So the momentous day arrived, October 9th, 2009. Gerry and I went down to the new Federal courhouse in Brooklyn and after sitting for over two hours in hard plastic seats, I and and 120 others took the oath and became US citizens.
After the ceremony and a much delayed breakfast at a local diner, we headed out of town and made a 150+ mile dash down the Garden State Parkway, to arrived at Cape May on the most southern tip of New Jersey. To develop an appetite for diner, we took a stroll along the beach, and enjoyed the sunset.
Beach Comber
Beach Comber
Sunset Surf
Painted Surf
Sanderling Feeding
The next day we wandered around a bit and first on our itenerary was the Cape May Lighthouse, where we saw either a Merlin or a peregrine falcon, a beautiful pair of Great Blue herons, Egrets, and juvenile bald eagles. But the plants stood still and let themselves be photographed…
Wild Honesuckle
Rushes in the Breeze
Cattail Rushes
There are a couple of shots at the extremes of my camera kit’s capabilities – based around my Olympus E510.
Both of these were taken in Gilbert Lake State park in New York. The first was the view from our campsite looking straight up. This is was shot at a focal length of 14mm (28mm equ), the widest I can get with one shot. Auto focus, programed exposure, the works.
Camp Site Canopy
The next was taken with the E510 too, but this time mounted on it was my old Vivitar 100-300mm zoom lens from my OM series cameras (I’ve been through a few in my time). So that of course means manual focus (how retro is that?) and only Aperture priority exposure mode available. Nevertheless, I think this picture clearly shows the benefits of in-camera optical image stabilization. This picture was shot hand held at 300mm, which on the E510 is the equivalent of 600mm. Shot at 200 ISO, the exposure time was only 160th of a second with the lens wide open at f5.8. Still pretty sharp if I say so myself. 
Dragonfly at rest
