Digging Up The Streets

There has been a lot of street construction going on in Sea Cliff.  There is excavating equipment that digs a trench in the street then men are working in the trench, then the excavation is filled in and asphalt fills it all in.  Turns out they are replacing natural gas lines that one of the workers told me, were installed in the 1950's and are getting old. I was driving down the street and saw these old cut up gas lines covered with dirt and had to stop and see them close up.  You can see the filled up trench in the road, to the right.

Here is a closeup of a group of the old gas pipes.  If you look at most of these, they are cut off clean with a saw and you can see that the steel looks pretty solid. But the pipe at the very top has a ragged end to it that doesn't look good.

I don't know what this pipe was connected to, but how could this pipe not be leaking gas with the ragged end showing?  I will show you a couple of photographs of what this pipe is being replaced with tomorrow.

 

The Old Tree at Dusk

I parked my car at the Vanderbilt Museum and as I was taking my computer and other things out of the trunk for the meeting, I happened to look over to my right and saw this tree off to the right.  My sense is that the tree is really old, based on its shape and the condition of its branches.  I have no idea what kind of tree this is  - maybe in daylight when it is leafed out I might hazard a guess.  What made the photograph as well are the high overcast clouds that silhouette the tree. Against a plain sky I am thinking that the photograph would not be as strong. Please click on this to see more detail.

 

As Far As The Eye Can See

I was riding back up Laurel avenue at the end of my bike ride today and I passed this patch of flowers.  I turned around and put my bike down and got my iPhone out.  When I got down close to the ground I put my iPhone just above the closest flowers and shot this view.  Flowers as far as the eye can see.  I had to do a Google Image search and this is what I found out about these flowers:  "Scilla siberica, the Siberian squill or wood squill, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae, native to southwestern Russia, the Caucasus, and Turkey. Despite its name, it is not native to Siberia.Many parts of the plant such as the flowers, fruits, leaves, roots, sap, seeds, and stem are poisonous to eat for some animals."  Wow!

 

The Branches are so Delicate!

It was such a nice day today that we went up to the top of the back yard where we have two white Adirondack chairs, thanks to my sister Joan.  The two chairs are lovely to see up there, seen from the street.  And when we sit in them we can oversee our house, garage and side yard.  Well today it was nice and warm and we sat.  And then I looked up and saw all these delicate branches overhead, from the other Japanese maple tree.  That tree is in our neighbor's yard, just over the fence from our yard.  It is impossible to describe the delicacy of these branches which are so very thin, and which will soon be filled with leaves.  I am posting a larger photo so if you click on it you may be able to see some of the finer branches.

 

Tools of the Trade

Dude, wow, that is one ugly looking coffee cup!  You need to either wash that or toss it. Wait, is that a Sandra Boynton cup?  It looks like her drawings.  Yes, it is a Sandra Boynton cup.  I photographed her at her home and farm many years ago up in Massachusetts, and she gave the writer and I some cups to take home.  But this is not a coffee cup.  It is used for something else, and has been for years.

Look at this!  It is immaculate inside.  There is not a speck of dust inside.  It is my varnish cup.  When I am varnishing a table top that I am refinishing or a telescope I have built or a wood telescope mount, I use this cup to hold varnish. I keep it clean as a whistle inside but don't worry about the outside.  But it is so interesting with all the layers of dripped varnish on the outside that it has collected over the years.  Just one of my tools of the trade.

 

Happy Birthday, Karen!

We drove to Connecticut today to have lunch with my three sisters.  The celebration was for my older sister Karen, because it was her 80th birthday!  It was nice to get together and spend time with all my sisters.  Because we are hours away from each other, we don't get to see each other that often.  We were lucky that traffic was light and our trip both ways to Milford was relatively easy.  A wonderful way to spend a Saturday, with family!

 

The Remains of Fall

I have watched this pot and the grasses, all winter long.  The pot is on one of the back steps so I pass it each day.  I keep looking at it and love the monochromatic tan colors. I have photographed it but was never satisfied until on this day.  I think the colors have changed in subtle ways during the winter.  I like the two different textures, between the plant and the grasses.  Spring will soon be here and all this will change, which will be welcome.

