Sunday Final

I was going to do a special sunrise edition, but I came home and I fell asleep.
So anyways this morning I went out and attempted to get some pictures of the sunrise.
I'm on a mission cause Canon has this contest going and first place is a new camera and I need a new camera.
Like I need a hole in my head.
Well, I wouldn't look a free camera in the mouth.
If you know what I mean.
To get a nice sunrise shot, you need the right equipment:

I got these square filter thingys, graduated neutral density filters, you know, so my camera looks all PRO.
Okay, it only looks PRO cause those are the cheap filters.
Supposedly you can darken the sky to match the exposure value of the foreground, or something like that.
It was really dark when I got to the beach:

Luckily it's pretty hard to get lost at the beach, I mean there's only like water or land.
I stayed on the land part.
It wasn't such a nice day to be taking sunrise pictures cause of all them clouds.
On the other hand, I was hoping them clouds would make some pretty colors but that didn't happen.
I also had to deal with other folks walking along the beach, you'd be surprised how many folks are out and about.
I wanted to get the sand part in the picture but I didn't want any footprints and stuff and I had folks running, folks with dogs, folks drinking coffee, etc. all over the place!
So I kept moving around, up and down the beach looking for a nice spot to settle into.
Oh, there were also two boats out there floating around that I didn't see until it got a bit more light and I decided I didn't want them in the shot so I had to move again:

I like the way a long exposure smooths out the ocean, but I don't like the way the clouds get all blurry.
Pesky clouds!
Okay, so it's getting close to sunrise, and more folks start walking around!
I even got a dude in a one man outrigger paddling back and forth:

Then there's all the clouds and I'm thinking it's not going to be a good sunrise and I wasted my time.
Well it turns out I didn't waste my time.
No, I didn't get any nice shots but I did learn a few things like I need to remember to check my focus after it starts to get light cause I took like sixty or so shots not knowing it I was in focus or not.
I turned off the auto focus for it doesn't work in the dark and I forgot to turn it back on.
Fortunately the focus point was infinity so I just missed being a banana head.
Again.
Sunrise:

Without the boats.
There's some slight barreling with this lens: I'm gonna have to run this through PS and fix it.
The square ND filters helped some, but I think I'm gonna have to stack them with a polarizer.
I'm still looking at the images and trying to figure out how to do better.
Meanwhile, the packing is not going well.
This hole in my bookshelf took up one box:

I may end up with like a GAGILLION boxes cause lemme tell you, I got a lot of books!
Okay, back to packing!