"Don't Be Fooled.."

This is hysterical!  Kathy had an early client online today, so by the time I came down after my shower, she was in the back room with the doors closed.  Here's the thing about the kitties.  They are so smart and crafty too.  One of us will feed them and then the other of us will come into the room, and the two kitties will be sitting near each other, looking up at us with those eyes that you cannot deny, as if they have not been fed!  It has happened before.  So Kathy left this sign, so that the kitties would not outsmart me!   :-)

 

Orion the Hunter, and Mars

When I take the garbage out at about 1 AM lately, I look to the south and there is Orion the Hunter shining in the sky, always a magnificent reminder that winter has arrived.  But these days there is something extra something special.  Mars, the God of war is brightly shining almost directly over my head and above Orion.  It is the orange circle near the top center of the photograph.  Such a spectacular sight, this magnificent constellation, and the orange beacon above it.  I have been an amateur astronomer since 1989 and have never seen anything like this before.  Mars and Earth come close to each other every two years or so, but sometimes Mars can be quite low in the sky and each time we are close to Mars, it is in a completely different part of the sky.   But this apparition, as it is called, or "appearance" is the most spectacular in my memory!

 

The Color of Light

I love the Japanese maple trees around here.  We of course have our now famous tree that I have photographed so many times, and then there is a huge tree behind our garage.  I have been photographing both of them because this is their time to shine in the late fall.  Today I was doing close-up photographs of the leaves on our tree.  The sun was out and the colors were absolutely brilliant.

Suddenly, the sun went behind the clouds and it got darker, and there was a dramatic change in the color of the leaves I was photographing!  I don't think I have ever had this happen before - such a dramatic change in color of a subject that I was photographing, when the light changed.  These are the exact same leaves and they are just as beautiful, but a different color.  When the sunlight is blocked, then the subject is lit by skylight, which, like the sky is so much more blue in color.

 

We Go Back Some...

This is funny - I was going to say "These are our old friends," but then I thought, that was not the right sense of what I was trying to say!  So the four of us go back a long way.  We bought our house in 1970 and two years later, Ronni and Ken bought the house across from us.  I had just bought a Lightning sailboat and when I looked at their driveway, there was a yellow Thistle class sailboat!  I thought: "Gee, maybe we will be friends."  Well that was an understatement.  We have been friends now for 50 years.  We have sailed together and vacationed with each other.  We flew to Milan, Italy to visit them when Ken was sent there for his work.  Our daughters are good friends with their two daughters as well, and to top it all off, we both celebrated our 50th wedding anniversaries together in Hawaii. They live in Charleston, South Carolina and came to New York  where they vacationed with one daughter and her husband and their two boys.  So they came for lunch today and we got to visit here before they flew home.  So, yes, we go back some. 

 

The Bearded Man!

The Bearded Man!  Sounds like a circus sideshow attraction!  In the past on maybe 3 occasions in 30 or 40 years, when I have gotten the flu, I would stop shaving because my skin hurt.  It usually took a week for the flu to pass and by then I had a pretty scruffy beard on my face.  So my skin did not hurt when I had my mild case of COVID, but I decided to stop shaving because I was not going anywhere.  So this is about 10 days worth of beard for the Bearded Man.  Tomorrow we have Ken and Ronnie for lunch so I will be shaving in the morning.  I do like the clean shaven look, actually.  Click on the photo to see how really scruffy I am!

 

A Late Fall Afternoon

Late one afternoon I was going to the grocery store, and when getting in the car I saw this scene.  Two Adirondack chairs, which Joan gave to us a couple of years ago, sitting on the hill surrounded by green grass.  They look beautiful sitting together up on our little hill.  What makes the photograph so interesting is the late afternoon sunlight raking across the lawn.  I do love the feeling of this photograph for those reasons.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a really nice Thanksgiving.  We all have so much to be thankful for.  So we were just the two of us at home, and it was only a turkey breast, but with all the trimmings, including home made cranberry sauce and stuffing, among other side dishes.  I used a wide angle lens for this shot just for fun, to emphasize the large table with just the two of use.  Photographs can lie!  

