my father's birthday

Today my dad would have turned 65.

I can't really come up with a good follow up sentence to that. It's the first day of spring and the weather here has been beautiful. Today was forecast to be another glorious day. But, I wish I was in NY celebrating a birthday with my father. You know, in 2007, we surprised him by driving home for dinner and cake. We knew when supper would be and the twins and I hopped in the car (they were 16 months old at the time) and drove home. As we pulled in Kenny's driveway, he was at his sink. He said he looked up and said, "Oh here comes Jill." Guess it didn't seem crazy for us to show up. We only lived three and a half hours away. You just can't drop in for parties when you live 16ish hours away. We took a great photo of Daddy on the floor with all the grandkids piled on him. Even in '07, Joey was wearing a winter hat!

So, I decided to do something today that I would not normally do. I woke up at 5:17am got ready and drove out to the beach in the darkness that is predawn. I was meeting some camera club friends - I wouldn't have done this on my own - for a field trip. But, had it not been March 20th, I probably would have skipped the sunrise part and joined them for the 8:00 meet-up. But, I thought I would maybe, just maybe capture something beautiful with my lens this morning. A birthday sunrise.

I know nothing about sunrise photography. I can say, this was the best sunrise shoot I have ever done!!!

When I pulled into the lot, there was only one other woman there already. She and I decided to walk down to the beach then and not wait for the others because we wanted to capture the very first colors of the morning light. And everyone else was late. This was my very first shot of the day. It looks much brighter than it truly was, the shutter was open a sort of long time - you can see the water is satiny and not clear. It was about 6:30am.

The others were helping some of us newer people by explaining settings and looking at our shots to see if we were getting them correct. I was happy to have someone there to be sure I got decent shots, because I don't plan to do a re-shoot anytime soon.

Skip explained what lens to use and how to try to get a back lit wave photo. These are my attempts. 2 of his waves won ribbons in our more recent club competition!

I miss my Dad.