Acadia Evening Hike

Well it was long day before I left for acadia, let's just say I got 2 hours of sleep the night before, as I had to help my friend storm a huge yard sale at my alma mater at 8am (we were 5th in line at 5:30) No $5 Mark III's, but I did pick up 3 epson printers (photo printing?) 3 sleeping bags (always useful for car camping) and enough hockey gear to get my assistant Devan to play hockey this winter... sweet! Met up with my buddy Rob up at the park (Tom Tom said I'd get there at 5pm and sure enough I pull in at 5:07 (I had to score a free waterski I saw left by the side of the road after another yard sale was over - another big score, as someone stole my last slalom ski ) Seeing that I had to try the new Mtn. Dew flavor on the way up (it's called Voltage which looks exactly like antifreeze, in fact you could easily get away with putting it in there in crunch) I'm still somehow awake so hit the trail. Pretty nice rock ledge at the top, I wonder what trail this was now? It's amazing what seems to fly into your picture when you least expect it! Is that an eagle? Wow I am good!

Geotagging

I've always been fascinated by the idea of tagging photos to GPS locations, after we would fly Civil Air Patrol photo missions a few years back, the process of detailing the photos to the upper commanders was quite poorly thought out. At that time I started researching how this could be done and found some great web sites and some very smart grad students explaining what you could do and providing free software. I then did a presentation to the squadron and showed them how you could take a picture of a Garmin Etrex with the time displayed on it, then proceed to do shoot aerials while the gps writes a "track log" which includes time stamps on each point, and then "sync" the photos EXIF data to the track log... The trick is to pick a small enough distance or time log so that the points are not too far apart. I decided to get up to date on what's going on in Geotagging. The results were great but let me tell I stayed up until 4am to get all these online and geotag all the photos. Google added a bunch of my photos to Google Earth after I uploaded them to panoramio, I think I'll keep it all a secret how I did it, but you can see the results of my experiments in Panoramio here, and in Flickr here.

Photographers Luck

A lot of what happens in photography is pretty hard to plan, and good shots you think you will get almost always turn out to be "something else" ... well anyhow case in point here I was coming back in from the reverse figawi and these kite boarders are cranking right past the mouth of the Bass River in Yarmouth, so I hang out, whip out the 300 2.8 (the greatest lens ever) throw it on my new 40D and start firing... well these guys obviously like to show off so they start sailing about 3 feet from the Dauntless then pulling these killer jumps, little do they realize I'm shooting their LEFT EYEBROW!... so I tell this guy (who appears to be REALLY good) to go jump over by the tower, which he immediately does and as I smartly set the shooting mode to "continuous" I say to myself "I paid big bucks for this gear, now it's time for it to do the work for me!" and I just hold down the trigger firing off about 15 shots... well here's the best one... it turned out to be TODD BAGGE, like the best windsurfer on the cape.

Reverse Figawi

Looking windy so I think I best be getting my groove on... oh no it's memorial day, TOM TOM please help me get around these parades and over to the ramp! Do a casual launch thinking I've got this one in the bag, also cause it's blowing 25, I'm being extra careful that everything's in its place, as this is only my 3rd photo shoot of the season... get out a ways and some serious chop slows me down to about 4 knots, too slow to make what appear to be the fleet cranking over to Hyannis on a broad reach... oh well I have a chiropractic appt. every tuesday I say so it's pedal to the medal... upwind... ouch... hey wait, there's MYA in 3rd place! who knew? I track 'em down and shoot like crazy, but can't really see Ted at the wheel very well as the position of the sails completely block his face, oh well, it's a pretty boat at least... this reminds me of the time I was tagging boats off Swan's Island on a beautiful day way back before I knew the boat, MYA came up casco passage and I started shooting her... suddenly this big guy yells out "I'm TED KENNEDY send me those photos!" I said "email me and I'll send'em to you" which I did. He then placed an order right before the time his died in a plane crash which kind of freaked me out, cause here it is the news that he died, and Ted Kennedys voice is on my answering machine... anyhow I think these pics of MYA coming back from figawi are the best yet I've taken of her.. see'em all here...

Chatam and the newest photo boat driver

Beautiful day on sunday at the cape, no racing, but the nephews want to explore so we head over to Chatam, puttering around, it's amazing though you can't use charts here because the sands shift so much... I use the latest online charts though and do a screen capture on my mac, then I send the pic to my blackberry so in case I get confusted it's right there! Genius! Felix managed to prove that his boat handling skills are on par with his older brothers, who managed to back the Dauntless into the dock after I stupidly jumped off without a thought on the dock and instructed him to "put it in reverse" bad idea... poor dock... it's a whaler!

Figawi :(

Forecast pretty good for Figawi, and someone thinks Ted Kennedy might race! Gotta tool up the highway on this one, crashed somewhere at a rest stop and then turned on the TOM TOM and headed for my favorite ramp. No luck though, no sign of Mya, wind kind of died after the start, think I'll call it and try for the "reverse figawi" heck my brother's got a place right in Eastham, and they're waiting for me for dinner! No need to post any pics from this day here... It's a wrap...

Season Opener

Got the Dauntless ready after I heard the weekend cape forecast and headed down to the Around Block Island start off Stamford CT. Really nice wind for this race, and all the chutes were up.
Got a nice shot right when the sun went down of this crew silhouetted against it... nice!

See all the photos here

GMORA 2008 cover

This if from the 2007 MS Regatta where I should have taken then the bigger boat rather my 17" took a beating and the seating pulled out, not the first time that's happened..

Andrew Sims - Marine Photographer, Commercial Pilot, Flash Programmer, and one funny guy