I Regret to Inform You...

This is a battery powered skeleton that we bought at Home Depot several years ago, and at Halloween it hangs from the closet door in the front hall.  When you squeeze the button on one of the hands, it's mouth starts moving and it says in a deep voice: "Don't be afraid..." and it's eyes light up bright red.  We love this thing!  I probably photographed it before for the blog.  But this Halloween I had to hang it on the front porch, where I lit it with a small spotlight I have for photography.  Why did I do this?  I regret to inform you, that after carving a Jack O' Lantern every single year since we have had this house, this year there was none!  And that is sad.  What happened is that we bought two pumpkins several weeks ago and they have been sitting on the back porch  When I went to carve one of them today I discovered they were all soft around the top!  So there was really no way I could start cutting it open.  So I put the soft pumpkin on it's platform on the front porch rail, where it could be seen, but Halloween was just not the same with out a Jack O' Lantern.  And the skeleton was hung outside for the night.

 

The Grape Arbor Next Door

I happened to look out our kitchen window today while washing my hands before breakfast.  My bagel was in the toaster oven and I hesitated.  I wanted to take a photograph of the grape arbor next door because the fog separated it from the background, making the darker vines and posts stand out more than usual.  So I turned off the toaster oven, knowing my bagel would be cold when I was done.  So I had to first take everything off the window ledge, and then I had to wash the window on the inside to clean it perfectly, then I got my camera and took the photograph through the clean window.  I love the curves in the vines and I thing that is the subject of the photograph.  I didn't mind a cold bagel for this photograph.

 

Riding in the Rain

OK, DON'T PANIC.  Yes I did a few shots in the rain as we crossed the Q bridge in New Haven.  BUT...   I held my camera up on the dashboard of the car, and pointed the camera forward, and clicked one image after another, without looking at what the camera was seeing.  I got lucky and got this one shot.  I was ALWAYS looking at traffic and the road.  We left Massachusetts at about 10 AM this morning and it was just starting to sprinkle.  The rain increased and was light to moderate all the way home.  Given that it was late afternoon on Sunday there was a lot of traffic from New Haven home.  But the trip was uneventful if a bit long.  Home safe and sound.

 

The Sun in the Woods

Dick's wife Trauti is an amazing gardener!  She and Dick built a wonderful garden when their house was new, just outside their front door, with brick walks around the plants and a picket fence surrounding the garden.  Then they built a small pond just behind the back deck at the rear of the house and that is an amazing and beautiful thing to see.  I was looking in the woods just behind the house and found this wonderful metal sun hanging on a tree that is even better because it is all rusty!  What an amazing sense she has about what objects are interesting to look at.  I love this metal sun!

 

A Life in Photography

This is my great friend Dick Benjamin and we are visiting he and his wife in Rhode Island this weekend.  We have known each other for 57 years!  We met after both of us were hired at the Rochester Times Union back in 1966.  We, and our familie.s have been friends ever since.  He moved on to Newsday and then I followed him.  Then he moved on to a career at the Providence Journal, for 27 years, in his home state.  I stayed at Newsday.  Dick is a terrific photographer, one of the best.  He has an exhibit of his photographs in Providence and we went there today.  What astounded me were his earliest black and white prints, seen behind him.  When he was in college at Brown University he was taking photographs, and the photographs are beautifully seen and composed, and at such an early age.  I was envious of this work!  I have thought of Dick as a really good landscape photographer, and he is that, but these early black and white images of people are simply astounding.  In the exhibit are also large color prints of the landscapes and seascapes of Rhode Island, and they are amazing as well.  You can see his work here: Richard Benjamin

 

