View from the Mountain

The best under $250 digital camera

I am a long time photographer, and I have being doing digital photography since its inception.

I have used a lot of SLR cameras including Nikon & Leica.  Since I switched to digital most of my cameras have been Nikon with a small Sony and a couple of Panasonic cameras.  My kids have favored small Canon cameras.

I take a lot of pictures in demanding conditions, and I expect a lot from my cameras,  My Nikon D50 has been a workhorse for several years. 

A couple of years ago a bought a compact wide angle Panasonic Lumix camera.  It has been a great camera with the excepton that it takes a while to focus.

Recently my pocket camera, a Nikon S9 died.  I did not want to spend a lot of money, but I wanted wide angle and as much zoom as I could get.

I ended up buying a Pansonic Lumix DMC ZS-1 from Amazon for $240 before shipping.

The camera has 10.1 megapixels and 12X optical zoom plus 25mm wide angle capability.  I have used it hard, and I am very pleased.  I have done a number of interesting pictures with it, including the one in this post.

Because of its compact size it is my default camera these days.

I found it to be reliable and fast to focus.  I have used the camera to take pictures one handed while driving my skiff.

I even recorded a video while sitting in a pew in our church.  The camera was hand held with no tripod and no external microphone.

This one minute clip of the musical group Southern Grace is a testament to the camera's video capabilities.

I just posted another hand held video. This time it is a thunderstorm that struck our area this afternoon.

I am looking forward to doing some video with a tripod.

I did not buy the camera for its video capabilities but they are certainly a bonus.

The zoom feature which allowed me to get this great picture of a Willet this weekend in Atlantic Beach is enough to make me happy.

I read a lot of reviews before I bought the camera, but none of them gave me a true idea of the versatility of the camera.

Usually if I have to pick one camera, it is the ZS-1.  I can fish and still have it in my pocket.

It just does a great job.  This web page has samples of other photos that I have done with the camera.

This camera is hard to beat for the money. The fast focus, ultra zoom capabilities, wide angle lens, and video capability might make it the best real estate camera there is for the money.

I would definitely rather drag this camera on a trip rather than a DSLR.  If you are going to take it on a trip, I would buy a second battery.

A sunset perspective

When you get to be nearly sixty years old, you have watched more than a few sunsets.  I count myself very lucky to have seen some amazing sunsets.

My wife and I often play a game we call chasing sunsets.  We try to predict where we will find the most spectacular sunset.

It turns out to be more art than science.  We generally know the spots and the times of year for the best sunsets, but there is litte that we can do to prevent a cloud bank from stealing a sunset on us.

Still it is fun when we guess right and find a great sunset like we did this past Friday night.  We had run over to Emerald Isle for dinner and on the drive back towards home noticed that the clouds were looking favorable for a good sunset.

Based on the time of year and the amount of time we had left before the sun would drop below the horizon, we headed to the Tideland Trails parking area of the Croatan National Forest. 

It overlooks an inlet of the White Oak River.  In the summer the sun is too far around the corner to provide a good sunset.  Fall is another story as the sun moves down the White Oak the sunsets can be impressive.

I love both sunrises and sunsets.  Sunrises give the hope of a new day while sunsets bring the peace of the evening to our lives.  I have posted some of my favorite sunsets and sunrises on the web, and I have a site dedicated to sunrises taken from our deck in Roanoke.

There is a certain peace that a sunset brings to me.  While the day's work is often not over, the sunset is a signal that the day is winding down and no matter how much work needs to be done, the time for work will soon be overtaken by the time for sleep.

Sunsets seem to linger.  I find sunrises have to be instantly captured because the colors often change quickly.  Yet a sunset almost invites contemplation and the savoring of the colors which seem to hang on much longer than those I see in the sunrises.

There is one other important thing about sunrises and sunsets.  Most of the time, you are cold and/or damp when taking a sunrise pictures.  Sunsets are dry and warm.  That is the best way to end the day.

Today was cloudy, and I was standing in the water surf fishing at during the invisible sunset.  At least the water was still warm which was no surprise since I had already tried the warm river waters in an afternoon kayaking trip.

There is always tomorrow to catch that next sun event.

Knowing when to head out

Sometimes the spirit just moves you and doing something becomes a simple matter of following the path of least resistance.

When the water is warm and the day beautiful, it does not take much to get me on the water.

Putting my kayak in at Bluewater Cove is a matter of sliding it down the grass in my backyard into the water.

Lots of other decisions are more complex.  As a Realtor® I see lots of people struggling with what to do next in life. 

Sometimes I feel like a "what if" spreadsheet for people's lives.  People look at different areas and try to imagine themselves living in a particular home.  I try to help them do that in a realistic manner.

They wonder about the costs of heating/cooling, property taxes, and insurance.

Usually one of the first things on their mind is what our winter weather is like.

Sometimes they want to know where the closest trails for hiking are or how far is it to the nearest fitness facility? One of the questions we almost always get is how far is it to the beach?  Another important piece of information is how far away is medical care and what are the areas' three hospitals like?

It there are children involved, people want to know about area schools.  They often want to understand our demographics.

I get so many questions on area services that I finally made a custom map of the area where you can zoom and pan the map to see where everything is.

Folks thinking about moving also want to know what they will do with the inevitable visitors when they show up right after you move to an area close to beach.

I even did a suggested five day tourist itinerary for one client's sister.

We are lucky since there are plenty of things to do in Swansboro, Emerald Isle, and Beaufort.  We have a wonderful spot like Tryon Palace just 45 minutes away. 

You can even visit the Outer Banks like they used to be at Cape Lookout.

I feel fortunate that lots of people are looking for a new life in the small towns along the NC coast.

While our reasons for moving to Carteret county are specific to us, lots of people seem to relate to our thought process.

