On A Porch

I went to the Post Office late today, and when I came out, saw this on the front porch of the house across the street.  I have photographed other parts of this house before, so finding this arrangement was not a surprise.  I love the interesting combination of the U.S. Flag and the basket of flowers.  And there is some other quality that I can't seem to explain, but that I like. 

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie!

Rhubarb is in season, so Kathy has been making Strawberry Rhubarb pie.  Oh boy! When the girls were here, she made two pies for us all.  This is what the evening's dessert looked like before we dug in.  We did this a few nights in a row!  Wow, was this good!

The Photographer

This my friend Larry who I haven't seen in at least twenty years.  We go way back.  He was a photographer at Newsday who had come and gone before I got there, but I knew of him.  He was also an amateur radio operator, as I was, and we used to join a group of friends from around the northeast for a Saturday morning group chat on the airwaves, starting around 1979.  He has lived in Florida for a long time now. I received an email saying he would be in the New York Metro area, and today he stopped by.  Wow, it was non-stop talking all afternoon!  He has a great sense of humor as you can see - he is holding up a miniature wireless camera in front of his eye.  Yup he is definitely still a photographer!

A Little Bit Spooky

This is the view out the bedroom window into the side yard.  The tree at left is our "famous" Japanese maple tree, that you have seen so many photographs of over the years, but from the ground.  When I saw this scene, it felt as if the vegetation was taking over the world.  I like that the house in the background looks like it is slowly sinking into the trees.  I shot this in color, but the black and white version has a more ominous feel to it, I think.

Donuts & Sunspots

OK, you are liable to think I am loosing it!  I was having a plain donut with my coffee the other day and I happened to look carefully at the donut.  You know what I though of?  Right.  A sunspot on the Sun.  What?  When I first began observing the Sun with a telescope and a special solar filter, about twenty five years ago, I was able to see little black circular spots, surrounded by a larger gray circle.  then one day I saw some famous drawings of sunspots by the astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley, done in 1870 through a 13-inch refracting telescope at Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, PA.  As you can see from the two images, there is an amazing similarity between the appearance of this sunspot, and the donut.  You are amazed, right?  I am.

This morning it occurred to me that probably very few people are familiar with sunspots.  So I decided to add this image to the collection.  It is a photograph I took about a week ago with my camera through a telescope and a special filter.  This was on a day when there were a whole bunch of sunspots on the surface of the sun.  And you can see the black center of the spot, the "umbra" and the gray surround, called the "penumbra." Pretty cool stuff, right?

Waaaay Up There!

There has been a lot of tree-trimming going on around here for the past two weeks.  First the village started taking down several Locust trees along our street, because they were apparently rotted inside.  Then when they were done, there was more chainsaw noise from the next street over.  Those workers were taking down a huge tree that has been there forever.  The tree was nearly 100 feet tall in my estimation.  I needed to use a really long lens to get this photo - a 400mm.  But it creeped me out that this worker was so high, and only supported by one piece of rope.  What if he accidentally hit the rope with his chainsaw...  Whew...

Choices

I drove by the harbor this afternoon, shortly after a thunderstorm had passed by.  What caught my eye were the soft, pastel colors in the distance.  So I shot the first picture I saw, which was the view in the distance of the clouds and the water.  Then I started looking around, and thought that maybe I should take a wider view to show the scene in context.  So here were the choices I needed to make.  The "soft" version is at the top.  When I was working on the image, I added contrast to make the image more dramatic.  I think that ruined the feeling of the scene, however, and I don't like that version.  Then at the bottom is my wide angle view.  The picture is really interesting, and pretty, BUT the original scene that I saw is completely lost.  What do you think?