Shots from the Day - Towering Tripod

I recently picked up a new tripod at a ridiculous price (thank you Circuit City), and finally had the opportunity to use it today on the gondola.
My old tripod tops out at around four and a half feet tall. This new one towers upwards of six feet high.
It's easy to use the word "towers" when you're as short as I am.
So I attached the tripod to the tail of the Phoenix (by "attached" I mean that I bungee corded the crap out of it), and set it up with the remote trigger.


Unfortunately, in my haste, I didn't adjust it to make up for the inevitable lean, which comes whenever you lash something to the stem of an asymmetric boat.
So do yourself a favor:
grab a dictionary and shove it under the port side of your computer monitor (that's the left side).
That should level things out a bit.


Conditions weren't looking real positive today. We had some "sprinkles" earlier, followed by a brief "light shower", and somewhere in there, we had about five or ten minutes of straight "downpour".
By the time I showed up on the docks, the clouds had scurried away to hide on the western horizon. The wind dropped to a barely noticeable breeze, and we had the canals all to ourselves.

My cruise was a marriage proposal, and the gentleman didn't disappoint - having his proposal delivered via message in a bottle, going down on one knee, and making it the kind of engagement story she's sure to tell all her friends about for years to come.


As the cruise progressed, the sun ditched us and those clouds on the horizon snuck back and washed the gondola with us in it. It was actually refreshing, once I stowed the camera and stopped worrying about another downpour. The passengers made use of their umbrella, which seemed to enhance the romance of the evening, and I enjoyed the light rain we got - it only lasted about ten minutes.