In early October I went with my family to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a usual annual event. I did not take the motorcycles because I was with extended family, and there would not have been time to go riding. Overall a poor year for me riding. Just over 4200 miles when I normally average around 18000 miles. I expect to be back up in that range next year with a planned trip to Oregon for the rally and up to Alaska again to try to reach the Arctic Circle. 

But for now back to the Outer Banks. When I go anywhere I try to do a bunch of photography. I was up every morning before sunrise, going to the beach to try and catch sunrises. The first few days where cloudy and getting sunrises was poor at best. The sunsets, which I went for each evening were no better the first few days. Again a lot of cloud cover. Clouds are great for these photos if it will allow the sun to peek through and do it's thing. As the days went by the conditions improved and I was starting to get some great sunrises and sunsets. The photos included here are from that trip.

The order of shots are a sunrise, three sunsets and a sunrise. The two sunrises are the same morning, and two of the three sunsets is the same evening. The two sunrises were taken the morning after the two same sunset photos and the same day as the third sunset. The sunsets were taken in the hamlet of Duck looking out over a pier that was destroyed in 2011 by a hurricane. I thought it made great subject matter, and kept going back to get the right sunset photo. Photo 2 and 4 are the same evening and the wind was blowing hard. I used a 9 stop neutral density filter to smooth out the waves. This did however cause a little blur in the moving clouds. The next evening, photo 3 it was much calmer.

What I didn't get were storm photos. There was constant threat of storms, and we got rain, but no storms, no lightning. I would like to get some unobstructed lightning photos to add to my portfolio.