 

A Table Setting

On my walk each time I pass a marina and storage yard that has all kinds of stuff up on the land in storage. Boats, an old crane, cars, a truck and who knows what else.  One time there were tables set up out on the sidewalk and they were selling all kinds of stuff, including this stuff.  I remember all these plates and silverware.  Clearly, when it was over they just put this piece of plywood with all this stuff on the ground and I bet it has been here for 5 years.  I always look through the fence to see if there are things I want to photograph and I saw this the other day.  "A Table Setting."  Well, not exactly, but what an interesting collection of stuff!  I did have to shoot through a chain link fence so this photograph is not as clear and sharp as it should be.  Please click on this image - there is so much stuff to see here!

 

A Cat in the Sun

One of Grace's favorite places.  On the top of the staircase  right above the second landing, she curls up in the sun to sleep.  Sam also uses this spot as well.  How nice is it to be a cat and then find a patch of sunshine and then to just lie in the sun and fall asleep.  I could like the idea of doing that, except how could I sleep with the sun in my face?  Sometimes she and Sam put one of their paws over their eyes, and they are fast asleep.  Ahhhh....  The life of a cat...

 

Looking Out to Sea

As I was walking back home on my 2.6 mile walk, I suddenly noticed this young woman, all in white, leaning on the railing, looking out to sea.  How many times have we all  done this?  Lots and lots of times.  When you stand on the edge of the water, it is such a natural thing that we are compelled to do, to look out into the distance,  I guess to see how far we can see. Something about the water brings to mind distance and perhaps travel.  All of us lost in our own private thoughts.  So that's why I took this photograph.  What's funny is, that I thought it was a woman standing alone.  Imagine my surprise when I enlarged this image to full size and then realized that she has a man companion standing on the far side of her, but so little of him shows.  What an interesting surprise!  If you click on it to enlarge it, you can see parts of her companion.

 

More On Buttonball Trees

Buttonball trees have such a distinctive bark to them.  I have stopped so many times with my camera trying to find a face or some other figure or shape that looks like something, but I have never been successful.  Maybe there is a dancing woman here, although I only saw that just now, not when I took the photograph, so I guess that doesn't count!

I spoke of seeing "squished" buttonballs all over the grass under the trees, which is what got my attention.  There were literally hundreds of these in the first two tenths of a mile. I wanted you to see how soft these are when they get to this stage.  And I am not sure how they get from the hard round ball, to this state.  Did they fall down in the Fall, and then the winter weather opened these up somehow?  They are unbelievably soft, and so different from the hard round shapes. So many mysteries in nature!

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The Buttonball Tree, Again...

OK so this is SO cool!  I knew I had this photograph and I just had to find it!  I showed you the drawing of the family farmhouse in Guilford in my Buttonball post two days ago, and there are two Buttonball trees in the drawing.  We are standing on the remains of the tree to the right!  What an unbelievable photograph this is!  Everyone in their Sunday best, who came out for a photograph of all of us standing on the remains of the giant Buttonball that had just been cut down!  And then there are the cars in the driveway as well.  My mom took this photograph and it is perfect!  And then she carefully wrote everyone's names at the bottom of the print.  Buttonball farm, indeed!  This is an extra large image so please click on it.

 

If It's Spring..

Every Spring I look forward to the first signs of crocus coming up out of the ground in our garden next to the house.  I think that seeing them today was such a surprise because these shoots are only about one inch tall!  I don't think I have ever seen them this short!  It may be because we really cleaned out the garden carefully last fall.   When the garden wasn't completely cleaned out, then the very short shoots would be covered with leaves and we wouldn't see the shoots until long after they got much taller.  So it is pretty much same old, same old, but actually, Spring never gets old!

 

What is This?

Anyone know what this is?  I didn't know what it is when I first saw it.  I was walking along the harbor on my usual route and I noticed next to the sidewalk hundreds of little round broken balls of soft stuff all over the grass.  I did find two of these that were still hard and still together.  I couldn't believe how many of these there were.  I have never noticed anything like this before on my walks all the years I have lived here. And then it hit me!  These beautiful trees all in a line that I have photographed before are Sycamore trees!  And Sycamore trees are called "Buttonball" trees!  This is a buttonball!  I was stunned.  I have heard this name for these trees all my life!  You know why?  Because of my sister's and me and our grandparents.  The family farm in Guilford, Connecticut is called "Buttonball Farm."  We have known of this all our lives and I bet none of us have ever seen a buttonball.

