Night Snowfall

So it started snowing late last night, very gently, an it was a sticky snow which coated everything like frosting.  I took the garbage out, and before going out to do that, I put my toy camera in my pocket.  Good thing I did!  The outside spotlight that shines on the driveway and garage is on, which is where the light comes from.  Thought this was in an interesting scene because of the light and the famous tree, seen in a different way.

 

The Birds!

If you remember, on February 20 I did a post of some buildings I thought were historic, and I thought had something to do with the history of Republic Aircraft Corporation.  After spending an hour photographing them, I waited to cross a busy street to get back to my car and head home.  Wouldn't you know that half way across Conklin Avenue, a huge flock of birds flew over really low.  I was so surprised because I was looking at traffic before crossing.  So I don't know where they came from, but they sure did make an interesting photograph against the gray and rainy sky, don't you think?

 

The Tattoo

I had a cup of coffee and a couple of hours of conversation with an astronomer friend of mine, whose name will not be mentioned.  When we were leaving Starbucks, she said: "Oh, I got a tattoo!"  And with that she pulled up her shirtsleeve and showed me this, which I recognized, but which I was not sure of what it meant.  The brilliant Astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake designed the Pulsar map, working with fellow astronomer Carl Sagan and artist and writer Linda Salzman Sagan. The starburst-like diagram is called a pulsar map, because it shows the location of our sun relative to known pulsars.  Pulsars are the rapidly spinning remains of dying stars—the leftover cores of supernova explosions. They're only about 12 to 15 miles in diameter, but most contain more than twice the mass of our sun. Their rapid spin and intense magnetic fields cause the pulsars to emit narrow beams of light, which flash like the beam from a lighthouse every time they pass across our field of view.  Each pulsar has its own signature pulse rate, making them easy to identify, and ideal as reference points on a map.  This map would show people from an intelligent civilization where Voyager came from.  This map is etched into a golden record which is part of the Voyager spacecraft.  If intelligent beings find Voyager, they’d be able to triangulate our sun’s location and plot a course to our little corner of the Milky Way.  Now THAT is a cool tattoo!

 

The Harbor at Dusk

 

This photograph is all about the mood.  I have photographed the harbor in all kinds of weather and in all seasons.  I went for my walk the other day, late in the day, which I am enjoying because I always walk in daylight.  I didn't find many things to shoot because it was dark!   :-)   But I was looking at this scene and thinking that I hadn't shot this scene ever looking like this.  While I contemplated all this, suddenly a car came down the road at me and the headlights were reflecting off the road, and I had my shot!

Flag Day

I have passed this fence on my walk every time I go out.  The other day I was surprised to see these four tiny pink flags placed at the base of the fence.  And I am not sure why there is pink paint on the gravel under the flags.  There have been a lot of new spray painted hieroglyphics on the sidewalks down in this area recently.  Many of the sidewalk markings are to show where pipes and electrical conduits are buried.  Perhaps that is the purpose of these flags.  In any case, I love the pink color against the dark green fence and the random pink gravel. As to what it signifies?  I will let you know if I ever find out.

 

An Honored Guest

We had an honored guest as our speaker last night at our astronomy club meeting.  You remember me telling the story of Jessica visiting back in November, when she came to the house and we spent a few hours catching up.  The Astronomer.  Well, she and her husband came from Arizona to visit their folks here on Long Island and she offered to give a talk to our club.  So she talked about her history with our club which I spoke of in my earlier post.  And then she spent most of the time talking about her work which involves Ultraviolet astronomy.  It was a stunning talk, and she is a brilliant engineer and astronomer.  We heard about the instruments she designed, one for a balloon borne telescope to get near the top of Earth's atmosphere, and another for a small satellite that will be launched into space!  Her skills and knowledge are just astounding.

Because she was speaking at our club, she invited two of her high school teachers to attend!  Richard, on the left was her physics teacher, and Linda on the right was her science teacher.  What a great reunion!  Definitely worth a photograph!

