Over the Fence

I made a change in equipment this year when I went to the Memorial Day Parade.  Usually I just brought one camera and one zoom lens, a 24mm to 70mm zoom.  This year I brought a second camera with just one lens on it, a Canon with a 50mm to 250mm lens, which, because this camera has a smaller sensor, it translates to an 80mm to 400mm focal length.  Which means I can really reach out to the distance to get close images from far away.  I did that here. They didn't even know I was there.  I loved this man leaning his fence talking to passersby.  I took a bunch of photos, and even though the conversation was friendly he never smiled, which is too bad.

 

Bobby and I

This is my friend Bob Keeler and we worked together at Newsday.  We worked together on the St. Brigid's Church story, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.  He is a brilliant reporter and a great writer!  Once we both retired we always got together for dinner every few months, but then Covid came along.  We have had dinner since Covid but it has been quite a while since our last dinner.  Life has a way of getting in the way.  So we had dinner tonight and spent a lot of time just catching up.  He has just finished a new book and it has gone to the publisher and is going through the editing process.  It was so good to "break bread" together after such a long time. I saw this great quote, author unknown about friendship: "We’ve been friends for so long I can’t remember which one of us is the bad influence.."

 

Memorial Day, 2023

                                                

As I do every year, I went to this year's Sea Cliff Memorial Day Parade.  I took lots of photographs but when it was time to edit, I found that the most interesting photographs were the people who were waiting for the parade, and then watching it as the parade came by.  Most of these don't need captions but a few do.  I loved this couple waiting for the parade.  I love the man's hat, his magnificent beard, and his wonderful walking stick!

                                        

                    

                                        

                    

                   

                   

The Sea Cliff Fire Department has quite a presence at the parade.  About half way through their route, they stop at the firehouse where there is a memorial for the volunteer firemen who have passed away.  Here the chief, I believe it is, watches as an invocation is given.

             

This volunteer was marching with his son, and still managed to salute while holding on to his son during the ceremonies at the firehouse.

               

I just love this sun dappled scene as the parade nears Clifton Park where there will be a ceremony and speeches and remembering those members of the military who gave their lives in wars, going back to the Spanish American War.

                

                

This photograph is a favorite.  Three children got to read their essays about what Memorial Day Means.  This last speaker had the wind nearly blow the pages of her speech away!  Without a second thought, the principal of the school jumped in and held the pages down while she crouched next to the the student while the student read her essay!  Quick thinking and what a wonderful thing the Principal did for this young girl!

In Advance of Memorial Day

When I drove by this church in Sea Cliff at the beginning of the week, I was amazed to see all these American flags on the front lawn.  I was puzzled at first, and then I remembered that Memorial day was only a week away.  I found this really beautiful to see, the brilliant colors in the bright sunshine.  I was in a bit of a hurry when photographing and I think when I was done and walked away, that maybe there were pieces of paper connected to the top of each flag, but I what is not customary for me, I walked away without investigating.  But I will be going to the parade and ceremony tomorrow and I will pass this on foot on the way home, and I will look more closely.

 

"Attention is the Beginning of Devotion"

Ok so this is a different kind of blog post.  After posting my blog about feathers and paying attention last night, when I woke this morning, I read a note that came in an email from The Atlantic magazine.  So here it is.  I was so moved by the discussion of the work of a famous woman poet whose work I don't know, but I am going to start reading!  The article:

“Attention is the beginning of devotion,” the poet Mary Oliver wrote in her final collection of essays. In 2021, the poet Leila Chatti took up Oliver’s words, reflecting on the challenge of them: “All day, the world makes its demands. There’s so much of it, world / begging to be noticed.” For those of us working to slow down, to smell the roses, to look one another in the eyes rather than in the iMessage bubbles, Oliver is a perfect guide. As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote in 2019, “It was not Mary Oliver’s intent to critique this new world—and it’s hard to imagine she even owned a flip phone—but her poetry captures its spiritual costs.”