In 1939 an artist in Guilford named Charles D. Hubbard published a book called "Old Guilford" filled with stunning pen and ink drawings of important buildings and places in Guilford.  Not only did he do the drawings, but he did all the hand lettering as well!  Read the text above in the page I copied and learn about our family farm.  Sadly it was sold years ago and is no longer ours and the surrounding lands and fields are gone as well.  But in this illustration are two giant Buttonball trees for which the farm is named.

 

Similar Scene, New View

On my walk the other day, I spoke of the sun being higher and so photographing out over the harbor directly into the sun didn't seem to offer any photographs at all.  So I was looking where I was walking instead, and suddenly I saw this tree, bent at the top.  All the other trees stick up straight.  And I was fascinated that I had never noticed this bent tree before.  It was so bent that I thought it would make a photograph, somehow.  So this is that image and you will recognize in the background a group of trees that I have photographed so many times before but usually as a horizontal photograph.  I decided that the colors in the image were distracting, and so converted this image to black and white.  Black and white is better at showing the form of things, because of there not being color as a distraction.  

 

A House and Shadows

I went for my walk this afternoon, but I went much earlier so the sun was higher in the sky.  When I looked at the harbor, I didn't see anything that I liked, so I started looking at things on the other side of the street.  So you will laugh at this story.  I saw the dark shadows of trees on the side of thehouse and thought there might be "something" there.  So I moved a little to the left of where I had been standing and lifted the camera to my eye and was stunned!  I had not seen the dark black shadow of the tree I was next to, going across the road!  Completely missed it with my eyes, but it leaped out at me in the camera's viewfinder.  So I find this interesting because it seems as if something, or some force is creeping up to the house.  I am guessing you can feel this, and I am not that good with words when talking about my photographs.  Hope you find this interesting.

 

The Leica Lens

Not a great photograph, actually, but beautiful in its way and interesting because it is a bit soft in it's sharpness, and the edges of the image are out of focus.  This is that old lens from my old Leica that I adapted with a couple of lens adapters to my modern SONY a7 III.  The last time you saw that lens on the camera, it was fastened with gaffer tape!  The adapter is more professional looking now.  So the above photo is interesting but not great.  I will continue to photograph with it and will only show you photographs where the soft focus lens really adds something to the image.

So here are two photographs of the Leica lens on my SONY.  These images show a more professional job of temporarily adapting this old lens to the new camera.  I am proud of the job I did putting this all together so it looks professional.

 

"A Drop of Ink in a Glass of Water..."

As many of you know, I am a die hard fountain pen user.  I am also a huge fan of the band "The National."  So often times I have the music and lyrics going through my head, because that's what music does to me.  To save money by not buying ink cartridges for my pens, I refill them with ink from bottles.  I have a special blunt ended syringe, and I suction the ink out of a bottle and then inject through the opening in the cartridge.  I do this a lot because I write a lot.  So the other day I was cleaning my syringe after filling some cartridges.  I am using purple ink in two of my fountain pens.  And then the lyric came to me from the National's song "Green Gloves."  So I took my syringe and dropped some ink into a glass of water.  Here is the result.  The lyric “like a drop of ink in a glass of water” is associated with the song “Green Gloves” by The National, from their 2007 album Boxer. The image is a phrase often used to describe how the music or feeling of the track spreads and deepens. The metaphor fits the band’s style: emotions slowly spreading and darkening the mood, like ink diffusing through water.

 

Who is This? What is This?

What is this?  Any guesses?  Of course you know who this is!  This is Grace curled up in one of the chairs in the back room.  It is a favorite place for her to curl up away from Sam.  I am looking over one arm of the chair, and the side of the other arm is behind her.  Actually this is more of an abstract photo, but when I saw the shapes I felt that it was a photograph.

 

The Electric Cat

I don't know if many of you know that our cat, Grace, is an electric cat.  Did you know that?  We plug her into the wall outlet each day so she can get the energy to eat and run around and purr and sleep.  It actually takes energy to sleep, which also might be news to you.  I know that's unusual, but we take it all in stride.  We do have to feed her regular cat food but she does need the electric energy for her to eat.  So, you learn something new every day, right?  An electric cat, indeed.