But then we had two Facetime sessions, first with my sisters in Connecticut.  They were at Lauren and John's home, and Joan is missing in this shot, and that is Lauren on the right.   Jon was taking a nap.

And Jennie was there with the twins!

Then we immediately had another Facetime with everyone in Los Angeles!

We couldn't be there, but it was so nice to see everyone, at least online.  All in all, a wonderful day!

 

Light!

I was on the telephone with a friend when I saw this, this afternoon, and nearly fell off my chair!  This is a narrow metal table with a thick glass top.  Sitting on top is a 6" diameter, 1" thick, old telescope mirror with the mirrored side facing down, and a white candle in a glass.   So I can't begin to calculate what objects are causing what reflections.  I love all the things going on and the abstract shapes that are made by the reflected sunlight!

 

Fading Hostas

In a way this is a different kind of photograph for me.  I love to photograph beauty, wherever it is.  I put a macro lens which allows me to do extreme close-ups.  So I went out to the side garden by the house trying to find a photograph.  So I thought this was interesting.  It is not beautiful in the way I normally think of beauty, because of the signs of fading and decay.  So I have thought about this a lot, and I think it might be beautiful, in it's own way.

 

The Astronomer

This is Jessica, who is an engineer and an astronomer.  I first met her when she came to our astronomy club when she was 14 years old and still in High School.  She was really excited about astronomy and wanted to build a telescope and grind and polish her own mirror!  So I helped her get started on that project.  She graduated from High School and went to Stony Brook University where she graduated with three majors: Mechanical Engineering, Physics and Astronomy!  She is now at the University of Arizona working on her PhD!  So I have known her for 15 years!  She came back home with her husband to visit her family, and stopped in so we could catch up after three years of COVID.  What an amazing thing to be friends with her all these years and watch her as she has grown.

 

The Test...

I have had, first a sore throat, and then sniffles and then a runny nose for a week.  Today I had a dry cough that nothing would stop.  I tried cough drops and then cough syrup to no avail.  I was just coughing all day.  Finally at the end of the day, Kathy said, "You know one of the symptoms of COVID is a dry cough.  I think you should get a test."  We had some of the free tests the government sent out but they had expired.  So Kathy went over to CVS and picked up some tests.  What's interesting is that Medicare paid for four sets of tests, two in each box, which was wonderful.  So I took the test and the results are shown in the photograph.  The faint pink like on the strip says I am positive.  Even though it was faint.  So, I have COVID.  But I feel fine.  Since we had the test kits, Kathy decided to see if she was positive since I have had this "cold" for a week now.  Fortunately, she is not positive, so someone in the house can go buy groceries!  Sadly, we were planning to drive to Rochester tomorrow morning to visit Vince and JoAnne for Thanksgiving as we have done for years.  But  Thanksgiving this year will be just the two of us, here at home.

 

Testing

A few days before the Total Lunar Eclipse, I went out scouting a location that would be best to photograph the eclipse from.  I brought along a compass because I had the magnetic headings for the different positions of the Moon during the eclipse.  But just a round orange ball in a dark sky is not all that interesting in and of itself, so I was looking for an interesting foreground over which to look toward the Moon.  So this is the place.  I had hoped that the eclipsed Moon would be setting as seen through these pilings, but dawn broke and the faint Moon, still fairly high in the sky, disappeared as the sky brightened.  But I saw this photograph again the other day, and thought it was pretty interesting all by itself with the cloudy sky and the black poles.  So here it is for you to see.