 

Night Shadows

Every night before I go to bed, I go outside an look at the sky, no matter what the conditions are.  I just like to make the connection before sleeping.  Last night I realized while outside that no one had gotten the mail.  So I walked down to our mailbox on the street, and on the way back up our driveway, I saw the shadow of the Japanese maple tree on the front of the garage, and my shadow as well!  All this thanks to the neighbor across the street who has one REALLY bright light on one side of his front door that stays on all night long.  Powerful enough to create shadows on our garage!  I love the feeling of this photograph!

 

Test Shot

I haven't forgotten my promise that I will doing another post on the Republic Airport photographs.  But meanwhile...  I was on the way to get dinner tonight - do I dare tell you that I was headed to Col Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken?  So these are the new high-end condos down beyond where the power plant used to be.  There was just something when I saw this scene ahead of me that made me stop and do a photograph.  I actually kept going and thought that this picture might be better if I had been here half an hour earlier and had some detail in the building from twilight.  I made a note on my pad to come back here half an hour earlier some day.  And then on the way back from KFC I decided to pull over and shoot this anyhow.  Then I can come back and take more time to do it in twilight.  But now I am thinking I will be surprised if having more detail in the building will make a better photograph.  We'll see.

 

These Buildings are Historic!

These buildings are historic and I have waited years to photograph them!  The other day when I drove by I realized that I had a chance, finally!  Can you guess what these buildings are part of?  They are the remains of the storied Republic Aviation Corporation which produced some of the most famous aircraft in military history.  So these buildings have been abandoned since the plant at Republic Airport was shut down in about 1965.  I didn't arrive on Long Island until November of 1966.  So the town used the spaces between these buildings for storing huge long piles of some kind of mulch that completely filled up the area.  You couldn't see the buildings from eye level.  And there was a chain link fence around everything so I couldn't get on the property.  I did do at least one post of these buildings as seen through the fence.  The other day as I drove by I noticed that part of the chain link fence was on the ground, and all the mulch was gone!  I quickly parked my car, grabbed my camera and ran across the road and onto the property!  I was in heaven, even though it was raining slightly.  I spent nearly an hour exploring these buildings.  They all have wooden roofs that are rotted, so I did not go into any of them, but photographed them from the outside through windows or openings in the walls.  So here are photographs of the exteriors of two buildings.  I will show you more photographs in another post!  Be sure and click on these to see more detail.

 

The Other Warehouse

I am probably overdoing this, a characteristic I have been known to display before!  So here are two new panoramas.  I should that these are taken with a regular digital camera, but what makes them different is that the top image is a combination of two separate images which makes the image much wider than with a regular wide angle lens.  And the bottom photograph is a combination of 5 different photographs, carefully composed from left to right and combined.  So the point of all this is that there are two warehouses on the former Newsday property.  This first photograph is the second warehouse north of the main one I showed the other day.

And this super wide angle panorama shows both new warehouses in one panorama.  What an incredible change to the landscape of this piece of property.  Someone asked me today what I thought this neighborhood would be like with a steady stream of trailer trucks coming and going from this location.  I went back and counted the loading bays for trucks in the first building - there are 60 bays for trucks to back up to!  I cannot imagine the traffic changes coming to this place once both warehouses are up and running.

 

The Great Nebula in Orion

I bought a small astronomical imaging camera that goes on the back of a telescope, and it connects to another  little box that collects the images from the camera and then processes them and wirelessly sends them to my iPad, which controls all this stuff! Astounding technology.  And relatively easy to learn how to use, so far, at least.  So this is the result of my first outing with the camera.  Because of the light polluted skies all over Long Island I was stunned to see some of the delicate, wispy detail this camera was able to capture!  Beginners luck!  The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye under a dark night sky. The nebula is a region of massive star formation.  Stars are born within this giant cloud of gas!  It is estimated to be 24 light-years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion. 

 

Gobsmacked!

I had to go to a welding supply store today, out in Melville. Melville, where Newsday used to be, and where I spent almost 30 years of my life working at a wonderful job with great people.   About 5 years after I retired, the Times Mirror company which owned the land under the Newsday building, sold it out from under the company.  By then, Newsday was owned by the son of the Cablevision founder, and was greatly reduced in size and the number of employees.  So they have moved to a corporate office building nearby, with really modern facilities and a high tech TV studio.  So the Newsday building on this site was demolished starting about 3 years ago, and a brand new, giant warehouse has been built on the property. I had heard about a warehouse, but nothing prepared me for the size and the extent of the building!  I truly was gobsmacked!  That's a British term meaning "utterly astonished; astounded."  and I was all of that!  The Newsday building was two stories tall - this warehouse is twice that height!  And on top of that, there is another warehouse to the left of this one!  Not quite as large, but the transformation of the old Newsday site is really unimaginable!  BE SURE and click on this photograph - it is an extra large file and you will be amazed at all you can see!

