What's This Thing Doing?

This barge can be seen from the beach at the end of our street.  I am not sure when I first noticed it, but today I walked out on the beach at mid-tide and then walked north toward it and took this photograph.  In the high resolution version I can see what looks like wood pilings in a random pile on the deck of the barge.  I wonder if the machine is pulling old pilings out of the water.  I asked a friend who might know, and I will be sure and let you know if I find out.  At least it makes the "landscape" look different for a bit.

 

I Won!

I have been a member of the National Press Photographer's Association for 57 years.  I still pay my dues and belong as a retired photographer.  They sent an email as part of a fund raiser, and asked for a contribution to the organization, and any contribution was an entry in a raffle with some prizes.  So I sent them some money, and guess what?  I won one of the top prizes!  This light is worth, believe it or not, $1,000.  Wow!  I never win anything and now I have this light to experiment with!

So here's the thing.  This is some kind of lighting unit.  I think that it is a flash unit, but I haven't made it flash yet.  But it is also an LED continuous light and I was able to light that up.  So this is the unit, and the handle is the battery.  It is a solid piece of equipment.  Those three circular things up above the flash unit are different reflectors that vary the width of the light, from wide to medium to spotlight.  The charger for the battery in the handle is at the top of the photo.  And the interesting thing is that there are no wires to connect this to a camera.  You have to have a remote electronic flash transmitter to set this off apparently.  You can use one of three transmitters by other companies.  Fortunately I have one of those for another flash I own.

This is the back of the flash head, and it is where you set the intensity of the light.  You use this one knob, which you can also press in, to adjust all the settings on the unit.  I used this to adjust the brightness of the continuous light source LED on the front.  But I guess when I set up my electronic trigger to talk to this, then this will become a flash unit.  Who knows!  So stay tuned, and I will take some photographs with this unit when I figure out how to use it, and you will be the first to see those photographs.

 

Grumman Mallard!

Meet one of the classic aircraft of all time, the Grumman Mallard!  I was just finishing tying down the Cessna I had been flying in when my instructor and I saw this aircraft land and then taxi over to where we were!  What great luck!  It was headed to a maintenance hangar beyond where were parked so it went right by us!  What a thrill!  This airplane is five years younger than I am!  I was born in 1942 and this was manufactured in 1947, by the Grumman Aircraft Corporation right here on Long Island.  It is an amphibian, so it can land on water with the wheels retracted, or on land with the wheels extended. It was such a thrill to see one of these aircraft in operation! 

 

Music Under The Stars

This is my friend Yannaki.  He joined our astronomy club about a year and a half ago, and he was so excited to be among others who loved astronomy and the night sky.  Then we found out that he is a musician.  He makes electronic music with a synthesizer and other instruments. He a self-taught Latin new age guitarist and multi-instrumental artist who was exposed in his formative years to the haunting and exotic sounds of Spanish flamenco music.  Since becoming more involved in astronomy he has produced two new albums “Electronic Dreams” and “Astronomia,” which are astronomical and space themed. He performed a live program in the Vanderbilt Planetarium, called “Arrizza - Under the Stars" and so I offered to do some portraits during a rehearsal for the show.  This is one of the portraits from that session. His music is thought provoking, hopeful, mysterious, and moody, and a joy to listen to!

 

A Tale of Two Mustard Bottles

I make this post at the risk that some of you might think I have "gone around the bend."  But here goes.  A few years ago I went to the nearby grocery store where we mainly shop, and one of the things I needed to get was another bottle of Gulden's spicy brown mustard.  I looked carefully, I thought, on every shelf with mustard and couldn't find Gulden's.  So I just figured the store was out.  I mentioned it to Kathy and she said she would get it at Stop & Shop when she went there.  Sure enough, she came home with a bottle of Gulden's but it was in a BLACK bottle!  What?  When I went back to the original store, sure enough, it was there in a black bottle!  Walked right by it.  What the heck, Gulden's has been in a clear bottle since I was a kid!  Why would they change this?  It says on the black bottle "New Look."  Yeah, well, I wonder whose genius idea it was to change the bottle color?  Probably some young marketing kid who wanted Gulden's to stand out from the others which were all brown in color.  Every time I saw the black bottle, I wondered if they were selling more mustard than they used to.  I would love to know.  So, cut to a few weeks ago, and the black bottle was nearly empty, so I went to our local store looking for another bottle, and, GET THIS, I could not find it!  What???  Every single bottle of mustard on the shelf was mustard colored! Where is Gulden's?  THEN I saw it!  Gulden's in a clear bottle!  I must have passed it on the shelf half a dozen times!  They are back to the old color!  So NOW I want to know the whole story!  Did they gain market share in the black bottle, or did they lose market share?  I am guessing they sold less of their mustard and so finally switched back to the original bottle.  I would LOVE to know the whole story about this.  The Harvard Business School from time to time does examinations of business successes and failures and researches the stories in great detail, and then publishes the stories as a lesson for all, so they can learn from mistakes.  I doubt they will do a study on this one, but I would love to know all the background on this "New Look" for Gulden's and its change back.

 

I Guess I'd Better Get Going!

Before I went out on my bike ride today I checked the radar to see if there were storms around.  There was a line of thunderstorms out over western New Jersey and I judged that I could get my ride in before they hit.  So off I went.  The sky was getting darker toward the end of my ride, which is the road that runs along the harbor.  I quickly jumped off the bike and grabbed this shot with my iPhone then left right away, and  continued up my street.  The first sprinkles hit just as I got to to my driveway!  Good timing I would think!

 

Purple Coneflowers

Speaking of car inspections...  This is another photograph I took while walking to or from dropping my car off and walking back to pick it up last week.  I only know the names of about 5 varieties of flowers, and you are in luck because this is one of them.  These are Purple coneflowers, and one of my favorite flowers, and I am not exactly sure why.  I loved these since the first time I saw them at Old Westbury Gardens, back when I was doing garden photography for the paper.  These were growing in a garden along the sidewalk, so I stopped and photographed them.