 

The Front Hall is Done

                                      

Whew!  Another room is finished!  This is the front hall, and it was photographed with an extreme wide angle lens, so the room is much smaller than it looks here!  The floors have had the original wall to wall carpet removed, and the pad beneath the rug as well, and then all the staples used to hold the padding.  Then the "tackless" strips around the edge of the room - those strips are what held the original carpet in place.  That's a nasty job, which eventually Kathy learned how to do!  Then the floor has been cleaned and sanded in some places, and some stain has been applied to even out the color, and then two coats of polyurethane have been applied to the floor, by brush. Whew!  But how beautiful it looks!  We weren't sure about the rugs here, but when we bought the dining room rug, it came with these two rugs as well!  Turns out, these rugs are perfect here!  Come visit us and see all our hard work.  Wait!  What are 80-year old people doing crawling around on our hands and knees, with hammers and pliers and scrapers and sanders?  Don't they know this work is for young people?

The Hickory Tree

The tall Hickory tree in our front yard never disappoints when Fall comes!  One day it looks normal and it seems the next day all the leaves are brilliant yellow, almost overnight.  It is a joy to watch the change and see the beautiful yellow leaves each year.  And then, seemingly in another instant, all the leaves are gone, just like that.  The circle of life.

 

Temporary Waiting Room

They are changing everything in the LIRR terminal in Penn Station.  They recently closed the rest rooms and the waiting room as part of the rebuilding of the terminal.  There is NOWHERE to sit.  Not that I need to sit because I am in great shape with my cycling and walking all around NYC on my visits there.  But I feel badly for older people whose only option is to stand while waiting for their trains!  For this young man, who is not sleeping - he is talking to someone on his cell phone which he has in his outstretched hand - the floor makes the perfect waiting room!  Necessity is the mother of invention!

 

Awake Before Dawn

While I was photographing the Total Lunar Eclipse last week, I was paying attention to what was going on around me, as I moved from place while photographing from different spots along the promenade.  As the eclipse progressed the sky started to get light as dawn approached.  That's when I turned around and saw this scene.  15 minutes earlier it was night.  The bench and its shadow is what a saw first and then the row of lights on the poles, and finally the sky lightening in the background, and there was my picture!  It is unusual for be to be awake before dawn!

 

The Owl Pumpkin

Kathy bought two pumpkins and I carved one and put it on the front porch, and we left the other one on the back porch.  And there it sat for a couple of weeks.  It seems like right after thanksgiving something started eating it.  I was thinking it was squirrels, but I haven't seen any of them around the pumpkin.  So now I am thinking it might be a raccoon.  What's funny is that first there was one part of the pumpkin eaten, then there was a second area eaten, and I thought it looked like raccoon eyes.  Raccoons usually come out at night.  Maybe I will have to bring a flashlight up to the bedroom and look out the window down at the pumpkin during the night and see if I can see the raccoon.

 

A Celebration of Sorts

My good friend Sam, sitting in the middle of the photograph, is my mentor in astronomy, and now lives in Florida.  He does miss Long Island and every once in a while he comes up here.  This weekend he came for a "Honeymooners" conference which was up the Hudson River, and he went with his friend Joe, seated at the right.  So Joe decided to surprise Sam with a luncheon at a restaurant and asked some of Sam's good friends if they wanted to come surprise him, which is what we did.  It was wonderful to see and talk with Sam and everyone else.  So I had to take a photo because this is a historic moment!

 

Hurricane

All day yesterday it was raining.  Between light and moderate during the day, and during much of the night.  When It first started raining I went down to the street to get the mail.  I happened to look down so I wouldn't step into the water in the gutter.  When I looked where to step I saw this.  I looked at it for maybe 15 seconds, and then decided it was a photograph for some reason.  So I ran back in the house and grabbed my toy camera and came back out and shot this.  I love the rich and subtle color of the leaves when they get to these colors.  I also liked how the water runs into the leaves and turns white and then goes around the leaves.