The Photo Mission

I confess to having an ulterior motive for flying across the sound to Connecticut.  I flew directly to Guilford.  That is where the Spencer family has had a farm for over a hundred years.  When my three sisters and I were young, each of us would get to spend a week at our grandparent's farm in Guilford.  I LOVED being at the farm and that gave me a feeling for farms and fields and life there, something that has stayed with me all my life.  When I was little, my grandfather had cows and would milk them when he came home from his office job in New Haven.  When I would read Robert Frost, I would think of my experiences on the farm as a young boy.  I think I was perhaps 8 to 10 years old when I stayed there each summer, and I met a friend who lived about two tenths of a mile away.  We would get lunches in brown bags, and take our bicycles and ride down to Indian Cove, a tiny beach that I thought must be at least five miles away, but in reality, when I measured it a couple of weeks ago, it was only two miles!  So I posted a photograph of the beach at Indian Cove, from the ground on October 12.  But I wanted to see it from the air because it is such an unusual geological formation.  Strangely, I had never flown over Guilford and the farm ever before, in all my flying years.  So it was a joy to see how interesting it is, this small beach surrounded by rocks. 

And then I was off to look for "Westside" the name of the farm.  The saltbox house was built around 1700.  It came into the family when Daniel Reeves Spencer bought it at some point.  He was born on April 5, 1855.  No telling when he bought the farm.  He was my great grandfather.  Then my Grandfather inherited the farm and he passed it on to my father and his brother, my uncle Norm.  My father sold his share for one dollar, because my Aunt June and Uncle Norm lived with my grandfather and grandmother, and Norm did all the maintenance work on the house for years.  At some point the farm was sold.  The person who bought it sold the fields that came with the farm, and residential homes were built on the fields.  Before the houses were built, you could sit on the side lawn and look across the field that came up to the house, called "the home lot" and see all the way down to the marshland and almost to Long Island Sound.  When the homes were built a line of trees was put up and you can only see for fifty feet!  What a loss. In this photograph, the farm is in the center of the picture.  The house is light yellow over by the trees with the orange leaves on the ground.  Then to the right there is a garage, and then a thin barn and finally the "street barn" which fortunately is being restored by the present owners, who my cousin tells me love the house and the barns dearly.  And I have finally seen it from the air!  Mission accomplished!

And to complete my story, here is a page from a book published in 1937 titled "Old Guilford."  The text is drawn by hand!  And as you can see the sketch is so beautifully done.  So read what is written about the "The Spencer Place" eighty six years ago!  

 

Going Places!

Most of my recent flying for the past couple of months has consisted of just flying around the airport, doing takeoffs and landings and trying to me more precise in my flying.  A necessary skill, obviously but I decided that it was time to GO SOMEPLACE, because that's what I always used the airplane for in all my years of flying.  That, and of course, doing aerial photographs.  So I just decided that my instructor and I should fly across Long Island Sound to Connecticut and I brought my camera to take some aerial photographs of my home state!  On the way back to Long Island, this is a view I saw and had to take because of how beautiful it was.  THIS is why I fly airplanes!

 

Observing the Moon for the First Time

Our astronomy club had an outreach program at a high school  about half an hour away.  I think there were seven of us with telescopes and a good crowd of teachers, and parents and children.  It is always a joy to see people observe the moon for the first time.  I loved seeing the patience of this mom and her young son, as she worked to make sure that he was able to see the moon.  It is difficult for young children to grasp the idea, in the dark, of centering one of their eyes over the eyepiece in order to see objects through the telescope.  You really need to position your eye within 1/4" of the exact center of the eyepiece.  But with patience, he did see the moon.  I love the tenderness with which the mom holds her young child and the concentration she is using to position him.  When he had seen the moon, then she took her turn and was amazed by what she saw.  That's what makes these events so wonderful for me, that I can be the one to show the moon to someone, through a telescope, for the first time!

 

The End of the Night Sky as we Know it!

"The end of the night sky as we know it."  Yeah, that sounds overwrought, doesn't it.  But it is not.  Not at all.  We had an outreach tonight at a nearby high school and there was a good turnout to look at the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn.  At about 7:15 there was a pass of the most recent launch payload of Starlink satellites (about two dozen) that took a west-to-southeast track across the sky between roughly 7:16 and 7:19 p.m. EDT.  One of the women saw the "train" of 24 satellites and hollered out and pointed at it. The satellites were bright at magnitude +2.6.  Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by American aerospace company SpaceX,  providing coverage to over 60 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023.  SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. As of August 2023, it consists of over 5,000 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit, which communicate with designated ground transceivers. Nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, 

This is what the train looked like when we first saw the 24 satellites.  They were climbing up from the west and then began to descend to the southeast, after passing nearly overhead.