 

No More Snow for Our Garden Angel

The temperature was 64 a couple of our days this week.  It is 40 degrees outside tonight as I write this and tomorrow is forecast to be 51 degrees.  So hopefully there will be no more snow for our garden angel.  Years ago we did have a pretty good wet snowfall in April and we couldn't believe our eyes seeing the trees all covered with a frosting in April.  But it warmed and quickly melted.  We last saw her on March 2nd, both buried and with much of it melted.  Hopefully she will have warm spring days as she waits for the rebirth of the garden as we continue into spring.

 

I Am Done Wirh My White Shirts!

I found this bright yellow Lands End buttondown shirt up in Amy's closet.  It has not been worn much and the color is a brilliant bright yellow, not the pale yellow which is the only color you can buy today.  I realize that it must be boring seeing me wearing white buttondown shirts every day.  So, no more!  I will put them all away and start buying brighter colored shirts from now on.  I actually have, from years ago, dark blue buttondown shirts!  That was a different phase in my fashion style!  This will be life-changing.  No one will recognize me!  And now here is a tale out of school, something I just learned...  You all recognize the name Ken Schwarz, who is a great friend of mine who always comments here?  Well, in a conversation we  just had the other day, he said when he retired he got rid of ALL his buttondown shirts!  I was stunned!  I could not even BREATHE if I didn't have buttondown shirts to wear!

 

Carving My Turns

This is my curvy road about 3/4 the way through my 10 mile ride.  It is downhill and only two lanes so not that much traffic.  I turn onto this road off a main road, with a fairly sharp curve to the right, at the beginning here, and because I am moving pretty fast, I lean into the turn to the right.  Then as you can see here, the road then curves to the left in the distance and I am picking up speed and I carve my turn to the left, by leaning to the left.  There is something wonderful about carving turns on nice roads - it is a very smooth and fluid motion and is one of the rich feelings of cycling.  I have started riding again now that the temps are in the 60's. What a joy to be on the bike again!

 

The Last of It

Well, this is the last of it.  Fingers crossed of course.  We have had a St. Patricks Day snowstorm in years passed, and I think maybe we even had an April snowfall once?  I forget.  But this year, for some reason, the snow and the cold seemed harder to deal with.  Several weeks of 15 degree temperatures were a tough one.  The cold was worse than the snowfall.  I think we got 12 inches of snow the first time and about 16 inches the second time, but that was not a problem because of my snow blower.  On the first storm I cleaned the driveway and walkways in an hour and a half, which was not bad.  But now even this last bit it is all gone, and the temperature today was 64 degrees and out I went on my bike with just a jersey and shorts on!  Fingers crossed that the temps stay reasonable.

 

My FrankenSONY Camera

I am reading a book by a famous woman photographer, about what it takes to be a creative artist-photographer and the struggles and the creativity and all the issues with doing it professionally. She works with a huge 8x10 camera for her work.  But I found a photograph of her with a 35mm Leica digital camera around her neck.  The Leica costs $9600.  But what is interesting is that the lens on her Leica is a lens from a really old Leica film camera.   You saw the photograph I did on February 25 of the tree branches, where I used essentially a magnifying glass as a lens.  So using an old Leica lens is similar to that quality but not as severely out of focus around the edges.

So this is my original Leica film camera.  It is a Leica II manufactured starting in 1932.  When I first got it in a trade with a friend, I traded a more modern lens for his much older camera.  I discovered that I had to use a slow film to take photographs with this because light leaked around the edges of the focal plane shutter.  So I remember walking around Geneva, NY, where Kathy's mom lived, taking photographs with this camera. So I am temporarily putting the lens from this camera on my modern SONY a7 III camera, with the use of an adapter I built.  I did some tests, however by gaffer-taping the lens to an adapter on my SONY!  I will, of course show you some of the results after I finish making the finished, more permanent adapter.  What IS interesting, is that this camera still works perfectly!  What is the chance, by the way, that my SONY a7 III will still be working in 94 years!

 

 

The Trifecta!