This is a reminder of what the old Newsday building looked like, during demolition.  I should see if I can find a wider angle photograph so you can see more of the old building.

 

High Water Mark

                               

This is a recent favorite photograph that I only got around to posting tonight.  So many things to photograph, so little time.  So I should be talking about artistic things, but instead I will talk about how this scene came about.  The water in the harbor is not freezing, so it is warmer than 32 degrees F.  But when this photograph was taken, it was bitter cold around here and the winds were howling one night and the temperature of the wind was about 20 degrees.  So the howling, cold wind made large waves And then the wind blew the seawater off the tops of the waves and then that spray ended up on the rocks.  Think about all night long.  But then when the wind died down, and the tide came up, the warmer water melted the ice on the rocks that was submerged in the water at high tide.  The result?  A perfect line on the bottom of of the ice.  Cool, huh?

Viewer's Choice

"And now for something different" as was so often said on Monty Python episodes.  I took this photograph because I loved the shape of this tree, bit it was the faint bit of pastel color just above the horizon in the distance that clinched the shot.   I framed the scene as a vertical which felt better for the shot than a horizontal, and I put the horizon nearly in the center, which you are not supposed to do.  It just felt correct.  But then when I was working on this image before posting, I wondered if it would be a better photograph if I cropped out the land in the foreground.  So I did that and then stared at the two photographs side by side to see which was my favorite.  The two different versions have a slightly different feel to them and I can't make up my mind which is my favorite.  So all of you get to vote and choose your favorite one.  Thank you for your help.  It is truly amazing how different the two photographs feel.

 

Sea Grasses

These sea grasses are so interesting to watch as the seasons change.  In the Spring they are short and green when they come out of the sand and then they grow to perhaps three feet high or more by the end of summer.  Then in Fall they turn brown, and gradually collapse a the water freezes and thaws.  So I love the warm colors of the grasses during the Fall and winter as the colors contrast with the reflections of the blue sky..

 

Just Another Sunset

I was on my way back from the grocery store when I saw the bright orange sky of a sunset to the west.  So I ran in the house and grabbed my SONY a7 and drove to the beach to capture the scene.  But I was a bit late - sunsets change so quickly.  But there was some color left, even though it was a bit muted.  I do like the layer of gray clouds running along the top of the scene with a lighter gray edge.

 

Sun, Rock and Water

A bit too cold to ride my bike today, so I did my 2.7 mile walk to the power plant that is no longer there.  It was a soft gray overcast of high clouds and there was not much wind.  So the water in the harbor was relatively smooth.  There were some darker clouds under the overcast, so that gave varying shades of gray to the water.  As I walked south the bright reflection of the sun moved across the water with me.  When it got to the rock I stopped.  "This is the spot" I thought, and here is that photograph.  I love the smoothness of the water and all the various shades of gray, and of course the brightness of the sun.  Please click on the photograph to see the beautiful detail within it.

 

A Quintessential New Yorker

After visiting the International Center of Photography and having lunch in a Chinese restaurant, I returned to Penn Station, as you can see, still under construction.  As I got off the subway a young woman walked past me and she was moving.  I caught a glimpse of her and realized that she is a great New York type, because she was in a hurry, and because of the way she was dressed, what she was carrying and the fact that she was texting as she went!  So I upped my pace and caught up with her but stayed even with her, and as I walked along, I pointed my camera at her sideways without looking to see what was in the frame.  I did have a wide angle lens on.  I probably snapped about 12 photographs of her walking and had no idea if she was actually in the frame!  I was thrilled to see this image when I stopped walking fast and took a look.  A quintessential New Yorker, indeed!