Astronomers have raised concerns about the effect the constellation may have on ground-based astronomy, and how the satellites will add to an already congested orbital environment. SpaceX has attempted to mitigate astronometric interference concerns with measures to reduce the satellites' brightness during operation.  However there are numerous examples of long exposure photographs of the night sky, ruined when 24 streaks run through the middle of the image.  As I first said, the end of the night sky as we know it!

Here is a NASA image of the Orion Nebula, ruined by the passage of Starlink Satellites.

 

Short Final to 22 Left

After we picked up Liz at JFK we drove home north on the Cross Island Parkway headed up to the Long Island Expressway.  This aircraft is on final approach to runway 22 left and is low because it is only 2 miles from landing.  There is a really cool thing that happens in some kinds of weather.  When the wind is from the south, JFK is landing aircraft on this runway and the thing is that the final approach path is right above the Cross Island Parkway for about 2 miles.  What is really cool is when the cloud ceiling is really low, you are driving north on the parkway, and suddenly a aircraft on final approach which is descending to land suddenly comes out of the clouds just above the parkway.  That is awesome! And as you can see it is impressive even on a clear day!

 

Fun With Photography!

I loved working with models for fashion photography. I was terrified the first time I had a big four day fall fashion shoot. Edie Smith, the producer of the shoot would go to the shows, pick the clothing and the accessories and it would be shipped to our site.  She would dress the models and then it was up to me to find a spot at our location and light it.  So I was terrified that the professional models would know that I had never done this kind of work before.  We were shooting at a modern college with all kinds of interesting concrete structures.  So I would ask the model if she could go over to a particular spot for a shot.  I was not sure how to suggest a pose to her but I didn't know how.  So I remember saying "Is there something you could do here?"  And WHAM! She struck an amazing pose!  Then after shooting that one, I asked if she could do something else, and "WHAM" another great pose!  So I learned that when working with professional models, we were a team, we worked together and we each had our own skills, and when we worked together, we could create great photographs!  So we had fun, too.  Every once in a while we would do something funny, just for laughs.  We were working on the roof of a building in Manhattan, and after we were done I saw that door and asked if we could a fun photo and both of the models agreed. So I put the camera on a tripod and did this pose and Edie snapped the shutter, then we all laughed at how silly this was!  Oh, I forgot to say you are seeing this photograph because I found the old color negative when cleaning out the darkroom, and then used my Nikon film scanner to make this positive digital image.

 

Take Your Pick

This is a photograph that I did back in the 1980's I think it was.  These are the ships "Hesper" and the "Luther Little," two trade route schooners that were left abandoned in Wiscasset, Maine. Both ships were built in Massachusetts in the 1910s, and wound up under one owner by 1932. Despite efforts to make use of the two schooners, this last owner went bankrupt and died not long afterwards. Both ships were essentially abandoned where their owner had left them in Wiscasset where they disintegrated over time. Despite efforts to save the ships as tourist attractions, both were demolished in 1998 having been finally reduced to piles of debris by the elements.  I photographed them every time I was in Maine and went through Wiscasset.  All my other photographs were in black and white, but this photograph, the last, is in color.  So I made some note cards with this photograph just to have around.  Then I converted the photograph to black and white to see what it would look like.  Here it is, below.  So which version of the photograph do you like?  The prize for all of you winners will be one of my note cards.  Just tell me which photograph you like best.

For those of you who find the story of these historic schooners interesting, you might really enjoy reading more about them.  Go to Wikipedia and look for "Hesper and Luther Little."

 

A Quiz!

When we were leaving the Nassau County Museum of Fine Arts, we walked by these bushes and these brilliant purple berries stopped us in our tracks.  The bushes actually didn't look like they were in great shape, actually, but of course it is mid-october so maybe that's why why they didn't look that healthy.  In any case, these are stunning to see in person!  And they make for an interesting photograph, I think.  So, "The Quiz?"  Who can tell me the name of these bushes?  The first one will win a prize, seriously.  It won't be worth all that much, but I think you would really enjoy it when you see it.  Who will be first?

