A Whirlwind Finish

A three week whirlwind of dance has come to a close and with it the end of our dance season. The end of June was the annual recital beginning with dress rehearsals,

Followed a couple of days later with a weekend full of sold out recital performances,

A couple of rehearsals and lots of packing for the next week then off we went to Nationals in Ocean City MD. I was not able to take pictures during the national competition. This is a whole other story which I will be leaving alone, but as always the team was amazing and scored very well for all their routines!

During my downtime from being a dance dad I was of course chasing the light. I had intended to recruit some dancers for a sunrise shoot, but at this time of year the sun rises way too early for me to stick to such a request. 5 am wake up is not my idea of a good time during a week of no work, I can not imagine the girls wanting to do it on a day they had to dance. Nevertheless, I did manage to arise early enough on one day for an attempt at getting an Ocean City sunrise. Had a small problem with some clouds getting in the way thus eliminating 95% of the color; and this turned out to be the theme of the week for me for sunrise:

and sunset:

I am still on the hunt for an undisturbed sunset over the water photograph, being on the east coast I need bay views but by the end of the summer I hope to have what I am seeking. Not only did the sun hide during the color hours it did a bit of hiding during the midday hours as well!

This is a view down the strip on a very stormy day from our room on the 15th floor:

Friday was the final day for competition and after all responsibilities were taken care of, it was time to do a little sightseeing! First stop was the boardwalk section at the end of the island. Ocean City has two distinct sections in their two and a half mile long boardwalk. The classic and the modern. The classic section is your typical wooden planked boardwalk with arcades and shops, a bit run down looking, old if you will.

The modern section was more to my liking. While it also had your typical boardwalk retail stores it was upbeat and filled with some quite interesting looking and uniquely named shops.

One place that I feel I have visited all too often:

Quite tasty and recommended. An art gallery that took it to the extreme:

And some street performers that rocked! This dude is not only very talented he is also really funny and engages the crowd quite well. He can be found at The Reid Show:

 

Musical Performers, A large sand art display,

and a few illustrative artists also were present. Our favorite artist was actually someone who uses spray paint for his pictures. We were blown away with this process and the resulting detail so we ended up purchasing one of his works. He can be found here, be sure and check out the videos. Good times.

The following day we made our way to Assateague Island to check out the wild horses:

There are about 105 of them on the island and we managed to come in contact with about 20 of them. They do not get spooked by humans but have been known to bite if you try to touch them. Just imagine the look on the face of a visitor when they pull into a trail head parking area and see this:

We saw one that was limping and asked a park ranger if they intervene at all. They will only intervene if an animal was injured by human interaction. If the horses fight and one gets hurt natural evolution is in play. Fair enough. This is definitely a place we will be visiting again to do some camping. Maybe we will even have a few visitors stop by for dinner…I was incredibly thrilled with some of the shots I captured of these magnificent creatures. Off to the printers we will be going.

We took a beach trail as well, did not see any horses on that one but came across a road (Baltimore Avenue) that was washed out in a 1962 Nor’easter and devastated the entire area as well. Much like Sandy did to the Jersey Shore last year.

We met this little guy at the information center:

A day concluded, a wake up and a trip back home. Part of our short jaunt includes a ferry ride spanning a 17 mile channel from Delaware to New Jersey. I was hoping to have some Dolphin photos but they stayed out and away from the boat so I only was able to capture one as it was swimming. No jumps today…The jetty’s on the Delaware side are very nice aesthetically and I did manage to capture this image which eluded me on the way in.

Have a great summer, thanks for stopping by! Till next time…