 

Train Time

This photograph is all about the light!  I was on my way home from my day in Fun City.  I take an electric train from Penn Station, because diesel trains cannot operate in the tunnels under the East river.  Then I get off the train and wait for the Diesel train that takes me to Sea Cliff.  I have stood on this exact spot every time I come from the city.  But never at this time of day.  Usually is is daylight, or it is night.  But this light was beautiful!  It was dusk.  The light on the structures on the platform across the tracks add to the light in the scene.  That platform across the tracks is new - it is where you board the "Train to the Plane" which takes people to JFK airport.

 

Lost in Penn Station

I went to the city today to help my friend Stan shop for a Drone.  He is doing more work on his long term project about the internment camps into which the U.S. Government imprisoned people of Japanese descent, even though many of them were United States Citizens.  He and a writer have published two books about the camps.  Anyhow, that's why I went to the city.  So I got off my train, walked up the stairs to the corridor and had no idea where I was in the station!  I couldn't believe it!  I have been using Penn Station since I came to Long Island in 1966!  And I had no idea where I was!  Well, in my defense, there are monumental changes taking part in Penn Station to modernize it, and this is  what that looks like.  Believe it or not I saw a man behind an "information" desk, so I asked him where I was.  Turns out I was in a corridor over by the Moynihan Station which is across the street from Penn Station.  So I found my way back to the main station, which is where I wanted to be.  I had planned to do more photography of the changes since my last visit here.

This part of the newly finished station, the entrance.  It has really tall ceilings, and the room is flooded with light, as you can see.  The new huge entrance stairway is at left, and I have photographed that before. You can see that photograph here: New Stairway  This construction is not finished yet, and they have just contracted to a whole new multi-million project that will ultimate break through the floor above this, and this ceiling will be gone and this floor will be open to the sky!  Here is an artist's rendering of what is to come!  Wow!

 

The Pumpkin is not Well

The poor pumpkin is not feeling well, I am sorry to say.  I am not sure exactly what his ailment is, but I am afraid it might be old age.  I feel badly, but old age will eventually get to all of us.  He was a good pumpkin.  We made him a Jack-O-Lantern only the night before Halloween and so he was only illuminated for two nights.  I make a short fat candle for our pumpkins by using a piece of old fashioned canning wax which I cut in half, and make a groove in, and put a piece of twine in the crack then heat one of the wax pieces with a propane torch and when it starts to melt on the surface, I stick the two pieces together and I have a candle.  But I think it burns too bright and two fast, and only lasts two days.  So we hate to see this go, but it is time that he visits the compost heap, sad to say.

 

The Lunar Eclipse

We are talking sacrifice here!  I set the alarm this morning for 4:30 AM!  I quickly dressed and loaded my camera equipment and tripods into the car, and then headed for this beach and boat ramp in Glen Cove.  I had scouted the location a week before and what I liked were the pilings in the center of the photograph, sticking up above the horizon.  I thought those pilings might add interest to the photograph.  But it turns out I needed to be further away from them to get this wide angle view and so they didn't really play a part in my eclipse photos.  So this is shortly after the total eclipse started at 5:16 AM.  You can see that the moon is orange, instead of white, meaning that it is in the shadow of the earth.

So this is a photograph of the fully eclipsed moon taken with my 300mm lens.  If you enlarge this image by clicking on it, you can see a few stars in the background.  This was taken at 5:30 AM.

And this photo was taken at 5:46 as the sky got brighter as dawn approached.  The Moon is lower as it begins setting, so I used a longer lens, and so the moon is larger, which is nice.  As 6:00 AM approached, the sky became lighter and the eclipsed moon gradually faded and disappeared.  An astounding morning, and certainly worth getting up early for!  

 

Dusty miller

I bought a new Macro lens for my Sony a7 III camera, which is used for close-up photographs.  It is capable of 1:1 images, which means the image on the "film" is the same size as the object is in nature.  You can fill the frame with a postage stamp.  This is not a super close up image but just a close photo of one of my favorite plants, Dusty miller.  I think I love this plant because of its subtlety.  A gentle gray color with a hint of green and blue.  We have one plant in the garden by the driveway and it has survived through the winters and still looks healthy.  And Beautiful.