 

Uhhh... Do You Want to go Flying Today?

Uhhh... Maybe not...  The weather today looked great for flying.  It was cloudy, but the clouds were at 8,000 feet all over Long Island and over in Connecticut.  So I thought I had a sure thing.  But on the way out to the airport, there were these really dark, smaller clouds that were much lower.  This view is looking west from Brookhaven Airport, which is east of Long Island MacArthur where I first started my flying.  I thought maybe we could stay "in the pattern" at the airport and just fly touch and goes, but there were rain showers to the east which were developing and expanding  None of that was in the forecast from the afternoon into the evening.  So no flying for me today, sad to say.  But you have to admit that these clouds are really beautiful.

 

A Landmark

This is an older photograph of a building that was once part of the Sea Cliff Water Company, and it is located at the bottom of our street.  It was built as one of two pumping stations in 1940 and was designed to look like a residence to complement the elegant homes that surrounded it.  These pumping stations played a pivotal role in the village’s transition from a seasonal resort to a year-round residential community.  The water company was privately owned and during a recent sale, the company allowed the village to buy this building and property.  The village is studying what the building can be used for but the hope is that it will eventually be used for community events.  The building had deteriorated some while it was unused.  The good news is that restoration has begun!  It was given landmark status back in 2019 which is great news.  I will keep you up to date on the restoration work as it progresses!

 

30 Year Anniversary

Thirty years ago I remember my friend Tony coming to one of our astronomy club meetings and saying he didn't know what he was going to do.  The company he worked for went out of business and he didn't know what to do.  What he did do, was open his own optical coating company 30 years ago and he has done really well with it.  He is a brilliant guy and has built a number of vacuum coating machines by himself.  He does work for astronomical observatories and a lens he coated is on one of the Mars rovers! So on Saturday he held an anniversary gathering inviting friends and people he does business with.  We had lunch and then he had a number of amazing speakers during the afternoon.

What was wonderful was that Tony's mother was there and his daughter and grand daughter.  Tony's mom and dad supported him as a teenager when he first got interested in astronomy, and first started building telescopes.

One of the speakers was the head of the astronomy department at one of the local colleges and she talked about her research.

Another speaker, at left, is with a company that is making new virtual reality glasses.  Here he talks about them as one of the guests wears a pair of the glasses to see what they are like.

This woman is an engineer at Brookhaven National Lab and talked is about her work involving Quantum Mechanics, and quantum computing and quantum networking.  This talk made my head spin but was really informative. What a day!  What a way to celebrate 30 years in business.

 

Georgian Revival Architecture

While walking through the Nassau County Museum of Fine Arts, I always enjoy the architecture.  I was taking a photograph of this passage lined with windows and only then noticed that Kathy had stopped to look at something in one of the glass cases.  Perfect, a person in the photograph for scale!  In 1890, the land that eventually became the Nassau County Museum of Fine Arts was sold to former congressman Lloyd Bryce, who hired Ogden Codman, Jr. to build a Georgian Revival mansion on the high ground in the middle of the property, overlooking nearby Hempstead Harbor.  In 1919, the estate was sold  to Henry Clay Frick, the co-founder of U.S. Steel, for his son, Childs Frick. The architect Sir Charles Carrick Allom was commissioned to redesign the facade and much of the interior. The Fricks named their home "Clayton". Childs Frick, his wife Frances and their four children lived at Clayton for almost 50 years, until his death in 1965. The county bought the estate four years later and converted it into a museum.  In 1989, the museum became a private not-for-profit institution. It is a stunning mansion, and enjoying the mansion itself is an extra treat in addition to the exhibits there.

 

An Apple A Day...