 

In The Dark

If this photograph seems too dark, that's because it was taken in the dark.  Really.  One of the three women in the portrait photography exhibit only shoots 16mm movie film.  She doesn't make prints at all of any of the subjects she films.  Anyhow, we were sitting in this little theater room that they constructed for this exhibit, watching one of her movies, and Stan got up to look at the projector.  I turned around and saw this scene and asked him not to move.  So here is where the amazing ability of my SONY a7 III comes into the picture, so to speak.  I set the ISO (which we used call "film speed") to 12,800 which is an astounding number.  I used to use Tri-X black and white film at 400 speed, and the faster films were 1,600.  So this ISO with the SONY is crazy sensitive.  And my shutter speed was 1/4 second.  You really can't hold a camera steady for that long of an exposure, but the SONY has a built-in image stabilization function that electronically steadies the camera!  This photograph is tack sharp!  And I like that the image is kind of mysterious at first, until you read this caption.

 

Stan's New Camera

I took the train to Fun City today and met Stan at the International Center of Photography to see a huge exhibit called "Face to Face."  It featured the portrait photographs of three women photographers.  I particularly wanted to see the work of  Brigitte Lacombe, I am a huge fan of her work!  On the way out of the exhibit I decided to buy a small book and as we were standing at the check out register, there was this giant model of a 35mm camera about five times actual size.  So of course Stan had to pick it up and pretend he was taking a photograph, and of course I had to take my camera and make a portrait of him with the camera.  Just two photographers having fun, like so many photographers do!

 

How NOT to Hold a Camera!

When Stan came out yesterday, he had a request.  He had seen someone at a solar eclipse event holding a camera out at arm's length, and the camera had a 70-200mm lens on it!  That lens is fairly heavy! He couldn't believe that someone would use their camera and lens in that way.  Instead of holding the camera up to his eye and looking in the viewfinder where you can see everything in great detail, the photographer was viewing and composing by looking at the tiny screen on the back of the camera!  The screen is only 1.5 inches by 2.24 inches.  Imagine how small that looks from two feet away - that's how long our arms are.  That screen on the back is meant to be used by looking at it up close.  Perhaps the photographer had forgotten his reading glasses!  So Stan wanted to have me pose, showing the wrong way and the right way to hold a camera while shooting and composing.  I was to be the model.

One other thing about the incorrect method is that when you use a lens of 200mm focal length, it is really hard to hold the camera and lens steady.  And it certainly will not be steady held this way!

 So you have probably guessed that this is the correct way to hold this camera and lens.  What may not be obvious is that my elbows are jammed into my torso, making a kind of tripod.  The back of the camera is pressed against my forehead, and the arms are against me, and that steadies the camera and lens quite a bit.  I learned one other thing from this shoot, by the way.  I have a lot of gray hair!  :-)  

All Photographs are by Stan Honda, a guy who knows how to hold HIS camera!

Saving the Washout House

You will all remember a couple of posts I have done about this home that had its foundation nearly washed out during an incredible rainstorm we had back in September of 2021 After the Washout.  Then I did another few posts when they started rebuilding the cliff behind the house to save the house.  Starting the Repair In July of 2022 I showed how much progress had been made. Repair Progress.  Well, when I was at the beach for the icicles, I saw how much has been done!  So I took some photographs from the ground and was going to post one or two.  Until today!  Stan came out for some more drone practice at the ballfield in town and when he was done, I thought we should come down here and see what an aerial photograph of the repair work would look like!  I am blown away!  Look how much better this photograph I did with Stan's new drone, shows how far the repair process has come, and what an astounding amount of work is involved in restoring the hill and saving the house!  This is an extra large image so please click on it to see more details.

 

Sketching the Comet

I told you that I was unsuccessful in trying to photograph the comet last Wednesday.  But even though it was cold, I spent a fair amount of time just looking at the comet in the eyepiece, studying it carefully.  I have been learning how to "see" when observing astronomical objects, for years.  It is a skill that you develop over time.  You really get to carefully see an object when you make a pencil sketch of it.  I don't do a lot of sketching, but each time I do, I get better at it.  You get better at it by asking questions about it.  How bright is it, what shape is it, is it the same brightness all over, or is there there a bright center, and so on analyzing what you are looking at.  So I didn't draw the comet that night because it was so cold and windy.  I did the drawing from memory a couple of days ago.  I did the drawing on the left with an ordinary No. 2 pencil on drawing paper.  I also used something called a "blending tortillion."  It is a thing that looks like a short pencil, made from tightly wrapped heavy paper.  You use it so smear parts of the pencil drawing, to get really delicate tones. So the original drawing is on the left.  I photographed that drawing and then in Photoshop, "inverted" the tones, so that's what you see on the right, which more closely resembles what I saw in the eyepiece.  So now you have a sense of what this comet, named C2022 E3 ZTF, looks like.

