Plum Island to Rye New Hampshire

Sunrise at Plum Island

This weekend I joined my friend John Slonina on his one day photo tour, where we started at sunrise at Plum Island and the day finished at sunset at Salisbury Beach. John knows the area very well and works with the photographers to get them thinking out of the box. He helps everybody with composition, settings, and given freely of his knowledge. I also will help them with the participants.

After sunrise, we traveled down through Parker River National Wildlife Sanctuary all the way to the very end, which is Sandy Point State Reservation. We stopped at different locations for landscape photography. We did see a Snowy Owl and Bald Eagles in flight.

Boardwalk at Parker River

Sand Abstracts on the Dunes

Landscape

Colored Rock at Sandy Point

Next stop was Salisbury Beach State Reservation, where we searched for birds and stopped and photographed at one location along the Merrimack River, which gave a number of subjects for close-ups and landscapes. Ice floating in the river had some interesting shapes.

Ice Flow

We continued into New Hampshire, where it was lunch time so we stopped at the Castaways and had a good lunch, plus a lot of interesting discussion about photography, equipment, settings and post processing.

Continuing along route 1A, we searched Hampton State Park, looking for snowy owls, but there were none so we continued up to Rye State Park. At Rye there was a snowy owl present on a log that was on the rocks and was very comfortable with people in front of it and behind it. After photographing it for around the half-hour or more, the snowy owl defecated and then flew off into the wind right at us, my problem was that I lost focus in the flight shots were blurry. Going back to the parking lot, the snowy owl was perched on an electric pole and allowed a lot more photography.

Snowy Owl

Snowy Owl Preparing to Fly

Snowy Owl on Electric Post

The group went back to Salisbury to photograph the sunset, however, I stayed and worked the snowy owl for a a while.

John has two more plum island-right New Hampshire tours scheduled for January 17 and January 31. You can contact John at http://www.sphotography.com/new-england-one-day-photo-tours-and-workshops/

Also, he has a number of other day trips scheduled plus a number of longer workshops, including one to Downeast Maine that I co-lead with John.