So there's a curious thing I have found that happens.  I am always looking for things to photograph.  Interesting things, things that are different or that attract my attention for some reason.  But what's funny sometimes is that commonplace objects don't attract my attention.  Because they are simple things that I see every day.  But every now and then I will look at something ordinary and think, "wow, that looks really interesting."  And then I decide to photograph the thing.  Well, every night after I have a cup of coffee, I take an apple and cut it into quarters, then I cut out the seeds in the middle and cut each quarter in half and put all the pieces on a plate, and that's how I eat an apple a day.  I am from New England and grew up with "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."  As far as I am concerned, that has always worked for me!  So this is the day I stopped to look at one of the quartered apple sections.  I just found it fascinating!  The shape is interesting, and the delicate coloring, and I liked that this quarter of an apple had the stem with it, and the seeds in the center.  So much to look at carefully.  So here it is.  What do you think?

 

The Bronze Figure, and...

We went to the Nassau County Museum of Art today because there was an exhibition called "Modigliani and the Modern Portrait," which I wanted to see.  The exhibit included a number of Modigliani original paintings and then other portraits by other artists, some from his era, and others from more modern times.  There were other exhibits in the museum as well.  This bronze sculpture is called "Sitzendes Mädchen (Seated Girl),"  1913, by Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919).  I thought it was an interesting sculpture, and so I decided to photograph it.  Oh, and it appears, me, as well!

 

Seventy Years

I haven't been to this place in seventy years!  This is Indian Cove, in Guilford, Connecticut.  Another spot I saw when exploring last Sunday.  When my sisters and I were young children, we would each come out to visit for a week, our grandfather and grandmother at Buttonball Farm, on Three Mile Course.  When I was about ten years old, I met Danny Bebee, another young boy who lived a few houses away.  The two of us would have lunches in paper bags and we would have our swimsuits on and ride our bikes by ourselves down along a narrow twisting road to Indian Cove.  I had no idea of how far we rode - I thought it was probably a five mile trip, so it was interesting to drive it on Sunday and find that it was only two miles!  So it was wonderful to trace my route in the car and then arrive at this beautiful little beach.  So here's an interesting fact.  When you get to Indian Cove, there are three streets where all the houses are, and the streets are named Daniel Avenue, Reeves Avenue, and, wait for it, Spencer Avenue.  My great grandfather was named Daniel Reeves Spencer!  That's all I know.  I have no idea what he did in his life, but he did live at Buttonball Farm.  My father was born at the farm, and when I was ten, my grandmother and grandfather lived there as well as my Aunt June and Uncle Norm and my two cousins, Carole and John.  What an astounding thing to come back here seventy years later!  The beach remains as I remember it from way back then.

 

Heading Home

Late this afternoon we headed to JFK with Liz and Sarah, for their trip back to California and home. We had such a wonderful time with both of them and they had a great time as well.  They drove to Coney Island and had a fantastic time there one afternoon, and the next day they went to Manhattan and saw the new Grand Central Madison train station, and the historic original Grand Central, and then went to the High Line and then down to the village to have dinner with a friend.  And of course we all went to Connecticut to see relatives.  What a jam packed vacation for them!  So we are sad to see them go, but we had such a great time with them when they were here.  So hugs all around when dropping them off at the airport.

And one last shot of the two of them, just before going through the door to the terminal!

 

Drone Flight

This afternoon I decided to take my drone for a spin.  I thought I would photograph the side yard to show you that this year the lawn doesn't look like it was carpet bombed.  For some reason, it looks better than it ever has during the heat of summer.  Kathy came out to see what I was doing and so she was watching me fly the drone around.  So to demonstrate it, I said "watch this" and put the drone in maximum climb, up to it's altitude limit, by law, of 300 feet.  Then I turned it around so she could see that from that altitude it could see the harbor which is always pretty.  But I never expected to see these spectacular clouds!  What a stunning scene!  I have posted a larger than normal image, so please click on the image to see more detail.  You will see the little "spikes" of the buildings in Manhattan to the right of the clouds!

