The Gorgeous Hickory Tree

                                       

What a joy this Hickory tree is!  Yesterday's photograph was taken maybe 3 or 4 days ago, but now every leaf on the tree has turned this beautiful color.  When the tree gets this color, Kathy and I find as we pass Amy's old room, we stop just to see the yellow leaves, because they are so beautiful.  So I started looking for another interesting photograph of the tree.  And I realized that seeing it through a window is not a bad photo.

But then, looking for another photograph, I opened the window completely and photographed the tree with nothing in the way.  I really love this photograph as well.  We had reasonable temperatures today, but I think that in the next day or two, the temps will be dropping and we won't see 50 degrees again for a while.

Something Beautiful in Fall

I am embarrassed by showing you the poor squirrel from yesterday, but it seemed an important photograph given the nature of the post. So here is something just beautiful.  Our magnificent hickory tree.  It still has some green in it because the fall color has been strange this year.  It seems to be happening in some spots and not in others.  There is suddenly a time each year in fall, when the tree changes to completely yellow leaves.  It is my sign that when I am painting the house, which requires that the temperature be above 50 degrees, that when the tree turns yellow, the temperatures will never be above 50 degrees again.  Just for fun, I have included the setting moon along with the beautiful tree.

 

The Squirrel Did It.

At 11 AM yesterday morning our power went out!  I heard a "BANG" just as the lights went out!  Hmmmmm... We waited an hour, because these things don't usually last that long.   So after an hour I went to the store to buy some things.  What was unfortunate was that Stan and Ann were coming for dinner, and Kathy was just starting to bake a pie for dessert.  So we were stuck.  On the way back from the store, I was looking up and down streets to see if I could see a repair truck.  I didn't see anything, until I turned up Laurel avenue and as I got close to our house, there was the repair truck!  So I walked up to where the lineman was preparing his tools and equipment before getting in the bucket.  I asked what caused the outage.  I thought maybe a transformer had exploded or something.  He walked over to some leaves by the side of the street, and moved some leaves out of the way with his foot;  "This squirrel caused it. He must have been walking around up on the transformer and unfortunately part of him was on one wire and part of him on the other, and he was a conduit for a very high voltage and he was electrocuted, and that blew the fuse."  He said that when the fuse blew, that was the bang I heard. He said he needed to replace the giant fuse, and then go to a substation to reset something else before we would have power.  What was really nice is that he was so friendly and answered all the questions I had and I really appreciated that.

Well this is the poor squirrel.   He was just trying to find something to eat, and going about his day.  But he stepped on the wrong thing, sad to say.  Sorry for the disturbing picture.

So here is the lineman at work in his bucket.  He is WAY up in the air.  He is wearing orange rubber insulating sleeves which is a safety device just in case he accidentally brushed up against a live wire!  The arm connected to the bucket is made of fiberglass, so it is insulated from the ground, another safety feature of his equipment.  Well after a while the truck went away, heading off to the substation, and about an hour after that the power came back on.  Boy, we really take the electric service for granted, don't we!  The good news is that Kathy got the pie baked in time and we had a lovely dinner together!

 

The Artist at Work

Stan and Ann came out from the city this afternoon so that we could visit the Nassau County Museum of Art, where there was an exhibit of Modigliani portraits, along with portrait examples from a number of other artists.  There was a woman artist at work in the first gallery, doing a portrait from memory, I believe.  As a fund raising project for the museum, you could commission her to do a portrait of you, and some of the money would go to the museum.  I was fascinated, watching the way she worked, in particular because she held the brush a long way from the metal ferrule that holds the bristles.  So I asked her a few questions as she painted, and realized that I wanted to do a quick portrait of her.  I asked if that was OK and she said it would be fine.  I was taken, first, that she was painting in an elegant black dress, instead of in an artist's smock.  The other thing was her wonderful profile, and the gentle curve of her arm.  So I did a few images and then started talking to her again.  Then I realized that I had kind of missed the point.  So I said I wanted to do just a few more, and this time I backed up. What is wonderful I thought was the contrast of how she was dressed, with her surroundings, particularly the white drop cloth on the floor.  So I am glad I didn't stop photographing her after this first image.  My favorite, when I was all done, is this vertical image which has so much more information about her surroundings.

 

Frost This Morning!

When I woke this morning I looked out at the side yard as I always do, and noticed what looked like small patches of frost on the lawn.  They looked like the photograph, below.  So I knew they would not last long at all, so I rushed through my shower and dressed quickly.  I put on a jacket and grabbed my camera, after changing the lens to a "macro" lens, used for close ups.  The photograph below is the first one I took, and I did a bunch, but it really didn't look that interesting.  And every time I do a close-up, I think of the words of my friend Dean Ketelsen, who recently passed away: "Not close enough, Ken!"  Dean was the absolute master of the close up, sometimes using a technique where you take a dozen photographs, one by one at different points of focus, and then he combined them so the subject was tack sharp from back to front.  So I haven't done that, but after doing the photograph, I moved in closer and closer to the blades of grass until I got THIS close.  I was stunned to see that I can see the tiny ice crystals clinging to each blade of grass!  What a surprise I could see that, and that I could photograph it as well!  How cool is this!

 

Three People Walking

I was on the way back from errands late this afternoon and as I drove by the harbor I saw the brilliant yellow light from the setting sun illuminating my favorite trees.  Because it was really clear this afternoon, the late afternoon light was not softened by haze.  So the sidelight on the trees was brilliant and that's the first thing that caught my attention.  So I pulled over, grabbed a camera and framed the picture.  Then I waited for some people to walk through.  When I saw three, I thought "perfect" and waited until the spacing was perfect. Click.

 

Almost Completely Gone

                             

I was in the city at the end of September and did these photographs of the old Pennsylvania Hotel at that time.  I hadn't gotten around to editing them until now.   Well, this historic hotel is just about completely gone now.  The only thing left above the street level are these black beams which once held up the facade of the hotel.  I'm sorry I never took a photograph of the hotel before it was shrouded in black fabric to protect people during the demolition.

I got these photographs by finding a crack between the gates that allowed trucks in to carry off the demolition material.  If I found a 3 inch gap, then the lens would fit in the space and I could take a photograph.  For the first photograph, they had one of those curved pipe exit gates like in the subway system and I put my arms and camera through the pipes and reached in as far as I could to eliminate any foreround.  For this shot I found a 3 inch gap to show the back of the beams in the top photo.

And this is the view of the street.  The only thing sticking up above street level, in addition to the black painted beams, is the protective scaffolding and walls that surrounded the hotel during demolition.  Funny how easy it is to forget what was once here, after such a short time.  So here are two photographs I think I have posted before, but which are great reminders of what once was.