I like to think that the people who came before us have helped develop a wonderful spot for second homes, retirement, and even new lives along the shores of Bogue Sound and the White Oak River.  I am thankful to them for making the first steps.

When you get down to crunch, people make their own decisions for their own reasons.  What makes sense for one person might not make sense for another. Yet change is the spice of life and lots of people understand that.

Lots of times you might find just enough information from someone like me to give you that push to head out into that new life in a new spot even if it is not the one I have shown you.

If you do, I hope you find a place as nice as our coastal paradise.  Right now there are plenty of choices.

This is especially true with some great new properties coming on line at a time when prices are at levels that haven't been seen since 2004.

When blue sky is all you have

We all go through some challenges in life.  I have alway been fond of telling my kids that it builds character.

In 2004, the year that I left Apple, the challenges just kept coming.  Lots of very personal tragedies hit us.

Even then I remained an optimist, choosing to believe that even in the toughest times, you have to count on yourself more than anyone or anything.

As a new Realtor® I felt that the strong close that I had to 2007 meant that I was on my way to a new career.

The recent turmoil in Q1 2008 has proved that my optimism was a little ahead of the game.

Pretty well everyone in real estate is struggling now.  Most buyers are very nervous, and few people are moving if they do not have to.  Unless things turn around in the next couple of months, this might be a very long summer for sellers and Reators®.

When you face a situation like that, you can focus on the gloom or lift your eyes up and look at the blue skies.  I am happy to have blue skies in tough times.  They help keep me motivated.

I can look back at other tough times and know that I survived them.  You dig a little deeper, work a little harder, and try to be smarter.

Someone told me the other day, that we were having trouble providing people from the interior of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland with a good sense of what our coastal rivers are like.

I mounted a camera on the windshield of my skiff and drove it out to river and brought it back.  I was able to drive with one hand and take pictures with the other. The slide show provides a good perspective for someone who has never been on the White Oak River.

I continue to believe that by working hard to reach new people and provide them with high quality information, that I will eventually be very successful in my career.

While it might seem to make little sense for me to post travel guides of local towns like Beaufort, Swansboro, and Emerald Isle, it gets my name out as a local expert.

By the time the real estate market turns around, if someone is looking for property here on the Southern Outer Banks, I hope they will not have any trouble figuring out who will provide them with the most accurate information.

After all where else can you go for slide shows of Beaufort, Emerald Isle, Swansboro, a boat trip to Shackleford Banks, Hammocks Beach, up the White Oak River, or a car trip Down East?  If you want to know what the area looks like before visiting, I am your source of information, and my digital cameras are always searching for more great pictures.

When you figure out how special the Carteret County area is and want someone who knows the area to find a special spot, I hope I will be the one you turn to since I have the blue sky and emerald waters covered.

The peace of a new year arriving

I snapped this shot on New Year's eve while I was walking the beach over at Emerald Isle.

It is a pretty good shot with which to end the year.

Some people get a little confused with the shot when they wonder about the sun setting in the east.

If you look at a map of our NC area, it is pretty easy to see that our beaches run almost east-west.  The surf comes in from the south, and sometimes the sun sets over the water.

While New Year's eve might be a very public time, I like to think that New Year's day is a little more personal.

If football is not your cup of tea, there is plenty to do getting ready for the first business days of 2008.

For me this is the time of year to reset my dreams.  In the last year, I have accomplished some things, and there are some things I did not manage to get done.

If I look back over the last year, I sold my first homes.  I now feel comfortable in my new career in real estate.  We also managed to have a lot of fun in our new skiff. 

I like being a boater even if our world of water is a place where the water is spread mighty thin. I am happy to report that  I caught enough fish to keep me fishing, but that is an area where I plan to focus in 2008.

I got published in the Guardian, a London, England paper, and managed to continue to enjoy writing.

The tomato crop was the best that it has been in years.

I also met lots of wonderful new people and reconnected with a couple of old friends.

The year 2007 marked my third year away from Apple. That turns out to be an important milestone since most of the people who worked for me at Apple have now also gone on to new careers. 

Apple is one of those places where graceful retirement does not happen often so I am happy to see most of my former colleagues settled in something different.

While this might have been the year of the iPhone for the Apple faithful, to me this was the year of the notepad.  My real estate work got me back into the world of taking lots of notes and creating file folders full of paper.

Most of Fortune 500 companies live in a world of emails.  In the world of real estate, we have to deal with everything from phone calls and faxes to emails and personal meetings.

Sometimes the only way to put it all together is through notes, printing, and shoving it all into that paper folder.

The dream of the paperless office remains as elusive as it was many years ago.

There are some dreams that might have gone by the wayside. 

I have chosen to continue working instead of retiring.  Part of it is to pay for health benefits, but much of my reasoning centers around keeping my mind active and  not losing touch with the business world.

Sitting around doing nothing was never part of my dreams.

In a certain respect I am already living one of my dreams by being able to walk a beach on New Year's eve, or practically whenever I want.

There are times in your life when you face the choice of the safe and easy road or one that might look a little scary.

I have always kept this piece of advice close to the front of my mind.

Whenever you have a choice of doing something that will create new memories or continuing with the same old stuff, always choose to make new memories.

There is very simple reason to go for the new memories.

One of the these days, you will not have a choice of what to do. Life has a way of creating these invisible bands that bind you to places and people that often make your dreams impossible.

I am pleased how well choosing new memories has served me over the years, from farming in the wilds of Canada to working at Apple and selling real estate on the Carolina coast.

While it is great to dream, it is just important to not let those dreams escape.

I still have a few dreams left in me, one is to continue writing my book.

The other is to make this beach life permanent.  As someone said the other day, "I want to live down here so much that I would live in a crab shack."

That about sums it up.