 

A Ring Around the Moon!

There was a note and a photograph on the astronomy club mailing list that one of the members posted  showing a ring around the moon.  So I grabbed my camera and went outside, and there was the ring!  Other members said it was cloudy and they couldn't see it.  This ring is called a 22 degree halo.  It is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that forms as sunlight or moonlight is refracted by millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere as clouds.  Halos appear when the sky is covered by thin cirrus, or cirrostratus clouds that often come a few days before a large storm front. That was pretty technical, for something so beautiful and poetic as this.

 

A Sky Full of Clouds

So you remember my photographs of the ice on the railings on the Sea Cliff Boardwalk?  Well, it was much colder last night and the wind was stronger.  So I drove back there after lunch wondering what I would find, expecting a lot more ice.  I was stunned!  Not one speck of ice on any of the railings!  I have absolutely no idea what happened.  It was well below freezing and there were hight winds all night, so I expected to see more ice, but certainly not no ice!  A mystery.  But my trip was not wasted.  I saw this magnificent scene from 40 feet away from where I shot yesterday's photographs.  Wow...  Definitely worth the trip.

 

Temperature 22 degrees, Winds 32 MPH Gusting to 42 MPH!

It was FREEZING today and the wind was howling!  I went to the store for some things, and on the way home decided to drive by Sea Cliff Beach, which faces north toward Long Island Sound.  So the wind was howling from the northwest, and blowing waves toward the beach.  Well, it was so cold last night and today that apparently the salt spray was blown up onto this railing along the boardwalk and today the railing was covered with icicles for about 30 feet, and the benches and boardwalk were also iced over!

It made for a spectacular scene!  I have never seen anything quite like this!

The first photograph I took was this view out over Long Island Sound toward New Rochelle, NY  When I got out of my car with my camera, I couldn't find any gloves, and I could only stay photographing for less than a minute before my hands were too cold.  For the ice on the railings photographs, I had found gloves so I could spend more time composing photographs.

This is a different part of the railing.  I shoot a lot of things and then end up rejecting some photographs.  This looks interesting at first but it is not as beautiful as the images where I am looking up at the blue sky.

 

That Sam, He's So Funny

Kathy bought a new wok.  It is smaller and has a handle on it.  It was all shiny metal and the instructions explain how to season it by coating the inside of the wok with an oil like canola oil, and then heating the wok on the stove until the oil smokes.  Then you let it cool down and do the same thing again.  When she was done, I thought I would take a photograph of the colors in the seasoned wok.  So I put it on the floor to photograph it, and in the middle of that, who sticks his head into the picture but Sammy the cat!  He sniffed around for a while, and I cannot imagine why.  A cat who likes burned canola oil?  One more mystery in the life of cats!

 

Do You See a Comet?

First thing, please click on this photograph to enlarge it.  It is a photograph of part of the night sky and you will see numerous stars when you enlarge the photo.  Now, look and see if you can see a fuzzy, blurry whitish odd shaped grayish comet-looking thing?  You don't see that?  Neither do I and that is a disappointment.  A small group of us went looking for the comet tonight out at the Vanderbilt Museum.  It was COLD - 28 degrees, and it was windy too - from 10 to 15 MPH winds.  The good news is that I was able to find the comet in my 8" diameter telescope, and I was able to show it to half a dozen people who wanted to see it.  So I did see it.  But I didn't manage to photograph it.  It was in the sky that didn't have any really bright stars as a reference.  So I did a series of photos where I took one photo then moved the camera to the left and took another and so on, a couple of times, but I was disappointed, when I got home, to discover the comet was not in any of the photos.  Oh well, at least I saw it with my own eyes through my telescope.  Such is the life of a comet hunter.