridge and crescent moon.

A front had come through and the temperature was dropping and the wind was blowing very, very hard.

I have a big, heavy tripod and although I blocked the wind as much as I could with my body, I could see that many of the time exposures of the bridge were slightly blurry when blown up large on my computer.

These two photo came out the best of the bunch.

Shepherd FM1000 Electronic Flash Meter Instructions

Do you have a  Shepherd FM1000 Electronic Flash Meter, but do NOT have the instructions?

I'll email you a copy of the instructions that I wrote for this meter.

I bought a Shepherd FM1000 Flash Meter  from eBay a while back.(it also meters ambient light)

My reasoning was that I could use it for both my occasional flash/studio setup type photography and also use it as an ambient meter with my old Kodak and Zorki cameras which have no built-in meter.  This older meter didn't cost me much; very much in line with how frequently I use it.

No one that I can find has placed the instructions for this 1980s era meter on the internet.

I can find a copy machine copy of the Shepherd FM1000 Flash Meter instruction manual, but I refuse to pay $13 for a photocopy of it, I paid a couple of dollars more than that for the friggin' meter!

Using the FM1000 meter for both flash and ambient light work is not rocket surgery, so I just wrote my own instructions.  I used the instruction manual for the somewhat different Shepherd XE-88 Flash Meter as a basis for terminology of the parts and to get my instructions to have a similar feel to a Shepherd manual.

I'm just writing this post in case someone in the future searches for a copy of the Shepherd FM1000 Electronic Flash Meter Instruction Manual.  Hopefully search engines will list this post as a link and they'll see this.

I have the Shepherd FM1000 Flash Meter instructions in both Microsoft Word (.doc) and .pdf versions and if you need them, email me at mastersja@cfl.rr.com and I'll email back to you whichever version you prefer. 

If you receive a set of instructions from me, please read them carefully and let me know if you find mistakes that I need to correct. (I DID go to Louisiana public schools, so there are probably some mistakes and I'd appreciate your help finding them so that I could correct the document.)

Butterfly

Nikon P7100, lens @ 202mm (35mm equiv.), f/6.3, 1/100sec, ISO 1600

This butterfly was nice enough to pose for a while on one of Lovely Wife's flowers out by our swimming pool.