The world makes its demands, and distraction has both personal costs and societal ones. My colleague Megan Garber has smartly noted how an overload of information and a fracturing of attention makes people, and Americans in particular, less equipped to meet the challenges of the moment. “Today’s news moves as a maelstrom of information at once trifling and historic, petty and grave, cajoling, demanding, funny, horrifying, uplifting, embarrassing, fleeting, loud—so much of it, at so many scales,” she wrote  in 2021.

A lack of attention is dangerous. But we might also spend time thinking about the beauty of its presence, what attention gives back to those who pay it. I’ll leave you with a few more of Oliver’s words: “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

---Isabel Fattal, Senior Editor at The Atlantic

 

The Miracle of a Feather

I found this small feather lying in the driveway.  I noticed it because it was so small and delicate and smooth that it stood out on the blacktop driveway.  The feather itself is only 2 1/2 inches long.  I picked it up and was astounded at the delicacy of it.  Something so small, so complex and so delicate.  I have seen feathers before but this one just made me stop and look carefully.

Here is a close-up of the tip of the feather.  Maybe I am imagining this, but I think I read that no two feathers on a bird are the same!  The left wing feathers, for instance will be different than the right wing feathers, and on the wing, for instance, as you move out from body to tip, each feather is slightly different!  I am sure that is true.  So the engineering of these is miraculous, they are so light and yet so strong.  It made my day to stop and examine and think about this marvelous thing.

 

Observing the Moon

Our club had an outreach event at a school called "The Long Island School for the Gifted" tonight.  We had a great turnout, I think there were about 40 people who came to look at the moon which was wonderful.  I gave a 15 minute talk to the students and parents in the school where I told them what to expect to see when looking at the moon through a telescope.  There were four of us from the club who set up our telescopes for everyone to look through.  Both parents and children were astounded when seeing the moon, it is such a beautiful and desolate place as seen through the telescope.  What is amazing about this photograph is that it was so dark I could hardly see the people.  I set the ISO which is like the speed of the film, and I set it a 12,800!  Normally my camera film speed is set at 400. And ths photograph looks as if it was taken in daylight, but it was much darker than that.

 

That is Some Airplane!

I loose points for this post!  I photographed it through a window because I am not allowed on the ramp without a flight instructor.  Later, when we were out on the ramp and done flying, I should have used my camera to photograph it without glass and reflections in the way!  Epic Fail!  But this is an astounding aircraft.  It is a Cessna 208 "Caravan" on amphibious floats, meaning it can land on water or land.  And this is a turboprop aircraft.  That jet engine turning that propeller has a LOT of power.  I wish there was someone standing near the aircraft so you could see how huge it really is.  I would love to see this aircraft take off, on either land or water, but water would be more spectacular!

 

The Crescent Moon and Venus!

I received a text last night from a photographer friend and she said "Have you seen the crescent Moon and Venus?  It is all orange!"  So I went outside and was able to see the pair through trees and some electrical wires, because it was down low on the horizon.  It was a ghostly orange because of the thin clouds.  So there was no way I could photograph that.  But I was ready tonight and started looking for the crescent Moon before it was fully dark.  So when it did get darker, this is the photograph I got.  I have to say, that what really mattered was seeing the pair with the unaided eye.  What a magnificent sight it was, and a photograph can't do the experience justice.

 

That Silly Cat!

The cats are endlessly fascinating!  This is Sam.  There is nothing in that plastic container, but I know why he stuck his head into it.  We keep some dry cat food in that container and give them a little bit of it to them after their meals of canned cat food.  So the container is empty and apparently it fell on the floor and he smelled what had been in there, so in he goes!  So silly looking! Made my day to see this!

 

The Sculpture!

This apple tree has been in the front yard of my brother-in-law's home since it was built.  After many years it started dying off, one branch at a time.  I had forgotten about it until our visit this weekend, but when I saw it, I thought it looked like some kind of modern sculpture!  Neil said to me he was thinking of getting a saw and cutting it down, and I said "No!  It is a great piece of sculpture!"  So he has decided to leave it, and so I photographed it today, just in case it happens to fall over in a windstorm some day soon.

