Hi Folks:

Today is the last day of December, and that means it’s time for the ‘Photo of the Month’ post. Being December 31, it’s also the last day of 2010. There’s an old story about spring coming in like a lamb or a lion, and if that also applies to winter, this one could be interesting!

I was walking back from the grocery store on December 20, and when I got to Dallas Road the wind was just howling and the waves were crashing into the beach. Despite this, the sun was still shining. I later discovered this is known as a ‘King Tide‘ event, a biannual event caused by the alignment of the sun and moon that creates extremely high tides. All I knew at the time was, “I’ve got to shoot this!”

Dropped off the groceries and grabbed my old Cullman 2504 tripod and my walkaround camera, the Fuji Finepix S1500fd. Walked back to Clover Point to begin, and the wind was blowing so hard that I had to wedge my tripod into the corner of the fence to keep it upright. Now, I’ve been a photographer for over 35 years but I’m not a videographer. That’s our son’s department. Still, even my new cell phone camera shoots 720p HD video, so I made both video and still images. I combined 103 still images into a time lapse sequence using Lightroom and uploaded them to YouTube:

Clover Point Time Lapse Sequence – Click to Watch Video

Here’s the 30-second video:

Clover Point Video – Click to Watch Video

I tried talking over the wind, but it was a waste of time. And yes, that is someone on a bicycle trying to ride past. Fortunately, he thought better of it.

I moved down the shore to the east a bit, and tried capturing some video of Ross Bay, but leveling the tripod was impossible so I took the camera off the tripod and shot it handheld instead:

Ross Bay Video Sequence – Click to Watch Video

And finally, I wanted to get closer to the water so I moved a little farther east yet, down by Ross Bay Cemetery. When I had walked past this area earlier the waves had thrown gravel and driftwood past the seawall and onto the sidewalk and Dallas Road. I heard later that parts of the cemetery had been flooded.

There was a corner in the seawall there, so I wedged my tripod in there and started by making another short video sequence:

Ross Bay Beach Video Sequence – Click to Watch Video

By this time it was proving impossible to keep the front of the lens clean but I wanted to make a few more stills. I combined 45 images into this time lapse sequence:

Ross Bay Beach Time Lapse Sequence – Click to Watch Video

The end of that sequence (the image below) was the last image I made that day for the simple reason that a few seconds later I was swamped by a rogue wave that came right over the sea wall and soaked me from toque to boots. You’ll be happy to know that I took the camera home and emptied it, then set it over a forced-air floor vent to dry. A few Q-Tips and some rubbing alcohol and it’s as good as new. I wasn’t the only person walking along the seawall that day, but I was the only one I saw brave stupid enough to be out with a camera and tripod!

Baptism

For those who celebrate the New Year tomorrow, Marcia and I wish you a year filled with as much love, peace, joy, excitement and prosperity as you can handle!

Now go out and make some photographs!!

Mike.

P.S. You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.