Evidence

I was on the way to the bank late in the afternoon today, and saw this when I got to the harbor.  So I parked the car, and got my camera and headed over the the railing.  I only had my little Sony Rx II with me which was difficult because the sun was shining in my eyes when I was looking on the back of the camera, because it doesn't have a look-through viewfinder.  So I thought I was framing things correctly but I couldn't be sure.  So here is my best shot, but of course I try other views and different compositions as well.

I really liked this image, showing the long, thin icicles as the sunlight was melting the ice, but then it apparently was re-freezing.  It is an interesting photograph because it is not clear what the subject is exactly, but it makes for a nice second shot, not as the main shot.  This ice accumulation happened because the temperatures were so cold - 11 degrees at night, with the wind blowing the spray from the waves in the harbor blowing up on the railing and the chain.  Oh, "Evidence?"  Evidence that it has been really cold here!

 

You Wouldn't Want to Sit Here

This is yesterday morning, and it had been snowing since the night before.  The snow was really light and continuous,  but the wind was howling.  You would definitely not want to be sitting here while the storm was going on.  I do love how everything on the porch is covered in frosting.  The snow continued until early afternoon, but the snow was really light and easy to shovel, and the snow blower was throwing the snow half way across the side yard!

 

The Delicate Nature of Trees

When I woke this morning, the first thing I did was look out the east side bedroom window to see how much snow had fallen.  The first thing I noticed was how delicate the tree branches are!  I would not have noticed how fine the ends of the branches are, if I was not looking at them silhouetted against the white snow.  You would not notice this if you were looking from underneath against the sky, or at least I never noticed this.  Perhaps because I would be so close to a branch only two feet over my head.  So I celebrate again, that magnificent beauty of nature!

 

Feeding the Gulls

I was on my walk today, photographing, as I have lately, inanimate objects, which can be fun for me but boring to all of you readers.  I was taking a slightly different route that went through the parking lot at the beach and Then I saw this woman feeding the Gulls.  I saw the cloud of gulls first, and then noticed that this woman was kind of jumping up as she threw food at them.  I immediately went in to my "action shot" mode and started shooting.  At least it is something different for all of you!  But then...  I think I remembered that it is not a good practice to feed Gulls.  I looked it up, and sure enough, it is not healthy to feed them.  The Masachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation says:  "Feeding gulls may be fun and appear beneficial for the birds, but this food threatens their well-being as well as presenting a threat to drinking water supplies. Before deciding to feed the gulls, please consider the following impacts. Gull Health - Foods like breads, crackers and french fries are commonly offered to gulls, but these items are nutritionally inferior and poor substitutes for natural foods. Gulls with a highly artificial diet may suffer long-term health problems. Disease - Lower nutrition and crowding together promotes the spread of disease among gulls, other native birds, and humans. Gulls are best left alone to forage naturally."  Wow, I got more than I bargained for!  But there it is!

A Different Time of Day

I have walked this mile of harbor shoreline more times than I can count.  And I have photographed this shoreline every step of the way.  But this is a different time of day for me.  And I have my new Sony a7 III which is really great for low light situations like this.  It was an accident that I was out this late but I found some different photographs as a result.  You have already seen my street corner in the dark which you saw first.  I do love the feeling of the night coming on in this photograph.

 

I Understand the Sentiment...

There is a commercial airline pilot who has a channel on YouTube where he analyzes aircraft accidents of smaller aircraft, and he is really brilliant.  I love watching his detailed analysis of accidents.  The other day he was ranting a bit about  a particular safety issue and he said this:  "At the risk of sounding like the old guy which I am becoming..." and I laughed!  That would be me, ranting about something. So here I go:  I get the sentiment of this message, made up of bright orange plastic pieces tied to this fence down by the water.  But to me, this is ugly and like someone spray painting on a wall.  It is defacing this fence, and at this point, 20 years later, you are either not going to know what this is, or it happened and you saw all of it, and you will not, in fact, ever forget.  Time to clean up the fence.  End of rant.

 

Ancient History II

So since you are enjoying a photo from my past, here is another.  I set up a gray seamless background in the dining room and some big studio strobes with light banks and my 4x5 view camera.  I did individual portraits of Kathy and Liz and Amy, and then I had them do this shot of me.  I am pretending to be Indiana Jones, if you can't tell.  I think I have a bit of an actor gene in me and I love trying to be other people.  I think it runs in our family!  I realize that my hat brim needed to be wider but I got the leather flying jacket and two day beard growth right.