 

3 Hours and 100 Miles in the Driving Rain

Today we drove up to Wallingford, Connecticut to visit my brother-in-law and his two daughters.  It was Neil's birthday today and we are here to celebrate!  But what a trip up!  It was pouring rain for the entire three hour trip.  Our trip usually takes only two hours in good weather and no traffic.  This is a photograph of descending the long hill approaching the West Rock Tunnel.  So it was a slog of a drive, but it is great being here to celebrate with Neil and family!

 

The New Streetlights

A month or so ago, a notice appeared in the village bulletin that new streetlights had been selected and were going to be installed.  They would be LED lights, which use less power AND they have the ability for each one to have its brightness changed if necessary, from some central control place.  So I  guessed they would be of the latest style which is called "full cutoff" which means the light fixture will only allow the light to shine straight down on the street, not sideways or up in the sky thus not wasting light in directions it is not needed, and thus reducing light pollution.  So imagine my disappointment when we got our new light and it is not shielded!  Our old mercury vapor light was a glass hemisphere and the light went everywhere, including into our living room!  I don't get it - EVERYONE now knows that all lights should be shielded!  Notice how the light is lighting up our front lawn!  To what purpose?

And this shows how the light is glaring to drivers - from this distance away, the light should not be shining in the driver's eyes, thus interfering with their vision at night.  This is beyond stupid!  What kind of consultants or lighting company doesn't know enough not to use shielded lights!  And notice how the front of our house is lit up as well!  I am really hacked off and so I will go talk to the village manager, and see if they can add a shield to keep the light out of our windows, and to keep our lawn dark so I can do astronomy without the interference of the lights!

 

Another Demolition

This is another demolition at what was once the Long Island Lighting Company generating station.  Many of you will remember my chronicling the demolition of that huge plant over what must have taken a year.  This much smaller structure is across the street from where the generating station was.  So this is what is called a "Substation" and it was a beautifully constructed brick building of perhaps 5 or 6 stories.  So the main structure was built around those heavy black I-beams you see at the top of the photograph.  To the left of that are thinner beams which are behind the main structure.  I think they may still be in use - there are all kinds of transformers and high voltage lines on huge insulators within that structure.  But I have no idea what was once inside the brick building.  They had removed everything before they began demolition.  And I photographed this in infra-red because there are those trees covering up parts of the building, and the infra-red helps separate the tree from the buildings.

 

The Faithful Kitty

I have been in the living room and heard this kitty, Grace, mewing in the back room.  So when I go to investigate, I find that Kathy has probably gone outside to do some yard work and Grace misses her and will sit there with tiny mewing sounds until Kathy comes back in the house!  On this day, Kathy was on the phone to her friend Trauti and so close to Grace, but because she was separated by the door, Grace was mewing.  Kathy has her iPhone ear buds in and that's how she can be on the phone but not visibly so.

 

Another Abstraction

So this is fun.  What do you think this is a photograph of?  It's an interesting pattern, right?  Maybe it looks like some mountain ranges?  So click on the photograph and see if the extra detail that is revealed will give you a clue at all.  I think in the larger size you will get some useful information.  Wait, the white stuff looks like soap suds, I think.  But what would make those overlapping patterns?  Give up?  For Mother's Day Kathy wanted to take all the furniture off the porch, and then take the rug up, and then wash the porch floor and get all the yellow pollen off.  So I used a car washing brush about 8 inches wide on the end of a handle and as I moved the brush back and forth and side to side, these were the patterns created.  It took me about 3 seconds to realize that this would make a really interesting photograph!

 

A Colorful Sky

Tomorrow is Dunkin' Donuts Day!  When I ran across this photograph in my library I remembered that I took this a week or two ago on another of our Dunkin' days.  It was raining and as I left the car to go inside and get the goodies, I happened to look down, and saw this oil slick on the macadam parking lot.  I guess there was a lot of oil on the pavement to give such bright colors.  The original image was relatively low contrast so I did increase the contrast, but I did not increase the saturation.  These colors seen by my eye were brilliant!

 

THIS Year Our Lawn Will be PERFECT!

