I Went for a Walk Today...

I decided that I needed to get out for some exercise, since it was no longer raining today.  Not only did I need the walk, but I also needed to come up with some new photographs that I haven't taken in the side yard!  So I walked a total of three miles, and it took me two hours, because I stopped every ten feet to take another photograph!  I brought two cameras with me - the regular one that takes color photographs, and the infrared one, that I used for this photo.  I just love the strange magical look that I get with infrared.  This could look like a photograph after a snowstorm at first glimpse.  It really is wondrous, isn't it?

Green as Green Can Be

We take back roads to get down to our church in Westbury.  The two lane roads that connect to one another go through a lot of very expensive real estate.  It is very pretty along most of our route.  This is one field that I have been watching for a while now.  Someone bought the house that is out of sight at the rear of this field.  Believe it or not, it was all lawn!  Then they planted it with different plants and ground covers and just let them grow!  It is so much more beautiful than a green lawn.  I have taken a few photographs right around this field before.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is Marie, and her two boys, Carl, at left and Daniel, at right.  They sit behind us in church each week and we get to talk for a few moments before the service begins.  You may remember we all went to the Cradle of Aviation Museum a few months ago - I posted a photograph of the two boys in the cockpit of an airplane on display there.  I thought that I would take a picture of them in church on Mother's Day - a mother and her two boys together, on her day.

Christmas, 2001

Continuing my digging through two cartons of photo CD's in the garage, I came up with this wonderful photograph of the George Washington Bridge on Christmas.  If I recall correctly, Liz lived near here, and we must have come here to visit.  I guess I walked over to the road overlooking the bridge and did a few pictures, because the scene was so spectacular.

The Photographers, 2004

I didn't find anything to photograph today.  I was out running errands and then doing some yardwork when I got home.  But I can't have a blank blog.  We have been cleaning out the garage, and I found two cartons of CD's that are copies of everything I shot back from 2001 to about 2007.  Some of the CD's are unreadable because of their age...   :-(  The majority of them can be read and I have copied some of the files on them to an external hard drive.  I have been going through them to see what I can find.  This is a shot I did back in 2004 when Liz and Amy were visiting for Thanksgiving.  It is down at the beach at sunset.  I am so thrilled that the both of them are such good photographers - that they love to record the world around them!

The Garden Angel

Ho hum.  Another infrared photograph.  But I like this one.  I have photographed this angel before, but when I saw it from the upstairs window with the shadows in front of it, I thought I should take a look at how it might appear in infrared, and I like this shot a lot.  It's pretty, huh?

The Test Pilot!

 

I had such an amazing evening tonight!  I played Hooky from my astronomy club, and went to a presentation at a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at a university nearby.  The speaker this evening was a test pilot who was in the US Air Force, and then was a test pilot for Lockheed Aircraft!  He mainly flew two famous stealth aircraft, the F-117 Nighthawk, and the F-22 Raptor.  Wow!  Can you imagine.  He was a wonderful speaker and talked about all the technical details of both aircraft, and his experiences in flying them.  I got to talk to him before and after the meeting and ask him some questions about aerodynamics, and about some other aircraft he flies now.

This is a slide he showed of the F-117 Nighthawk, which he is flying in this photo.  This aircraft doesn't even look like it could fly.  It is designed to reflect radar sweeps and thus make the aircraft nearly invisible.  In fact, this aircraft is unstable in all three axes, and could not fly if it was not for the four computer systems in the aircraft that keep it stable!

He brought a number of items that he passed around the room for us to see and touch.  This is one of the data sensors on the aircraft, that sticks out in front if the airplane and the tubes coming out the back of it send various air pressures to the computer that controls the plane.  The airplane would be uncontrollable if not for this device and the computers.  You can see three of these devices on the pointy nose of the airplane in the picture of the aircraft above.