sithwitch

"But zesty_pinto," you may ask "isn't everything politics?"

Yeah, it is, so I guess this is also me being hypocritical.

So like I said prior, I spent a week in Boston. Island camping! How was it? Glorious. Actually, hot as well but I generally prefer cooler weather so yeah: good for some, not as good for me.

BUT

-Yurts are awesome
-Yurts with power magnify this awesomeness exponentially
-Running toilets and water let you focus more on activities
-I burnt 1k calories a day on top of my normal runtime
-I saw so much beach life
-Astrophotography? I now have a bunch of shots to experiment with once I get to them (details to follow)
-Got a bunch of macro that, with the extension tubes, got me some great shots of the tiny things living in tidal pools
-I got a bunker shot. Got a few of them, low exposure and everything
--At one point while I was prepping a shot, some guy started to approach and I think he was dramatizing it, but he was looking around, pulled out a light from his cellphone and, right as I was moving (just finished the exposure), he immediately bolted away like a cat that saw a cucumber. He said he was okay but I got a good laugh at it. Sorry guy!
-Saw a community of off-gridders that live on the remnants of a Portuguese community that live on the island-turned-park. They are grandfathered to live there, but they are literally THE LAST. The community has been shrinking and I remember there being many more houses here so I think they've been shrinking more and more. I literally was around living monuments that will be gone in the next ten years or so.
-I got to test the 400-800 that I was having quality concerns with and it actually turns out to be much more competent than I expected, I just need to use the proper settings to maximize it.
-Endlessly high humidity means I woke up never feeling dry
-There are some wild apple trees here and I ate a few. Yes they were good.
-Low tide is not only a great time to beachcomb, but there's part of the island that are not accessible because of it, giving even more awesome things to see.
-I only got one mosquito bite
-Didn't even need to take the ferry to go back for supplies, but we could have if we wanted to and that's pretty awesome!

Cons?
-The toilets were a half mile walk
-The shore is mostly stones which means walks along the beach take a lot of effort
-THE SUN GOOD GOD THE RELENTLESS HEAT OF THE SUN
-Burning 1k additional calories a day on top of my normal burn rate meant I was literally calorie counting but for the exact opposite reason I normally do. At one point we made pancakes and I was eating them every few hours to supplement nutrition since the snacks were not enough.
-Dehydration was very common and we did dehydration checks a lot
-Lemon eucalyptus works because it makes your skin disgusting for mosquitoes and it also applies to yourself: beware of finger food
-Birds, not unlike people, can get very antsy when you point a camera at them making it harder to camp a spot to bird watch
-It rained A LOT around the end of our stay which made it difficult to do things (but the night after when we saw lightning in the sky was awesome so a bit of a wash)
-We still were unable to see all of the island despite having 3.5 days (partially because of the rain but also because-)
-We walked so much that our feet were really hurting
-Also my shoes reek now I have bathed them (and the poor The Rat) in Fabreze

So the camping was awesome. And Boston? Still pretty damn cool!

It's such a difference from NYC, in that I feel like NYC is always changing every few years, while in Boston a lot of places we remember have held out pretty well!

We did the Freedom Trail and I finally saw Bunker Hill for the first time. I never mentioned in on LJ, but I had an impossible time finding Bunker Hill back when I lived there so this felt like an achievement for me.

The following day was a trip to the Boston Aquarium which, I'm sorry but I have to say it: it's a superior aquarium to NY Aquarium and Adventure.

"But zesty_pinto," you may say (again) "Adventure Aquarium is one of the biggest on the East Coast while the NY Aquarium has sharks"

To which I say, "eh."

Adventure Aquarium *is* nice, but it's kind of organized like a theme park and that always threw me off. I don't feel like they present what they do there as much for the scientific endeavor and more like you're there to pretend to be a pirate or something.

NY Aquarium is fine, but it feels so small in comparison despite having some really big saltwater tanks. It also always irks me the wrong way that their freshwater tanks are overloaded with beard algae. C'mon guys, you can't get someone in there to scrub the rock? Also, the freshwater tanks are much fewer in comparison and I'm always big on the freshwater aquahobby (this might be why I'm in love with the Bronx Zoo's Jungleworld full of giant couramis and tinfoil barbs).

Boston's architectural design is more my style: I like a main tank that is centered around the area and that you are allowed to see it from any angle. I like that they did a similar design idea with penguins and even though you're smelling fish everywhere you get to see penguins from everywhere. I even got to see them hump. It's awesome.

I also found out the Prudential Center has an observation deck and got some skyline shots, which I did not expect. It ended up leading to me dropping a lens and of course it's one of my favorite lenses but it only physically damaged the filter. I think the lens is still in trouble though because the focus motor is off. SIGH.

Anyway, after that was a trip back. Found some awesome muffins that were just breakfast cupcakes, followed by awesome bagels run by two ladies who are very obvious ex-New Yorkers.

The rest of the week isn't worth talking about unless you want to hear me complain about work lol

I DID HOWEVER GET THE COVID VACCINE BECAUSE NEW JERSEY FUCK YEAH

I also however feel like shit because I got to covid vaccine so yeah fuck

I'm on the better end of it but the weekend plans were mostly reduced as a result, save a trip to the Bronx Zoo which is always a treat.

So yeah, I've got A LOT of photos and ironically, I've got a month of shots I'm processing first.

I'm still halfway through the trip to Ellis Island and I got to tell you the images from it are amazing, some real art piece stuff I was able to get while I was there.


These aren't even my favorite pieces! There's so much good stuff, guys!

I think I am getting close to the end though, and in which case I probably will share some later on because there's definitely a couple that are going to the photo site and then after that is a bunch of stuff I'm less enthused over. Also, been taking advice from other photographers on rules about photography (and what traditional ones I honestly should stop following if I want to identify my own style) and I think that's also influencing my decisions these days so hopefully the images will get better along the way.

That's it from me.


Okay, just one more from Ellis Island. Now I'm done.