Long Beach Island 2011

Last week my family headed east to beautiful Long Beach Island, a long, skinny island connected to the New Jersey mainland by a single bridge. About 25 miles north of Atlantic City, Long Beach Island features a series of quaint beach towns and zero boardwalks… just the way I like my beaches. Like our last trip in 2009, we were in good company – my parents, my sister, her husband Madison and one-year-old, Kate, plus Madison’s parents and his sister Kari and her three kids, Juliana, Frankie and Vanessa.

It’s a little tricky going on vacation when you’re a photographer, trying to find the balance between relaxing and getting great pictures. I love taking pictures of the kids – I really love taking pictures, period – but I also want to be sure that I take time to relax and be part of the group without feeling like I have to capture every moment. And I’m also pretty paranoid about having my equipment around sand and salt water. So my strategy was: take my SLR camera down to the beach, shoot for about 10 minutes, take it back to the house, and then come back and relax. And if I really wanted to shoot more, I’d use my iPhone.

Of course I also wanted to make a movie. So that factored in to my shooting plan, too. So, without further blabbering, here are some photos, followed by a movie at the end.

We begin at sunrise. I woke up at 5:45am so I could capture this. When the sun first appears on the horizon, it looks like it’s coming right out of the ocean.

My Dad peeked his head out just as I left to head over for the sunrise. I knew it would only be a moment before he would follow… and I was right. Thanks, Dad, for sharing and appreciating the sunrise with me. Probably my favorite photo from the week.After this photo, I asked Frankie to put his arm around his sisters. “No way!”

Madison created an impressive city of drip castles. I’ll point out that this is an iPhone photo because the clarity of the iPhone camera amazes me.In the background here, you see Jonas sitting on Pop Tony’s lap. This was Jonas’s favorite thing to do at the beach. He’d say, “I want to take a chair down to the water.” That meant, I want to take a chair down to the water and then sit on you and cling to you while waves roll over us. Leo decided to try this too and this wave took him out.Kate really couldn’t be any cuter. This was post-nap.Jonas was quite smitten with her too.Juliana and I had so much fun playing with dominoes! Here she has spelled out “J O N A S” in dominoes. See movie below about three minutes in for Jonas’s unique way of knocking these down.My mom bought one of these shirts for each kid at a store called Caribongo in Beach Haven. They’re so cool! They are plain white with black designs. Or so you think until you take them into the sun. Then colors appear out of nowhere. Caribongo also has stores in Florida and you can buy online too.The whole group on the beach!Kari and kidsThanks to Kari for taking this photo of my family.It took a few tries… we had a few shots with some surprise extra family members.Finally, the movie!  A quick thanks to my friend Randi Voss for loaning me her Steadicam. I don’t want to say without Steadicam, a movie would not have been possible to make – because I still would have made a movie. But it would not be this movie. Steadicam allows the camera operator to walk/run/move but still hold the camera steady, so you don’t end up with a shaky Blair Beach Project. So many of the shots on the beach, particularly the ones with running children are all done with Steadicam.

The game you see played is Blokus. I don’t what we would have done without Blokus.

Music: “Bassa Island Game Loop” and “Comparsa” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0? creativecommons.org/?licenses/?by/?3.0/?