With all of the excitement from my trip out West, I thought it was time to return to our fantastic little slice of heaven here on earth with a local seacoast shot.  This is another take on the North Church’s clocktower.  It’s a familiar site, one I’ve featured often – as it’s one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Portsmouth, but I wanted to post today’s photo for a special reason.  This was taken with a very unique lens, one that’s very important to me.  I was fortunate to be given a gorgeous vintage Hasselblad camera by my Uncle Nate (Tudy) Sock.  As far as I can remember, Uncle Tudy was the first prolific photographer in our family, and I’m sure that all of our family’s appreciation and passion for photography is thanks to him.  He’s traveled the world with the Hasselblad, one of the most exotic locations I remember hearing about was one of his safaris in Africa.  I love  hearing about his travels and how much he enjoyed capturing the world around him, knowing that I feel the same rush when I am out shooting on adventures.

The camera itself is gorgeous (see below).  In a digital world, I had a difficult time determining whether it was functioning correctly…so in the meantime, I was able to find an adapter that let me use the Carl Zeiss 100mm f 3.5 lens on my Canon 5d Mark II.  Zeiss has always built incredibly quality products, with exceptional glass quality.  What you’ll notice is the remarkable clarity and color from just a single exposure with this lens.  I look forward to many more photos with this beauty…and with the camera itself now that I seem to have it working smoothly (time to order some slide film!).  Thanks for visiting.

I enjoyed a nice walk around Portsmouth earlier in the week, with some great early evening light and traffic.  This week marked the return of warmer weather…very early in the season (before spring officially started!), with Saturday being one of the busiest days downtown that I can remember.  The light streaks seen in the shot above are from the Coast Bus traveling up Market Street before stopping at the Congress Street stop in front of Starbucks. It made for some great light streaks in an otherwise beautiful and quiet scene.

Portwalk Place continues to rise out of the historic ground in the north end of Portsmouth, sandwiched in between Hanover Street and Deer Street.  Here you can see the plywood framing of the soon-to-be Residence Inn in Phase I of the redevelopment of the old Parade Mall.

For older progress pictures, see the vacant lot HERE and the steel frame HERE.

Today’s post marks 200 posts and nearly 17,500 visits here at The Daily Portsmouth!!  Many thanks to all those who have visited and those who continue to visit, I truly appreciate everyone’s comments and feedback.  I’m always out looking for fresh material to keep things interesting, and have been enjoying toying around with some night shots lately.  Please feel free to comment if you’ve got suggestions on good spots around town to shoot!

Special thanks go out to my lovely editor and girlfriend Steph for her support and critical & keen eye, and also thanks to my resident advisor (brother) who always answers me when I ask which of the many photos I should post.

Some other recent milestones include crossing the 52,000 view threshold over at www.flickr.com/photos/philipcase, an upcoming gallery at local law firm Wiggin & Nourie at Harbor Place, and hopefully some prints to be featured at 100 Market Street and the Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art in the near future.

Another Freighter made its way into town to unload more salt onto the “White Mountains of Portsmouth”.  I stopped to watch some of the action as the cranes on the waterfront unloaded some salt into new piles.  The blur of the lights is from the movement of the crane, and you can see a faint remnant of some orange lights from the loader that was moving the salt around on the ground.  I’ll put up a video later today that captured some of the action as it was happening.

Out shooting on Saturday night amidst a busy Market Square, the majority of my shots had some interesting headlights traveling through the exposure.  Happy with my shots and ready to head home and out of the cool weather, I was approached by a young couple who was curious if I was with the Portsmouth Herald or if I had happened to capture them dancing over near the newly installed scarecrows (guys – this post is for you, check out the video below).  I let them know I wasn’t from the paper but that there was a chance we had some evidence that they were in Market Square.