Day Trips and Pretty Nights

As I mentioned in a previous post, Karla and I drove up to Salem... two weeks ago now (?) and hung out, and for the first time for both of us, we enjoyed the "New England" coastline. I figured that if I was going to be on a rocky new england coastline, I may as well take some time and soak it all in.

So, we went to Salem, to the Salem Witch Museum, which was an embarrassing waste of fifteen dollars. The high note of the museum was the peanut butter & jelly lollipop that Karla bought for me in the gift store that tasted like a nightmare. Yes, that was the high point. The "museum" consisted of nothing more than a large room that had a bunch of statues/mannequins that lit up when the soundtrack was talking about them. Awful. but, like many things that are incredibly bad, we had a lot of fun with it.

After Salem, we got in Tom's prius, (which if you have never driven a prius, i highly recommend it) and drove north about another twenty miles to a town called rockport. This place was absolutely beautiful. We parked and walked through a street where art galleries and ice cream shops seemed like the only service the place offered. A little bit up on the street, we hit a lookout point, and I knew this was the place. I climbed down onto the rocks below the visitor's area, and I set up my tripod... I'm not really sure if this was allowed, but there weren't any problems.


Karla and I sat in this location for about an hour and a half, because I had timed the sunset very wrong and we were there at about 6 o'clock. So there we sat, Karla, my camera, and I, just enjoying the breeze and the sounds of the waves. As the sun started setting, I started to understand why the english chose this area to settle... it was amazing.

(Please click to view HQ in Flickr, this one deserves it!)

I wanted to include both pictures so that you can see what a little bit of planning, and a little bit of work on a picture can mean in the end. The top picture doesn't even have a visible cloud, and the sun washes everyyything out. I believe that it is near impossible to get a good, or even a moderate sunset picture without bracketing the shots and combining them in the digital darkroom later. People did the same thing with film, it was just a lot more difficult.

Thank you so much for keeping up and for reading :)

~elliot