 

Our lawn is looking really good this year!  THIS year our lawn will be PERFECT!  Haw, haw, haw, haw!  It always looks good at this time of year, but the minute the weather turns warm, it starts getting burned and by August half the lawn is brown!  Why, then, do I plant new grass seed every spring and water it and fertilize if it is just another fool's errand.  Because hope springs eternal.  "Maybe THIS will be the year that we have, not a perfect lawn, but a decent one."  The good news, and I should post a photograph of the lawn seen from the street - the grass is rich and thick and out lawn would qualify for a photo of it being on a package of Scott's grass seed!

Brilliant Venus Makes a Show

Tonight I went to an astronomy outreach event put on by another astronomy club.  I went because I have been asked to do a similar program in the fall, and I wanted to meet the students and see what and how the other club was going to present.  It was a nice evening, but because it was cloudy the whole program was indoors, for an hour and a half.  When the speaker was done, we had some refreshments and headed outdoors to discover the sky was mostly clear.  And there was a brilliant Venus in the dusk sky. What makes this photograph is the tree in the foreground.  I have no idea what kind of tree it is, but the silhouette of this particular tree against the sky is the most interesting thing in the photo, and Venus is frosting on the cake!

 

Even MORE Flowers...

I have been given an embarrassment of riches, with all the flowers and bushes in bloom at this time!  It sure beats overcast February and March days when I am really scrambling to find something interesting to photograph!  I bought a "macro" lens for the SONY a7 and it can focus so close that I can copy just a postage stamp and it will fill the frame!  Only thing is, when I get really close, the "depth of field" meaning how sharp the different parts of the image are from front to back, is not that great. So in extreme close ups parts of the image will be out of focus, as in this photograph of the Azalea blossom.  I still like this impressionistic image.

 

More Flower Photographs

Same place, almost but different time.  I take you back to my riding up my hill at the end of my bike ride.  Today I rode by the flowers I photographed the other day, but didn't like the image because it was in the contrasty light of the bright sun.  Today on the way up, I found a different garden, only 2 houses below us, and this garden was in the shade.  Look how much nicer it is when the garden is in soft light and you can see details and colors much better.  And what a beautiful garden design this is!

Joan thought the flowers I photographed the other day were possibly bluebells.  Perhaps these are as well, but just a different variety.  But I will let all of my readers tell me what I photographed THIS time!  Once again, in the soft light we can see so much more detail in each of the blossoms.  I still cannot imagine why I photographed those other flowers in the sun!  I know better than that!  Please, be SURE and click on each of these photographs - they are beautiful when enlarged!

 

A Beautiful Evening for Flying!

The CFI (Certified Flying Instructor) that I have been flying with since the beginning has taken some time off to get some training in a turboprop aircraft in hopes of flying for a charter aircraft company, which is a huge step up the ladder for a pilot hopefully on the way to an airline career!  So tonight I started with another instructor who I had done some ground school with, and who I really liked as well. Because this was a last minute switch, I could only get him from 5 PM until 8PM tonight.  But what a beautiful evening!  Climbing out from Mac Arthur Airport, as we approached Long Island Sound, I said to him: "Can you take the airplane, please?"  And he responded "Sure, are you OK?"  "Oh yeah, I just want to take some photographs!"  So this is the first one, with a hazy sun behind the clouds and reflecting off the water.

Only a short while later, this was the second scene worth photographing!  The bright sun became a hazy red ball because of the clouds and the evening haze.  How lucky could a photographer be to get both of these photographs on a single evening, from 2000 feet!  What an amazingly beautiful evening!

 

The Ferns Emerge

Every Spring I love to watch the ferns emerge.  First the little curled fiddleheads come up out of the leaves on the front hill then they start upward and unroll.  So I missed that part this year. But here a single fern makes its way up through all the other things growing on the front bank with the ferns.  Usually I shoot the ferns against the sky, but I love the feeling that this looks as if it is in a forest.  I used my 200mm telephoto lens so only the fern is sharp and the rest of the things are out of focus which I like.

 

A Flower Mystery

Ok, true confession here - EVERY flower is a mystery to me!  I was at the end of my bike ride, and heading up Laurel Avenue to home when I rode by these flowers on the side of the road.  Everything was completely green except for these blossoms and I really liked that.  I never have a camera with me on my rides, so I did this photograph with my iPhone.  I think maybe it looked better in person than it does in the photograph.  The problem is the high contrast from the bright sun.

