Fun With Drones!

After eleven days of sub freezing temperatures, a friend told me that Hempstead Harbor was covered with ice.  I went to several different sites to look for photographs and found some really nice things.  I will be posting a few more photographs in the days to come.  This is the last photograph that I did.  I was doing higher altitude aerial photographs of the expanse of ice across the harbor, and then started pointing the camera down and noticed my shadow.  So I lowered the drone and did this photo showing me on the edge of the harbor, and the edge of the ice.  Cool, huh?  Click on this to see more detail.

Breakfast!

Kathy has been in a bread-baking mood.  This week she did two versions of cinnamon raisin bread, one with a swirl inside, and one without.  Now those loaves have been eaten, she decided to make a loaf of pumpernickle raisin bread!  Oh man!  It smells so good, it was hard to photograph it without taking a bite.  I cannot wait for breakfast, when we will be toasting this and adding butter!  Oh, you want to know how our diets are going?  Not well, not well...   :-)

ICE Cold

It was really cold again today - 14 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind was still howling, 25 gusting to 40!  Yikes!  I am feeling much better, so I decided to walk down to the beach and go down to where the rocks are and see if they were covered in ice.  I got to the foot of my street and was stunned - everything was covered with ice!  I didn't leave the house yesterday until late in the day, when I used the snow blower on the driveway.  It was cold yesterday as well, with strong winds, and as the waves crashed into the bulkhead, the winds blew the spray over everything.  This one bench encased in ice was the most dramatic.

This is an overall shot of all the benches, trees, and the railing in ice.  In all the years I have lived here, I have never seen anything like this before.  And I have seen it so cold for so long that a major portion of Hempstead Harbor froze solid enough that people were out walking around on it.

This is the railing, and I  thought the close-up view was a nice detail of the ice.

The Snowstorm!

The wind!  Man oh man!  The snow was relatively light and came down slowly, but the winds were howling, 25 knots, gusting to 41!  It felt as if there was a real storm out there!  So I stayed inside and came up with these two photographs.  The one above is shot through the bathroom window upstairs, and it was coated with ice on the outside, making this impressionistic image.  I thought I would wait until tomorrow to get the snow blower out, since I was sitting and reading, and enjoying a cup of hot apple cider.  But then I heard the sound of a neighbor's snow blower and noticed that the snow had stopped.  So out I went and fired up my beast of a machine, and made short work of the driveway.  The winds are supposed to be just as strong tomorrow, so I will be curious to see how much snow drifts back on to the driveway.

Super Moon Over Huntington

I was driving to my astronomy meeting tonight when I saw a giant full moon on the horizon.  I kind of followed it as I headed east.  When I got to Huntingon, then I saw the picture.  The moon has risen high enough to be over the top of the buildings.  There is a minor problem in that the moon is partially covered by trees, so it looks a bit weird.  But it is still a sort of interesting photograph.

Trapped Indoors

Obviously I didn't take this photograph today.  I was digging through some old photographs and found this image I took years and years ago.  On the way home from Los Angeles, someone a row or two away was sneezing for the entire flight. The day after we got home I started sneezing, and within a day had a full blown cold, and felt really lousy.  With the temperatures in the teens I have been reluctant to spend much time outdoors.  I am feeling better now, but may not be shooting outdoors for another day or two.

A Christmas Candle

We are fond of putting one electric candle in each window in the front and side windows of the house.  I love the subtlety of this kind of Christmas decoration.  I first saw how something like this can make a spectacular sight when I first saw the town green in Guilford, Connecticut., about 50 years ago.  The green is surrounded by historic houses, and they have an understanding that no colored lights will be used.  To see all the houses on the green with each window in every house illuminated with white candles is really a sight to see!  Of course this photograph is different - this photograph feels spooky and strange.  The view from outside is more magical, however.