So I told you yesterday about doing two photographs within 50 feet of each other in the snow covered park.  And I mentioned driving by a house and returning to where it was to take a photograph.  This is the third photograph that I took in probably 30 minutes.  The trifecta!  I think this is an interesting photograph because it is not really about the house, it is about the trees in the foreground.  That's what I saw when I flashed by this scene the first time I went by.  I spent maybe 10 minutes or so moving around and trying different compositions, both closer to the house, and further away.  But this is my favorite.

 

Getting To Know You

I photographed that bench and the ball field covered in snow the other day.  Then I drove around the corner to drive home.  I passed a house that looked interesting in the rain.  But I had already gone by it, so I drove around the block to drive back to it. As I turned the corner to circle back I saw this out the front window!  I immediately stopped and shot through the front windshield. Two people walking their dogs on the ball field took time to stop and introduce their dogs to each other!   I took about 10 shots.  But what luck, that I went around the block and they were here when I passed by!  Two photographs on the same day not 50 feet from where I shot the bench!

 

And Now for Something Completely Different

I saw a post on Facebook today about a  man who bought a pair of Wolverine work boots and left them in his closet without wearing them for a year.  When he finally went to use them, the heel and part of the sole had detached from the upper boot.  It looked like it was attached with some kind of foam, rather than rubber to leather with some glue.  The manufacturer said they were more than a year old and wouldn't do anything to make it right for the customer.  I couldn't believe how cheaply the boots were made.  It made me think of my pair of Timberland work boots that are at least 30 years old.  I have used these for everything around here.  I wore them working on the roof, tearing off old shingles and I wear them on the ladder all the time that I am painting the house and I wore then when I built a brick patio and sidewalk.  They are well used but they have stood up well to all the work that they have been through.  These boots are the best, and I am shocked at how poorly the boots on the Facebook post were made.   So I decided to photograph my boots just for fun, and it was fun to look really closely at them and see all the details and all the of the wear over all the years I have used them.  Seeing all the wear and tear makes them kind of beautiful in a way.  Please be sure to click on this to see all the details.

 

Snow, Bench & Fog

Did someone around here mention not shooting any more snow?  Or was it no more ice?  I can't remember.  By tomorrow all of this will be gone, it has been raining all day and it is raining tonight.  These benches at the large field with two baseball diamonds look like a nice place to sit most of the year.  There is usually someone relaxing or reading or sitting with their dog.  But not these days.  I looked at the benches and they are soaking wet!  And there is water and ice where you would rest your feet.  So this might be worth a photograph, but definitely not a fun place to sit.

 

Back Working Again

I'm back at work again!  Well, not exactly.  I mean I did a self-assigned portrait tonight after the astronomy meeting.  A friend of mind, Steve, needed a portrait showing him with something astronomy related.  So I set him up in front of a giant painting of the moon on the wall in the plandetarium lobby, and then I asked hin to bring his automated telescope, which is seen on the table in the background.  I used two lights for the scene, one with an umbrella to the right, and another less powerful light way in the background on the left which put a highlight on the left side of his face, and on the brightest part of his automated telescope.  That second light from the left makes a world of difference in the sense of the photograph.  How'd I do?

 

The Collector

This is another case of following another walker down on the beach, from overhead.  I photographed this woman first, then the dog walker.  So there are two different photographs and I am trying to figure out which is best.  I think it is the one above.  I like that she is pretty much in silhouette, with no details visible.  I chose one where she is leaning a bit forward.

I took this one before the one above and we can see details in the woman and her clothing.  So I can't decide if seeing the way she is dressed matters.  She is apparently collecting "something" but she was asked by someone down on the beach what she was looking for with her little white net on the end of a stick, and she did not seem to give an answer. She does have a long white plastic bag on her front to put whatever she was looking for, into.  This second photograph has more detail, including her brightly decorated leggings, but I don't think this photograph is as effective as an interesting image.  What do you all think?  Would you choose the first photograph, or the second?  Thank you in advance for you choices.  Oh, please click on each image to see more detail before voting.  Thanks!

 

"How much snow did ya get?"

This is our little cement garden angel which I love seeing in the garden all year long.  I think it is about one foot tall, more or less.  We had gotten 3 inches of snow when I took this photograph, on January 24th..