 

How to Build a Stone Wall

We had some time on our hands yesterday after dropping Sarah off, so I thought it would be fun to drive by the old family farm in Guilford.  That farm has been bought and sold a number of times and is no longer owned by any family members, sad to say.  But I wanted to drive by it and see how it looks.  The good news is that the hay barn is being completely repaired and already has a new roof, which is wonderful to see.  I stopped down the road just a bit from the house to photograph this stone wall, covered with lichen.  I believe that this stone wall was built by my grandfather.  It runs along the edge of the farm by the road.  Building a stone wall that will last is a complicated process, believe it or not.  You can't just pile the stones on any which way.  You have to carefully stack them, the larger ones and the smaller ones, if you want the wall to survive freezing and thawing weather for a hundred years.  This is such a beautiful thing to see, to me how all these stones are arranged.  They may look random, but they are not.

Here is a close up of just part of the wall, so you can see the incredible detail of the way the lichen clings to the surface of the rocks.  It is really beautiful and the color is so subtle.

 

Poppy's

This morning after we left the motel where we stayed overnight, we took Sarah to visit a friend where we dropped her off so they could go out and have brunch. Then Kathy, Liz and I went looking for a place to have breakfast.  First there was a suggestion of going to McDonalds for a quick breakfast.  But then Liz said we should find a "real" restaurant, so she looked up a small breakfast place called Poppy's that wasn't far from where we were.  What a wonderful place!  This is a photograph of Poppy himself - he started the restaurant with his father when he returned from the army in 1973 - and his daughter on the right, and his granddaughter on the left!  His daughter was our waitress and she is so friendly and chatty, and told us some of the story about how this family restaurant began!  It was such a great experience to have breakfast here, and the food was delicious!

 

A Family Gathering!

Liz and Sarah and Kathy and I drove up to Wallingford, Connecticut today for a family gathering.  What an amazing turnout.  Vince and JoAnne came from Rochester, and Patrick and his two children came from Massachusetts, and we came from New York.  We were at Tracy & Bill's home with their kids and Maureen and Bill were there with their kids.  What a great crowd.  What a great family!  So a giant family portrait was in order, and here it is!

 

Two Lenses, Again

Here is another comparison of two lenses.  This is the new one, the Rokinon 50mm f/1.4 which can take photographs in the dark, it seems.  The other lens is a Sony 50mm f/2.8.  So I used both lenses to photograph Kathy's Chrysanthemums in a terra cotta pot on the front step.  As I mentioned before the new lens has a very shallow depth of field, so you will notice that not all the blossoms are in focus in this first photograph.  Notice how the leaves in the green area in the right center of the photo, are so blurred you can't tell they are leaves, and  I like this look.

In this photograph, I am using the Sony close up lens, and you can see that because I used smaller lens opening when I shot this photograph, all the blossoms are pretty much in focus, and also the leaves you can see in the opening in the upper right of this photo, are more defined.  

 

Liz and Sarah are Here!

We drove to JFK this evening to pick up Liz and Sarah who arrived from Los Angles!  Oh happy day!  We are so glad they are here to visit!  I knew I wanted to get some kind of photograph when we picked them up.  It was crazy at the arrivals area, as it always is.  So I had my Sony a7 ready with the "film speed" set to 3200 in case it was dark.  As soon as I stopped the car, I popped the trunk and jumped out with my  camera in hand, and just started shooting as fast as I could.  Things were happening fast with the suitcases that needed to be put in the trunk and both of them jumping in the car because we needed to get out the scrum of cars and people!  I was thrilled that in my "blind shooting" I ended up with this shot!

 

A Moment at Dunkin'

It was Tuesday and I was standing in line at our Dunkin' Donuts waiting to order.  The group at the far table caught my attention because of the activity.  The young mom with her baby who was being hugged and lifted by the mom, and the two older people who were watching and having a conversation and laughing.  I stood watching all this for at least a minute before I woke up and realized that this was a picture.  A "moment" in time that was significant in life because these people were interacting with each other and laughing and just enjoying this moment in life that seems ordinary, but in fact which is extraordinary.  Because it is an ordinary part of the day, filled with significance because this is what life is about.  I took my "toy" camera off my belt and worked slowly. I flipped the back screen horizontal so I could look down at the camera rather than at the people, hoping that no one would notice.  And they didn't, until the very end one of them noticed the camera. I turned away to order and nothing was said, but I had managed to capture a moment of time and a snapshot of life.