 

Ancient History

This is a strange and funny picture!  It's something photographers do when they are out on assignment working with a writer.  This is my friend Chapin Day at Theodore Roosevelt's grave in Oyster Bay.  I think I took it maybe in 1972.  It is raining, I have no idea what we were doing there.  Chapin was a good friend - he was a sailor and we spent some time sailing my Lightning class boat together.  He was a Thistle class sailor.  He left Newsday and then went to the Philadelphia Inquirer for a few years, then he went back to his home, California where he worked in television.  I called him the other day and we had a nice long talke and he said he found this photograph and sent it to me.  I have no recollection at all of taking this photograph!  Here is a close-up version!

 

Nightscape

My walk was much later today and when I returned to Laurel avenue, long after the sun had set, I saw this scene behind me when I started up the hill.  A single streetlight leaving an illuminated area on the ground.  In the shadows to the right a strange sycamore tree half dead, with the harbor beyond.  This scene to me has a feeling of something that might be part of an Edward Hopper scene.  A different kind of photograph for me, I think.  Please click on this image to see it larger.

 

Not Currier & Ives

There are no hockey players in Currier & Ives prints!  I mention this because the shot I did the other day reminded me about the Currier & Ives style.  Except that it was taken on an overcast day, and so the light was not that interesting.  So it was clear today, and it is a Saturday, so I knew there would be more skaters, and a late afternoon sun.  So on my walk I stopped by, loaded for bear, with my 70-200 where I could really zoom in on people from a distance if necessary.  Wow!  I got a decent action shot, and even got the puck!  I used to shoot some sports for the paper, but I wasn't as good as the special sports guys.  But this ain't bad, I think.

 

Where the Birds Sit

Down where the old generating station was, there is really a jumble of wires and power poles, for some reason.  I noticed a flock of birds circle overhead and then they all settled down on these wires, dividing themselves up and spreading out.  I love the silhouettes of the birds and wires and poles all together.

 

The Aloe on the Windowsill

Here is a bit of bright color on a gray day.  This is the Aloe plant that has been on our windowsill for maybe 20 years.  If we burn ourself, we cut a piece off, and use the clear gooey liquid which we squeeze from the cut piece, and put it on a burn.  It is absolutely magical how it heals the burn.  But here is the cool thing - I photographed this with my new 70-200mm lens by standing across from the plant.  The telephoto allows me to get close to the plant but the background outside the window is really out of focus, thus removing any distractions which we might see.

 

Empty Store

On my way to the restaurant on Monday night, I passed by this empty space on the ground level of a building.  Probably the location of some kind of store when it is done.  I don't know why I am so fascinated by spaces like this, but I am.  And thing that attracted my attention were the two small fire extinguishers.  I know why they are there, but they did seem to be out of place in such a large space.  So it is an unusual space with lighting that was interesting, and the scene is all one color and I thought I would record the scene.  This is a really wide view.  I didn't have an extreme wide-angle lens with me, so I photographed the left half and then the right half, and then used an application that stitches the two images together seamlessly.

 

Changes in Fun City

Welcome to "Fun City" - that was the term that Mayor John Lindsay used for Manhattan in 1966 on his first day in office.  I love that term, and so I continue to use it. Changes are always certain in a place like this.  What I noticed the other day was the proliferation of these giant LED signs.  They are all around Times Square but now they are showing up in other locations.  These signs are on the corner of 34th street and Seventh avenue, near Penn Station.  Another new thing is the bright red illuminated "Subway" signs which have turned up recently.  I love these signs because if you are in an unfamiliar area, you can spot a subway entrance, if they have these kinds of signs, from a mile away!

 

Saying Goodbye to Maggie

So a few friends gathered at a restaurant tonight to say goodbye to Maggie.  She is a member of the  New York Amateur Astronomer's Association.  She is a terrific photographer and then decided to take Stan's Class in Night Sky Photography several years ago, and she is great at that.  She thinks nothing of hopping on an airplane and flying to Utah to photograph a comet!  She is an engineering graduate of Penn State and has worked for a huge construction company as a project manager.  She was thinking about her life here in New York and decided on a change.  So she was hired by a large construction company in Phoenix and will start there next month.  This way she will be closer to the dark skies of the southwest which she loves so much.  So a small group of us took her to dinner, and shared conversations and history and laughter and great food.  A wonderful gathering of friends for a bittersweet sendoff for Maggie and her new life.

This Isn't Currier and Ives

I know, I know, this is not Currier and Ives!  I was surprised when I walked by the pond today on my walk, that the ice was thick enough for skaters.  I am not sure how the people on the ice knew they could take a chance on skating.  I wonder if someone drilled a hole to check the thickness of the ice.  Anyhow I spent some time trying to fine a nice photograph, but skaters were scattered everywhere, and this was the best I could do.  It would be so much better if the pond and the skaters were illuminated by a late afternoon sun, to give a golden color to the scene.  No such luck.  So this is all you get!  Not my best.

 

It Was COLD Today!

