Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.

I can’t remember where I found out about Henry Jun Wah Lee’s incredibly time lapse photography, but ever since I’ve been mesmerized viewing the videos. The video above of the Perseid meteor shower and the Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree. When we were in New Hampshire we were able to see the Milky Way from the Kancamagus Highway like I hadn’t seen it in a very long time. Everyone should have the opportunity to see the Milky Way like that.

The other video/time lapse I fell in love with is the Time Lapse Tour of Yosemite National Park. A place I would love to visit and hopefully will someday with my camera.

Black Point Beach

We spent the weekend, courtesy of friends at a beach rental in East Lyme/Niantic. It was a nice break from life and great times with friends. Our friend’s kids kept Craig busy wanting to play games and go exploring. While at the beach Dunkin Donuts flew their banner over head several times.

It was really peaceful to be in a private community where you can walk around, leave the house unlocked, everyone waves and says Hi, and people follow the speed limit. There was also something rejuvenating being near the water and having the expectations lowered significantly for two days. More photos on Flickr.

Craig’s cousin Bryan graduated from college this past May. They combined his party with the 4th of July and I brought my camera. It was a lot of fun visiting with everyone and catching the moments on “film”.

Bryan and his dog Anna

Val and Autumn

Fun with cameras

Unbeknownst to us the spare bedroom at our rental had a taxidermied bear under it. Craig and I had been in the room several times before my sister in law arrived and didn’t notice it. Then when she arrived and we went to make the bed, there was silence, a gasp and a scream. Of course this was all happening at night and thus making the “not what you expected” factor rise a lot more.

Before we left Craig and Kerry took some fun pics. Kerry has been vegan since the start of the year, so it seemed perfect to have her reading her book, “Simply Vegan”.

Of all the reasons to come to Maine this is by far my favorite; biking the carriage trails of Acadia. The hills are deceiving and I’m in awe of people who just fly by me. Today we did a 9 mile loop with a stop at Jordan Pond House for some pop overs.

Route: We parked at Bubble Pond, headed up to the Jordan Pond loop, went by Jordan Pond House, then around the mountain, down the backside of Eagle Lake and then back up to the Bubbles parking area.

Observations along the way:

• I bike up hills at 3-4 mph
• Stopping for longer than a minute after mile 5 garnered much longer start ups
• 65 degree weather and cloudy is perfect for me for biking
• Pack a small point and shoot camera
• Get an extra battery pack for the iPhone
• Listening to the Crystal Method for most of the trip seriously kept me moving?

Accomplishments:

• First ride of the season, 9 miles
• Did not have to stop on the hills, just went slow and steady
• Did not stress about hills, but accepted them and chose to conquer them

We managed to time our ride perfectly again to bump into the horse and carriage teams leaving the stables with their passengers. Each group waved to us and said Hi.

As always I loved the ride, had a great time and wish I could do it every weekend. A slightly easier version would be nice everyday to get to work.

We had fun later in the trip where we seemed to be the only ones on the trail and we shot some video. Craig is going to be compiling it into something fun to watch and I’ll post when he does.

Kerry and I decided to explore Great Wass Island today. The weather was perfect and we wanted to get out of the house, as well as get some exercise. My inlaws and Kerry had gone to this island last year but I never made it. It definitely ranks up as one of my favorite trails to hike.

The trail included several varieties of terrain, from roots and dirt, to boardwalks and several large boulders. I love the trees through these island landscapes, they’re small and scraggly growing in directions clearly blown by the Atlantic wind. In the woods the temperature was perfect, we worked up a good sweat. Along the trail I managed to scare a red squirrel and a spruce grouse.

At the terminus of the trail we got an incredible view of the Atlantic Ocean. We had the whole beach to ourselves for quite a while.

The rocks were wonderfully sun baked and kept us warm as the wind picked up and made for a chilly but sunny lunch. We were able to keep with our vegan eating packing left overs. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. According to the LoseIt app, our 2.5 hour hike totaled 1100 calories burned.  We spent a total of 3.5 hours out on the island.

Onto tomorrow and more adventures!

This year we’ve taken two weeks to vacation/retreat in Maine. The house as it turns out is being rented out to the public for the first time and I think we are the first renters. The view and location are incredible. We’re only 45 minutes from Bar Harbor and 20 minutes from Ellsworth. High speed internet was supposed to be in place, but it took a while for the internet company to get things going. With that said, Fairpoint is so much better to deal with than AT&T.

Unlike last year we’ve had incredible weather. Almost everyday has been sunny with a light breeze and as I said before, gorgeous views. I’m incredibly grateful for that. We’ve spent a lot of time reading and brainstorming projects and future plans. We’ve made some delicious healthy meals and working on sun tans. We both managed to get decent burns after sitting out for 5 hours on one day.

We made a trip into Bar Harbor and enjoyed town life and lots of lobster. I visited my favorite store, Cool As A Moose and picked up some new Life Is Good swag. Today begins the second week and we’re off to do some biking and enjoy the outdoors.

My mother in-law has a beautiful Azalea bush at their home. An idea of how much “warmer” it is this year, two years ago when I took photos of this in bloom it was Mother’s Day. This year it is mid-to-end of April.

I took this photo around 6pm with the sun setting behind the hill and backlighting the flowers. I shot it with the Canon 50mm 1.8/f lense which I love for it’s wonderful depth of field.

When going through old photos last weekend, I came across this one of my mother. I had said to her when I saw it, “my god Mom your hair looks phenomenal”. Her response was “yah but it was too hard to keep up”. It turns out this was from a family wedding in the summer of 1972, in Darien, Connecticut. Long before my parents were thinking of me.

My grandmother is on the left, and I believe my mom’s cousin is on the right. The original photo had faded quite a bit and I used levels, curves and contrast in Photoshop to bring back the depth of the photo. I also did some burning in of areas that had faded more than the rest of the photo.