Trick or Treat!

Is there anything better than Haloween? Dressing up in costume, running (and I mean RUNNING) from house to house with your candy bag, seeing all these other ghouls and ghosts, and trying to recognize which ones are your friends. In the North End, we do the "trick or treat" thing during the day, from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. This is great for kids our age, although when they get a bit older, I think we'll sneak them over to one of their cousins houses -- where Haloween is done properly at night!

I got a bunch of great pics, and I'll torture you with all of them, but this one captures the mood of the day best. Here is Sir Brad of Manchester, and behind him to the left is the Dark Knight, aka Batman. 

Daring, or maybe just foolish ...

About this Picture: This is another shot of my son (Julian, left) and his Aunt Carolyn (middle) and cousin Jenna (right). I had waded out to about my waist ... camera in hand. Waist deep doesn't describe the risk to my camera very well. This is the ocean, so that means the water had ebbed to well below my bathing suit bottoms at some points, and was crashing nipple height at other times -- all with me holding my camera as high above me head, and clutched as tightly in my hand as possible.

The camera angle I was going for was as close to the water surface as possible, with the kids in the background and an approaching wave coming at me. But after some experimenting, I found that wasn't very easy to do. Any decent picture of a big wave approaching me meant I couldn't see any of the kids from that camera angle (they would be behind the mountain of approaching water). And I probably risked my camera more than I should have, by holding it that close to on-rushing water. The wave that's approaching me in this shot, although hard to see in the picture, is about 3' tall. It hasn't started to curl yet, but it was big enough to almost knock me over and call an end to the shoot.

This is the last one I snapped, not really the effect I was looking for, but something I wanted to keep as a reminder of the failed experiment. =)

My Best Friend

Meet Pete, my bestest bud since my junior year in High School. That's his son, Dirt Eater. And let me tell you, this kid lives up to that name!! I wish I'd thought to capture the picture a few moments after this, when he'd been able to gulp down a couple fistfulls before Dad realized what he was up to.

The picture isn't seasonal ... but it's where we've left off last!