                             

It was 7 degrees this morning when I woke up!  There was frost on all the upstairs windows. The best frost was on Liz' front bedroom window.  So I quickly grabbed my Nikon camera with the Macro Lens - that's for taking extreme close up photographs.  What is astounding are all the incredible details in the crystalline structures that we can see in this photograph.  It is such an astounding world in close up.  Little feathery things of incredible detail everywhere!  How amazing is nature seen up cose!

The Water Company

This is the interior of what was once the Sea Cliff Water Company.  It was bought by a larger corporation called American Water Company which owned some other water companies on Long Island.  Apparently they no longer needed this building and what was in it, so they are selling this building to the Village, which is talking about using it as an art center or something like that.  I was wondering what was inside.  Turns out, if I went there late in the afternoon, and rubbed some of the dirt off one of the windows, I could get a good view of the inside since sunlight was shining in the through the west windows and illuminating the inside.  There is a broken concrete pad on the floor with large bolts coming out, and a deep hole in the floor.  I would love to know what that all was.  But I do love the chain hoist hanging in the foreground. I sure do love old ruins.

 

Birds and More Birds

More fun with my 70-200mm lens, before the snow fell.  Using a long lens is a different way of looking at the world.  When I walked down to the beach with the new lens on the camera, my brain and my eyes switched to "telephoto" and I sort of didn't see anything close to me or any wide-angle views - I only saw things in the distance.  And right at the foot of our street there was a beach full of sea gulls.  Looks like a shot to me!

 

The Gift of Bread

We really like our new neighbors.  They are a young couple with a young son.  The dad is the one who has made by hand all the small fences that surround different plantings on their front bank.  When they first moved in, I brought over a coffee cake that Kathy had made.  Later on Kathy made some cookies and I brought those over to them as well.  On one visit I was told that the neighbor's wife loves to bake bread but they were so busy with setting up the house.  Yesterday the doorbell rang and the husband was standing on the front porch, holding this loaf of sourdough bread wrapped in a kitchen towel!  I thanked him profusely and we immediately sliced a few pieces off the warm loaf and buttered them, and this bread is out of this world!  What a wonderful gift!

 

Criss Cross

Tuesday is still Dunkin' Donuts day at the beach for us, even though I don't photograph there each week.  But while sitting in the car enjoying my coffee and donut, I saw this strange pattern of one drift fence seen through another drift fence. It may be what is called a "moire pattern."  "A moiré pattern, in physics is the geometrical design that results when a set of straight or curved lines is superposed onto another set." Anyhow, this was dizzying to look at and I thought it was worth a photograph.  Click on the photograph, it will get larger, and mess with your eyes!

 

Mirror Image

The beauty of a 200mm lens is that I can reach out and find a detail in a scene that makes an interesting photograph.  I couldn't get this close with just the 70mm lens.  What struck me with this scene was that it was a mirror image, with both the image of the rock reflected as well as the sea gull reflected in the water as well.  They make a mirror image, even though the reflected image of the sea gull is not perfect because the water is not completely smooth.

 

Walking With My New Lens

I figure that if I am going to try and impress you with my new 70-200mm lens, I better start out with a really good photograph, right?  How's this one?  What makes it wonderful is the warm sunlight of late afternoon and no traffic, and wonder of wonders while I am standing there composing the photograph, suddenly a runner passes me on the left and runs into the picture!  What's better than that!  So I waited until he appeared between two trees and I took a number of photographs, trying to get it just right.   I think this is the best one. 

 

The New Lens

I bought a new lens for my SONY a7 camera!  When I bought the original camera it came without a lens.  A good friend of mind sold me her 24 - 70mm lens because she had bought a better lens - a 24 - 105mm lens which has a much wider range of focal lengths.  So my combination of  the 24-70mm was nice and I took a lot of photographs with that combination.  But I was thinking I needed a range of longer focal lengths for some of the kinds of photographs that I take.  So my friend Grace loaned me her 70 - 200mm lens to use for a while to see how I liked that focal length.  After about a month and a half I was hooked on the 70 - 200mm.  It was the perfect second lens for me!  So now I own this lens - the tall white lens on the right!

Just in case anyone is curious what these numbers mean, when referring to the lenses, here is what the 24mm focal length lens can show.  It is a fairly wide, wide angle lens, and takes in a lot of the landscape.

This is the 70mm setting of the 24 - 70mm zoom lens and you can see quite a lot more detail in things in the distance when you are zoomed out to 70mm. It brings things in the distance a lot closer, and it is a great portrait lens.

And this is the 70 - 200mm lens zoomed out to 200mm.  Quite a difference from the 24mm wide-angle lens.  It does a great job of bringing objects in the distance much closer in their appearance.  It is a great lens for wildlife, boats and aircraft, among other things.  So now I am all set to take all kinds of interesting photographs with this new lens!  Stay tuned! 