 

Fishing and Talking

If it's Tuesday, then you know what day this is - Dunkin' at the Beach!  It was an absolutely beautiful day with warm temperatures and light winds and a hazy sky.  We were sitting in our beach chairs each eating our single donut when these three fisherman arrived and waded into the water and started fishing.  I mean, I think they had lines in the water, but what was wonderful was that they stayed close to each other so they could talk the whole time!  I thought this was a wonderful thing, friends hanging out together and pretending to fish!  Well, they were fishing, actually, I just didn't see them catch anything.  What I loved was the color of the sky and the color of the water matched, and it was kind of hazy.  So it almost looks like they are standing in the middle of Long Island Sound, somehow.  But they were only about 30 feet off the beach.  I did choose this photograph because of the criss-crossed fishing poles!

 

A New Lens

I bought a new 50mm lens, which is a "normal" focal length, not wide-angle or telephoto so that I can take photographs when it is almost completely dark at night.  Like when people are looking through telescopes at night, at least on Long Island where there is so much light pollution. WARNING: Photography Lesson Ahead!  So the opening in a lens that lets light through to the sensor in cameras is based on a system which I will spare you the explanation of.  You're welcome! Suffice it to say, a lot of camera lenses have an opening expressed this way: f/4.  If you pay more money, then you can get a lens that has a larger opening of f/2.8.  That number is smaller, BUT that number means the opening in the lens is larger so more light can pass through. I know, I know, very confusing.  The difference between f/4 and f/2.8 is twice the amount of light comes through.  Pay more money and you can get an f/2 lens.  Twice the light again, or four times the amount of light from f/4.  And then if you really want the most amount of light, you can get a lens that has an opening of f/1.4 which will give you EIGHT TIMES MORE LIGHT!  Don't worry, I bought a lens made in China and I don't know how they do that, but an f/1.4 lens that SONY makes goes for $1,298.  Yikes.  But my Chinese lens was only $377.  It probably does not have the quality that the SONY lens has, but I bet most people would not know the difference.  The thing about an f/1.4 lens is, that there something called "depth of field" and that means, when you focus on something, how far in front and behind what you focus on, will also be in focus. With an f/1.4 lens the sharp focus is only about 1/4",  So I used my new lens in daylight and photographed this fern late in the day at f/1.4.  The whole point of this blog, now that you are bored silly, is to talk about the soft focus effect I got by using that lens to photograph this fern.  It is sort of in focus in the center, but becomes less in-focus  as you move toward the edges.  So I really like that effect.  Whew, I sure used a lot of words to explain my soft-focus fern!  Anyhow, here are two photos of the two lenses and you can see how much more glass is in the F/1.4 lens - a larger opening in front. And you can also see that the new lens is much larger than the other one, and, because of more glass, it is much heavier, but the weight and size are worth it.  It is a magic lens!

End of lesson!  Class dismissed!  Thank you for your attention!

 

The Mini Mart

 The annual Sea Cliff Mini Mart, an arts and crafts exposition sponsored by Kiwanis, takes place on the first Sunday of October every year.  We probably haven't been in 25 years, though.  Sea Cliff Avenue, the center of everything has always been packed with people shoulder to shoulder, and today was no different. Many charitable organizations depend on this as a fund raiser for their coming year's programs.  Please be sure and click on each photo to see more detail.

 

There were two bands that were playing, with great old rock and roll music, and this first one was at the firehouse.

You will be pleased to know that beer was available, and that was most obvious around where the bands were playing.

Most of the vendors were unter those pop-up tents, so this was easier to photograph because this wood worker had his works out in the open.

This is the other band, with just as large a crowd standing and listening, located at the west end of the main street.  These guys were really giving it their all!

Did I mention that there was beer available?  There were people at the event of all ages, and it was a great place for people watching.

I did this photograph of the west end of the main street, to show how many people were here, and how packed it was!  Amazing what a popular event this is.  Fortunately the weather was perfect this year. There is always the worry of a rainy day postponing the event.

And the good news was that beer was available for purchase.  Did I mention that?