One of my monthly routines regarding the blog is to keep track of the number of posts and the photos used, partially in case of server failure (which has happened before,) and partially out of curiosity. There is this faint background goal of posting more than I did for the previous year, but I don’t pursue that very tightly; as I’ve said before, I’d rather post what I like, when I feel I can do it justice, than to obligate myself to meeting a certain number – I don’t think quality comes from that, plus it starts to make posting more of a chore.
Yet I will note here that last month, I uploaded more photos than any other month in the history of the blog: 103 for July alone. That beats out June 2015’s tally of 96 images, though quite a few of those were from Jim Kramer’s Alaska trip. Not far behind was August 2015 with 92, which featured a lot of images of molting insects. The same subject was most responsible for pushing up last month’s count.
The overall count for the year is still a bit lower than some previous years, and so it goes; it will motivate me to get out to do more shooting, but not so much that I’ll try to force a topic. I’m just happy when I have something to illustrate, no matter how creepy it is.
The image above could have been posted anytime since I took it in May, but I just decided to use it here because it’s been sitting in my blog folder and there’s no particular topic looming that it will fit with. The first morning out at Topsail produced this waning crescent moon preceding the sun across the sky, a nice accent point to the color shift off the horizon. And yes, the deep blue section is actually the shadow of the Earth itself being cast onto the humidity in the air; the sun is only minutes from rising. There’s one other detail too, but you have to look very closely for it. Down on the waterline, beneath the moon and slightly to the right, sits a lone point of light (that reduction down to blog scale nearly eradicated.) It was definitely blinking in a pattern, and right at the moment, I’m not sure what this is. I had initially suspected that it was the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, but that sits 77 kilometers (48 miles) from where I took this photo, and according to a little Earth curvature calculator that I just found, it would have to be in excess of 400 meters (1,300 ft) to be seen at that distance – the lighthouse is a mere 50 meters tall. But another set of photos from another location revealed a light buoy someplace off from the New River Inlet, possibly a shoal marker, certainly a hell of a lot closer (and you’ll see one of these pics shortly.) I was not shooting up the beach or anywhere close to the shoreline, so no matter what, it was a decent distance out. Next trip out there I’ll plot a few specific bearings, triangulating if I can, and we’ll determine just where it is, at least.