Monday Excursion with Nick

Shall we continue with our three-days-behind theme? Someday, I will again become up-to-date. In fact, there will be days when I have nothing to post although that has seldom stopped me. It's just that I have been on a bit of a tear lately with a number of early morning forays with my camera. That is something that will not continue forever.

However, it did continue on Monday morning but in a very different way than recently.

Most of my morning excursions are local in which I go to a nearby spot for a half hour or so, and then I am back home before normal people roll back the covers.

On Sunday evening, however, Nick texted me and asked if I would like to go to Balaclava in the morning. The place is more than an hour away, and he proposed setting off at 5:15.

I accepted and set my three alarms: watch for 4:00, phone for 4:05, and Alexa for 4:10. Of course, you know that this is what I do on the Sundays when I drive Danica to work, and you likely recall me bragging about never once having to use them. Of course that is for 6:00, and this was for 4:00.

But once again, I didn't require nudging from an alarm, for with the help of dear Lacey, I awoke just after 3:00. I did try, futilely, to get a little more shut-eye until about 3:20 but was soon out of bed having breakfast and coffee before grabbing a quick shower, for it had been a sweaty night.

Needless to say, I was more than on time for Nick, and we were soon off. It was a very foggy drive in places, but Nick didn't seem alarmed.

There is a tumbling-down old sawmill at Balaclava, and Nick knew the kind of photos that he wanted. He headed down the boulders to the water's edge to look along the waterway for some long exposures on the swirling water.

As you know, I hobble with a recalcitrant foot and could only get as far as where I could take this ↑ photo. Even getting that far down the boulders was highly problematic. Nick, however, is disgustingly nimble and is sure-footed as a mountain goat.

So I stayed where I was and took the photos that I could. Once I sat down to develop the photos at the computer, they seemed to be suited for black-and-white treatment.

I did take one more smaller section of the structure ↓ where I could see some light hitting the wall past the window.

There is another structure behind the mill. I confess to adding a fake sky because the blank one was bothering me and ruining the photo. I dislike doing that and almost always won't, but I felt that this photo needed a sky to complete it properly.

Nick was able to get down to the water's edge and managed to get a very nice photo of that tower along with a good reflection, but this was the best composition that I could manage.

I have learned to be satisfied with photographing what I can access and to not worry about what I am missing due to my mobility issue. It is enough to be out and clicking the shutter and then post-processing in what seems to me to be the most suitable way. 

It had been a nice outing, and I was home by 10:30 or so to see what the rest of the day had to offer.