 

Fading Hostas

I do enjoy the beauty I see in plants in Fall, as they fade from their normal state.  I do see beauty in the way they change color and lose their shape and ultimately collapse.  I guess it is beauty in death, in a way.  This is a huge plant in the garden along the side of our house, brilliant green all year long with huge leaves.  And then in fall, the green turns to brilliant yellow, then brown, and then without even a frost, the stalks begin to just collapse, as you see them here.  I guess to me, this is really about design and color.

 

A Different View of the Beach

When we were at the beach a couple of weeks ago the beach was different.  I was surprised to see these metal stakes had been driven into the ground.  I recognized them as the posts that hold up the drift fences that they install each winter to keep the sand from blowing off the beach into the parking lot.  But the best part was that there was fog on the water that completely obscured the other side of the harbor.  But while we watched, the fog slowly started to dissipate and parts of the shoreline began to appear in the distance.  It was really cool to see trees on the opposite shore appear and disappear.  Something different.

 

The Dining Room is Done!

So back at the end of September I posted a photograph of me sanding part of the floor in the dining room, and then a photograph of the finished floor after being varnished.  Sanding & Varnishing  I am thrilled to tell you the dining room is now done.  The new rug arrived today and it is now in place!  I am thrilled with the change in the look of the room.  We have always had wall to wall carpet in our rooms and this is just so much more elegant.  And I love the look of the varnished floors.  We weren't sure what we would find when we removed strips of the carpet around the edges, but we were thrilled that with sanding and some staining and two coats of varnish, we had beautiful 90 year old wood floors!  Here is a photograph I did back in 2021 when I had just finished painting the room, and you can see the old carpet on the floor.  The Old Carpet Quite a different look!

No Diving

I was down by Sea Cliff beach when I saw this.  This is the swimming float which they anchor off the beach with several of these "mushroom" anchors.  What caught my eye was the shaft of the anchor that had the anchor chain wrapped around it.  That shape was what stuck out for some reason.  And something about this strange shape up against the sky - that anchor is really the subject of this photograph.  So I thought this made an interesting shot.  Also the "No diving" was a bit incongruous since the float was on the beach.

 

Clouds

Astronomers hate clouds!  They get in the way of being able to look at the sky at night for the beautiful celestial objects we love to observe, like the Moon, Planets, Star Clusters, Galaxies, and Nebulae.  We had an observing session a week ago and the sky was clear for an hour or two, but the weather forecast clouds at around 10 PM.  So, right on time, the clouds came in.  But it was OK because we had observed for a couple of hours.  But then I took a second look at the clouds and realized how beautiful they were.  So this photograph was taken at night.  It is a long exposure on a tripod.  The problem is that long exposures at night can make the image appear that it was taken during the day! The only clue that it is not a daytime photograph is the presence of the planet Jupiter at the top left in the photograph.  And then if you enlarge the photo by clicking on it, you will see on the right side of the photo a small dot which is the planet Saturn!  So we saw the night sky, and then we saw beautiful clouds!

 

My Brilliant Daughters!

Halloween in Los Angeles!  Here are two posts that were on Instagram yesterday, from my brilliant daughters!  They are both so smart and so creative and such good photographers and I am always amazed at how brilliant they both are.  Now the evidence!  The photograph above is how Liz dressed for Halloween.  She is the woman on the Starbucks cup!  What an astounding idea, and look how well she created the character!  I am blown away by this idea and how she created this costume!  (Photograph by Liz Spencer)

And this photograph of tiny Vivian dressed as Santa Claus, all alone on a sidewalk, which disappears into infinity is just astounding!  Take it from this photographer, this is a magnificent photograph!  When talking with Amy she said that recently she realized that close up photographs of Vivian are so cute because Vivian is cute, but she realized that context was so important and when she took this photograph she realized that this photograph shows how tiny Vivian really is, and that's why this is such a great photograph!  (Photograph by Amy Spencer)