Of course I have no idea what flowers these are, so I cropped into the large image so I can show you a close up of the blossoms.  And if you click on this image you will see even a closer view.  I would love to know what flower this is.  They are growing wild, but maybe they fame from someone's garden.

 

Portrait of the Photographer in Ivy

While I was poking around in the ferns and the ivy taking photographs, I happened to see my shadow on the ferns, cast by the late afternoon sun.  I think it was only my head, shoulders and the upraised arm holding the camera.  So I took a shot and liked the effect, and then backed up to include more of myself.  When I got to this spot I took several photographs, thinking that I had something here.  It's interesting, and something different.

 

Tiny Blue Ferns

Oh man, he's using that infrared camera again!  Can you make him stop please:   :-)  I decided to photograph some of the ferns that are scattered under the Japanese maple tree, and thought that they would look really interesting if I did the photographs in infrared.  So here you are!  These ferns are only about nine inches tall and I thought that the two of them were beautiful together, silhouetted against the dark ground.  The IR camera rendered this infrared image in a bluish tint, and I tried converting the photograph to black and white, and it lost something.  So I have left it blue, and that reminds me of a 19th century artist named Anna Adkins, who published the first book of photographs.  She made cyanotype images of plants, and the images looked like this.  Click here to see a story about her:  

Wow! This Looks Complicated...

Well, yes, in fact, it IS complicated!  This is the panel of the aircraft I am flying in my training.  It is a Cessna 172 R.  Those circles to the left are, on the left, from the top, Altimeter, Vertical Speed, Tachometer.  And the two circles to the right of those are indicators for the radios, are called CDI's - "Course Deviation Indicators."  Then in the middle is the "radio stack" with the audio panel at top, and then a Garmin GNX 375 WAAS GPS Navigator with ADS-B "Out"/"In" Transponder.  Whew, that's a mouthful.  So I am familiar with the other radios which have been in other aircraft I have flown, but the Garmin is a whole other animal!

It is kind of a jack of all trades, in that it is a GPS but it is also the Transponder and it has a LOT of functions.  I have no idea how it works just yet.  It is so complicated, that I have downloaded a simulator of this unit for my iPad, so I can practice with it on the ground before getting in the airplane.  I think it will be a while before I feel comfortable with all that it can do.  But that's the fun of doing all this training!

 

Magic Land

So once again, I took my infrared camera out for a stroll, to see what I could find.  Of course all of you will recognize one of my favorite scenes, which is the point down at Tappan Beach.  I just love how the IR camera creates "magic" when it takes a regular scene and makes it something completely different.  There is an old saying that photographers speak of:  "If you can't be creative, then use tricks!"

 

Clouds Earlier the Same Day

Here are three more photographs of the day with beautiful clouds.  You saw the last photo of the day, which I posted yesterday.  This photo was the first inkling that there might be some interesting photographs to be had.  I took this on Dunkin' day down at the beach.  Kind of looks like the end of the world.

About an hour later I came by the harbor again and things were still looking ominous.  Such powerful looking clouds, spanning the harbor.

Then I backed up and included the railing.  I liked the straight, bright railing as an accent to the random shapes of the clouds.  This was a day to be remembered for all of us cloud lovers!

 

The Beauty of the Sky

Today was a stunning day for cloud watching!  There were these amazing cumulus clouds coming and going overhead almost all day long.  I started photographing them at the beach on our Dunkin' day and then later in the day we went to a nearby nursery and when I got out of the car I saw this scene!  I am blown away by the beauty and subtlety of all the delicate gray tones in the clouds, and this IS a color photograph!

 

There's a House In Here

When you run out of creativity, then you need to use tricks.  So it was time for me to get out my infrared converted camera.  I didn't have to go far for this photograph.  It is a photograph of our neighbor's house, as seen from our bedroom.  The trees between us have grown thicker and thicker until we can barely see her house.  But in infrared this scene has a much different sense than a normal rendition would have.  I love that you can barely tell there is a house in there!