The Waxing Crescent Moon

I never tire of looking at the moon.  It changes every night, night after night.  This is a "waxing" crescent moon which means it is growing in size each night. The opposite of that is the "waning" moon, meaning the illuminated part we see is getting smaller each night.  Please click on this photo and look at the detail of the craters in the lower left side of the photograph.  It is a beautiful and yet astounding object, especially if you can view its battered surface in a telescope.  Stop by some time, and I will show you the moon.

Grace Likes Kathy Better Than Me!

Grace really does like Kathy better than me!  Even though I feed her sometimes, and make sure to pet her lying on the foot of the bed when I go to sleep at night.  But when Kathy is lying on the couch reading, or watching TV, then Grace climbs up on the couch and sits on her, or on her leg as long as Kathy is there.  I don't get no respect!  I do love to photograph her though - she is always paying attention.

 

Topsy Turvy

I have talked about the construction down on Shore road where they are drilling under the street, and installing two black plastic pipes for the whole length of Shore Road.  Turns out they are sewer pipes for the new condominium complex just beyond the old LILCO plant and the sewer pipes go all the way to Glen Cove, to their sewer treatment plant..  They take 30-foot lengths of this plastic pipe, and put the ends in a machine that heats both ends and then bonds them together in sections that are over 1000 feet long.  You can see two sections of the long pipe here on the ground.  They put traffic cones around the pipes because in this area they are on the sidewalk.  What caught my eye was how topsy turvy the cones were, instead of sitting flat on the ground, they are leaning on the pipes, all topsy turvy.  I thought it looked funny, and worth a picture.

 

Jitterbug

This is amazing!  I was walking pretty much in the dark on the way home when I noticed that a boat moving slowly across the harbor had made all these beautiful, smooth waves, and they were moving toward me.  I could barely see them in the dark, but I took a chance, put my camera on the railing to steady it, and then shot a series of photographs as the waves changed.  The exposure was 1/8 second wide open at 1600 ISO and I was amazed that the camera was steady.  It is just what is happening to the reflection of the lights on the waves!  When I was trying to think of what to title this I looked at all the jiggly dots of the lights on the water, and "Jitterbug" came to me.  That's the best I can do!   :-)  Please click on the image to make it larger - it is amazing!

 

Harbor at Dusk

One of the interesting things is that when I start my walk later in the day, is that I get to photograph in a different kind of light than I normally see.  This is interesting because to the eye, it was almost completely dark.  So I set my camera on the railing and cranked up the sensitivity of the camera to 3200, and shot this at 1/10th of a second with the lens set at 150mm and I took a number of exposures to make sure there was not any camera shake.  What's fascinating is that there was not even a hint of color when seen with my eyes.  It was such a surprise, and a pleasure to see the pink color in the sky and reflected in the water.

 

Heads Up!

 

And now for something completely different!  I love the things I can shoot in close-up with my long lens!  I can zero in on a small happening in nature.  These three Mallards were feeding at the time.  They are foraging aquatic vegetation on the bottom of the harbor.  This is a feeding technique that they prefer and use most often.  What's funny is that when the tide goes out, they could just walk over to where they are now and eat, but they don't.  The trick for me was timing.  I would see one with head down and two with heads up.  Then two with heads down and one with heads up.  I stood in one spot for several minutes before I got this perfect shot!

The Disk of the Sun

I started my walk a bit earlier today, so that when I got to the harbor, the Sun was still in the sky, although it had settled into the treeline over on the Port Washington side.  I watched the Sun go down and photographed it as it did.  I like this photograph best, because the Sun is surrounding a single tree.  It is so handy to have a 400mm lens for scenes like this.