This past Labor Day, I spent a few days with my friend’s in Sandy Hook, which is on the coast of New Jersey.

My good friend Mike, who is in the Coast Guard, is stationed there, so myself and a few other friends made the two hour trek there.

I used the opportunity to try a few new things…

On Saturday, we went to Dorney Park, located in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  As I was planning on going on rides, both wet and extreme, I decided against bringing a DSLR to the park.  Just in case I saw a shot I did not want to miss, I brought a point and shoot with Manual and Aperture Priority options (a Canon PowerShot A509 IS) and realized that even with a camera no bigger than one of my hands in hand, I can still nail a few actual photographs, and not just snapshots.

On Sunday, we did a bit of surveying the nearby coastline, and I had my DSLR in hand.

The first thing we did was we make a trip to the Quick Stop, the well known location that the movie Clerks was shot at.  It’s only about 15 minutes from Mike’s house, and he hadn’t been there yet himself.  We went into the store itself, and it smelled pretty bad.  Also, the video store had closed down, but still stored many VHS tapes.

After that, we started exploring the nearby high grounds; mainly because I wanted to, and I was driving, so my friends were stuck coming along.

While in one of the spots, I had Mike pose for me a bit.  One of the photos I took of him was pretty good, but I wanted to make it better, and spent a little time in Photoshop touching him up.  Hover the following image to see the original; brace yourself, its not pretty.

Scroll over for original:

And a few more from the trip to the higher areas around:

The next day we continued to crave our Frisbee addiction while at the beach.  Mike got really into it.

Perhaps too into it.  But that’s just how he is.

And we ate soft pretzel rods.  Lots of soft pretzels.