spooked

i really enjoy going out and taking pictures, particularly at night. i enjoy the long exposures and not having a clue what i'm going to get until i get the pictures developed. so last night i went out in hopes of getting pictures of things that i've always thought would look cool at night: the power plant, gmc through the arch, and the john milledge and milledgeville motel neon signs.

pulled into wendy's at 11:30 because i had forgotten to eat dinner. flew through 10 chicken nuggets and some fries before i got to the lake. went past the power plant, pulled a u-turn, and parked on what used to be a driveway to something. walked through the kudzu, set up my tripod, then jumped really big. oh, that noise was just the sprinklers across 441 at the bank. took a few pictures at f/8, 1 second, 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 8 seconds... you get the idea. collapse the tripod legs, leave the camera on, walk back to my car, back out of the driveway.

turn on the lights and put on my seat belt as i merge back onto the highway. state trooper turns on his spot light and pulls a u-turn and comes right up behind me. he kind of hunkers down in my blind spot for about 10 seconds, then pulls up along side me for 10, eases back to my blind spot, pulls up even with me. he does this like 5 times, then pulls in pretty close directly behind me and follows me all the way back to walmart. at that point he pulled over to assist another officer who had just pulled an f-150 over. i guess he was just making sure i wasn't drunk... he must have seen me turn on my lights when i was already on the road or something.

so i was pretty spooked, drove to the end of jefferson street to get some pics of gmc. it wasn't as impressive as i remembered and there were a bunch of army dudes running so i took a few pics of a confederate soldier monument on jefferson and headed to the motels. i pulled into the john milledge motel, took a light reading off of their marquee (not sure if that's where to do it, but i figure the neon would show up well at that exposure, we shall see the results and go back with that knowledge). took a few, pulled around to get some of the milledgeville motel, then headed back north towards the lake.

this time i parked in the old choby's parking lot and walked down to the lake. there are a lot more lights on this side of the power plant and they reflect off of the water. took a few with my 30-80mm and then finished the roll with my 70-300mm. (i used my 60mm micro on the other side of the plant. the micro part didn't matter, but it is a better lens than the other 2; $300 better, or so the price says.)

(side note: why is it called macro photography when you're taking pictures of things that are small and getting really close up? i think nikon's correct in calling their macro lenses micro, but it makes for a lot of confusion.)

as i'm walking back to my car i noticed the "no trespassing" signs mixed in with the realtor signs, so i decided i had seen enough of the authorities for one night and left pretty quickly, only to pull out as a baldwin county sheriff deputy was going by...