Sunset At The Beach Or Pie For Desert?

Sunset on the beach last night turned out to be pretty nice. Unfortunately if you have come down to enjoy the spectacle or to meditate on the blessings of life, forget it. I am going to put you to work and then tell you exactly when and how you are messing up MY photo. After fifteen minutes my subjects could not take it any more and announced that they were going back to the cottage to eat pie. Did I mention how much I like my Nikon D300 and the new Nikon SB600 flash for balanced fill flash? In this photo everything is on autopilot. That's not to say that I took all the photos that way because I didn't. Most were taken on full manual in order to adjust the ambient light and flash against each other. I was doing some off-camera flash in iTTL mode also. There is always more than one way to do things and creativity often dictates alternate approaches but if you are going for a safe shot and working against the setting sun it is nice to know that the camera and flash combination will provide you with a useable exposure without a whole lot of head scratching on the part of the photographer.
Breakfast update: Todd and the Uber-fit gang seem to have been corrupted by the constant smell of bacon wafting over to their compound every morning. No yoga, no jumping jacks, no running in place and no free weights today. Maybe it's their rest day or something but I like to think that we had something to do with some sort of mutiny over there.
Speaking of super-fitness, I had the worst headache of my life last night and nothing seemed to knock back the pain. I had a cold compress on my head and a hot water bottle on my neck. I started by taking a hot shower in the outdoor shower which usually makes me feel good but no go. I took some ibuprofen and that did nothing for me at least not for about an hour. I can usually ignore a headache if I am doing something but there was no ignoring this one. It's better today but I am still taking aspirin.
We had pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. It was the battle of the blueberry cakes verses the chocolate bacon cakes. Yes, there is a commercially available chocolate bar with bacon in it. In the end it was a tie. We started the prep work for tonight's dinner which is all about skewers on the grill. Jumbo shrimp for the shrimp lovers and chicken for the rest. We don't exclude anyone here. There are also pepper, onion and tomato skewers to keep the shrimp and chicken company on your plate and some sort of fruit or melon salad to round things out. I went on a bike ride this afternoon so I am all set to chow down this evening.

Note - I'm blogging over at insidetheviewfinder.com so I'm dual posting some of these. There are photos at the other site.

Relax, you're on vacation.

Today’s post is coming to you from the Village of Douglas on the shore of Lake Michigan. The days fly by too fast and run together like watercolor paints. We had a bonfire on the beach last night and stayed up way too late once again. It took me a while to get going this morning even though I was woken up prematurely by some sort of clatter going on in the kitchen. When I got up to investigate, I discovered some banana bread waiting on the counter that was still warm from the oven. Yesterday we had baked eggs with cream (like a souffle), bacon and warm croissants for breakfast. In the afternoon we had home made cookies, again straight from the oven. It’s about food first with this group.

There are some people renting the house next door and they appear to be super fitness freaks. I glanced over there this morning and they were running in place on those small trampolines prior to going on a bike ride which was probably following by a mile swim. When we went to the beach today (or rather when I wandered down there much later than everyone else) there was another family of super fit parents and kids. The kids ranged from about eight years old to maybe fifteen years old. Those kids were running in the water, wave boarding, tossing footballs and about a hundred other activities all at the same time and never paused to take a breath. This afternoon Tod the Uberman came over to chide me for starting the BBQ grill at four in the afternoon. Well, I may not be able to beat him in a marathon but…