 

A Bit of Snow

I hadn't been paying attention to the weather forecasts, so I was surprised to wake up this morning and find snow on the ground.  I though that maybe it was just a dusting of a couple of inches.  What a surprise to find out we got about 7 inches of snow!  When I went outside to get the newspaper, it was overcast, and so I shot this photograph of our famous tree.

An hour or so later when I went out to fire up the snow blower, the sun was in and out of the clouds, and there was sunlight on the tree and some blue sky behind it.  What a difference an hour makes.  It took  about 45 minutes to do our driveway and the walkway in the back.  Then I went over to the house next door, and a neighbor with a snowblower and I cleaned her driveway.  It was an easy snowfall.

 

Indian Pudding

Indian pudding has been one of the staples of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners all my life.  It was only served twice a year.  In recent years, my three sisters would host both holidays, but we would be in Rochester for Thanksgiving and in California for Christmas.  My sister Betsey was the one who made the Indian pudding for the gathering.  I actually can't remember the last time I had this delicious dessert because we were never at the family gatherings.  It is never served at the 4th of July picnic!  So after missing this delicacy for so long, last night I decided to make myself a big dish of Indian pudding.  This recipe goes back to my Grandmother Spencer, in Guilford, and it said on my mom's hand written copy of the recipe, that my grandmother got it from her friend Mertie Loomis.  How is that for a wonderful New England name!

So everything went well in my endeavors in the kitchen, and here is my first dish, along with some vanilla ice cream.  The kids always had ice cream on top, and the adults always had something called "hard sauce" which is made from powdered sugar, butter and either rum, whiskey or brandy and an egg or heavy cream.  Trust me, the vanilla ice cream is better.  Kathy had never tasted it, so she tried it last night and is not a fan.  She said it is not sweet at all, but the vanilla ice cream takes care of that for me.  It was absolutely delicious to my taste, and so nice to have it once again!

Silver Gray Reflections

                             

The day before I took that photograph of the spectacular sunset, I went for my usual walk along the harbor.  When I got to the bottom of our street I saw the tide was out and I walked down on to the tidal flats.  There were some beautiful silver gray clouds that formed an overcast, and below them were some lower scattered clouds that were darker because we are seeing them against lighter clouds.  I was looking for a good angle when I noticed a large tide pool, and thought that if I could get the water to reflect the sky, it would make a more interesting photograph.  Here it is!

New Take on Walking the Dog

When I did my walk today I came across this couple with their large dog in one of those sand buggies for the beach.  They were slowly pulling the wagon along the sidewalk.  I was tempted to ask about the dog, but I didn't.  I am guessing that the dog is old and may have trouble walking.  But isn't it nice that they bring the dog outside into the fresh air, even though he may not be able to get outside under his own power.

 

Quite a Sunset!

I am being disciplined in the new year year, and trying to exercise more.  It was too cold to do a bike ride today, but like yesterday, I decided to do my 2.7 mile walk.  I left really late today.  The sky was completely overcast, so it didn't look like a great photo opportunity, but I always bring a camera.  Lucky I did!  When I reached the harbor, everything was grey, with a little sliver of orange sky to the northwest.  After maybe 10 minutes, there was also an orange glow on the horizon to the west, where the sun had set.  Then the glow became larger and larger and soon covered nearly half the sky.  When I got to the old power plant site, this is what I saw!  Wow!  This is what the scene looked like and I have not added any saturation to the colors in the scene.  It was as spectacular in real life as it appears to the camera!

 

California Dreaming IV

GOO GOO GOO GOOGLIE EYES.  On the trip out to Los Angeles I have already whined about how I was stuck in a center seat for the flight.  And then the young woman at the window closed the shade so it was dark, and I couldn't look out the window.  I was prepared, however, and had my book to read.  Interestingly, it was called "Flying High" and is the story of how David Neeleman started JetBlue Airlines!  So it is a great read.  But it was dark with the window closed, so I reached up and turned on the spotlight over my seat, which illuminates my tray table area.  At some point I took my glasses off to rub my eyes, and saw this flash by my eyes. So I carefully moved my glasses around until I got this composition and then photographed it!  Cute, huh?

 

California Dreaming III

MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS IN THE SKY!  Oh no, we are being invaded by creatures from outer space.  Who will save us?  What will we do to defend ourselves from these aliens?  Are we doomed?  Nope, not at all.  These "space ships" are commercial aircraft on approach to two of the four runways at Los Angeles International Airport.  At this time of night, there are two streams of aircraft approaching two of the parallel runways - RWY 24L and 25R.  There are two straight lines of airplanes on the approaches and I believe that they are spaced about two minutes apart from each other.  Because of my position, off to the side of their approach path, they don't seem to be in straight lines. There are seven aircraft visible in this shot.  So cool to see so many aircraft in the sky at once!