After our first large snowfall which I think was 12 inches or so, I happened to notice that just her head was visible, but this must have been a week later.  So I walked out to the garden and did this photograph.  After the second snowfall where we got 12 to 14 inches of snow, on February 23 she completely disappeared!   So the snow has been melting for 7 days now, and today I could see just the very top of her head emerging from the snow!  So the answer is, "we got a lot of snow!" 

 

Moonrise

I went out to the garage to put some bottles in the recycling container and there was the nearly full moon rising behind the trees next door.  What a beautiful sight.  Funny, I usually have a sense of the current phase of the moon, but sometimes I lose track and then I am surprised, as I was to see this.  And that is always fun.  If the sky had been brighter, I would have been able to show some detail in the moon, instead of it being just a white circle.  But it's not a bad shot.

 

How I Take Photographs

I brought my camera with me today on my walk to the old power plant, and wasn't expecting much with all the ice gone.  I was up on the sidewalk about 10 feet above the beach which I could see because the tide was dead low.  I wasn't expecting much.  I did see a woman walking her dog and it didn't look interesting because I was looking down on her.  But I followed along as she walked and took pictures.  She was close to the bulkhead, but as we got closer to Tappan Beach she moved further away from me and closer to the water.  I kept shooting, just because that is what I do. So below is the first photograph I took and it is just not interesting. I took a total of 23 photographs, and this photograph, above, is the last one. And THIS is a real photograph, not just a snapshot!  Lucky me.  There is an old saying, attributed to Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors the prepared mind."  I believe in that and that belief has served me well my whole career.  So it may be luck, but it is also hard work.  So now you know a little bit more about how I work.

 

Ice Blocks!

I thought I would drive by the beach today just to see what it looked like.  You saw the beach completely covered with huge ice blocks and people on them only two days ago!  What a change!

This is actually the first view I saw of these ice blocks today and I was stunned.  To go from the entire beach covered with blocks of ice to just this in two days is almost beyond belief.  I thought it was the coolest thing I had seen!  Some of thewe blocks are almost two feet thick.

These blocks in the distance are so thick I do wonder how long it will take for them to completely melt.  The thinner slabs in the foreground are only maybe 10" thick.  This ice on the beach is the gift that keeps on giving.  I never know what to expect next.

 

People on the Ice!

I went for my walk down along the harbor yesterday.  When I got to the bottom of Laurel Avenue at the harbor I couldn't believe my eyes!  There were two people out on the ice!  They were close to shore and carefully walking further out as they explored.  I had my camera ready and started blasting away as fast as I could as they moved around on the giant ice blocks.  OK, not to panic!  It is dead low tide, and all of the ice blocks within a couple of hundred feet of the shore are sitting on the sandbars.  They are not floating.  I was so excited because suddenly there is a human dimension to all this ice. seeing how small a couple is compared to all the ice makes for a much more interesting photograph than all the others!  Human scale can be so important in some landscape photography.  This is an extra large image so please click on it.

 

I am reading a book now by a woman photographer who is maybe 10 years younger than I am, about art and the creative life.  I have known about her for years, and I own a couple of her books of photographs.  She uses a huge 8x10 inch view camera and a really old lens that is not as sharp as modern lenses but that is part of the richness of her work.  So I started thinking about and remembered that a college friend had sent me a really interesting small lens perhaps 30 years ago.  It is essentially a magnifying glass lens in a funny mount so that you could tilt it in different directions to make some parts of the photograph sharp and others out of focus.  Well, I found the lens in my bureau drawer and wandered around first thing this morning shooting out of the house windows, hoping for a photograph that seemed similar to hers.  Well, I was not successful exactly in doing that, but I did get this photograph which I think is really interesting in a kind of haunting way.  Because the device has only one optical lens, it is only sharp in the middle.  I will have to go back and find some posts I did with the lens years ago on the blog.  Oh, I took the color photograph and made it look sepia in color, because the photographer with the large camera does a similar thing. 

So this is the lens on my SONY camera. The three screws can be turned to tilt the lens in any direction for different effects of sharpness.  This device is called a Lensbaby, and they have many new, more modern versions, but mine works just fine, thank you.  I am glad I could find it when I needed it.  If you are curious, here is the link to the first time I used this lens, and it turns out I was trying to do the same thing with this lens! Lensbaby Photo