The Pond at Dusk

So I am having fun with my late day walking and photographing.  I saw these phragmites at Scudder's pond yesterday when it was really dark and I wanted to draw attention to them by focusing on them and leaving the background of the pond and trees in the distance out of focus.  It was really getting dark, but my Sony a7 III was up to the task.  The ISO was 1600 and the exposure was 1/60 at f/5.6.

 

An Imperfect Tree

I love to photograph trees and I am always looking for perfect ones to photograph.  They can be so beautiful and I have photographed hundreds of trees because of their form, or their perfect shape.  I was walking again this afternoon, always looking as is my way, when I saw this strange, kind of distorted tree silhouetted against the darkened sky.  Its strange shape really captured my attention after I first saw it.  It is not beautiful in the normal sense, but it has such a fascinating shape.  It has clearly been trimmed at the top.  It is located on a small patch of ground in an oil terminal where tanker trucks come to be filled.  In a way, this tree is more interesting because it is imperfect.  The thought I had was that the tree is imperfect, just as all of us are a bit imperfect, so I shouldn't ignore it because it is not perfect.  How's that for a train of thought that you would never expect!

 

Nightscape With Trees

Last Sunday I posted a photograph of a tiny bus stop shelter after going for my walk late in the day.  Well I kept on walking as it got darker and did a bunch of interesting photographs.  It was almost completely dark by the time I got back to Laurel Avenue.  As I walked up the street I saw this tree partially illuminated by the streetlight, and the shadow of the tree on the street.  And the exposure even captured the last of the light in the sky.

 

Why We Fly

We did a cross country trip today, and when you live on an island, the only place to go is across Long Island Sound and up to Connecticut.  Unless you want to fly through New York City, which we didn't!  So we took off from Brookhaven airport, climbed to 6,500 feet to cross the sound and then went to Danbury Municipal airport in Connecticut.  There were a few clouds in the distance over the sound which I thought made a nice photograph.

But then as we neared the Connecticut shore the clouds thickened and we flew over them as we headed north.  There was a band of these clouds along the shore and it was beautiful to fly over them.  We had no worried because we could see beyond them and it was clear north of us.  How magnificent to be up flying around clouds.  Just magical.  Be sure and click on each of the cloud photos to see more detail!

And here are two intrepid airmen - the instructor and the student.  You might wonder why I am not smiling.  It's funny when I saw this photograph, because usually I am smiling.  But I was holding my Canon digital camera with my left hand and snapping photographs, while flying the plane with my right hand.  And I am serious because I am trying to compose the photograph properly!  Trust me, I was having fun!

 

Upstate Skies

The thing that I love about being upstate is that in so many areas you can see forever because the land is farmland and it is flat in so many cases.  And when you can see a horizon like this, it means you can see clouds all the way down to the horizon, not just when they are overhead.  I love the open feeling that seeing this gives me.  It is beautiful country up here. If you click on the photograph and look at where the sky meets the land, you will see a sliver of Seneca Lake.

 

Fading Colors Of Fall

Whenever I go to what I call "Eastman House" (It is actually called the George Eastman Museum") I start looking for photographs the second I get out of my car.  And I am always carrying my camera, and I am never disappointed.  This granite wall is at the end of the West Garden.  Built in 1917, the West Garden was designed by architect Claude Bragdon, who modeled it after an English walled garden designed by Sir Edward Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll at Hestercombe House in Somerset, England.  On the opposite side of this wall is an roofed area with three arched entrances, and then a magnificent garden between this structure and the main house.  I love the faded colors of the leaves and vines here, which are emphasized by the neutral gray color of the granite.

So this is exciting!  I was bugged because I was incapable of describing the other side of the granite wall.  So on a hunch, I googled "Eastman Garden" and found this photograph that I did of the West Garden from the mansion.  Now you can see what I was trying to describe.  I am sure the arched structure has a name but I'll be darned if I have ever heard of what it is called.  Anyhow, now you know what it looks like!

 

Bus Stop

I went for my three mile walk late this afternoon.  Down by Scudder's Pond I saw this little bus stop shelter.  It is for the North Shore Country Club and has always been there, and I have seen it, but it only jumped out at me today because it was seen surrounded by wonderful fall color!  How pretty this was! And there is something old fashioned about this simple structure, and nice because it is not made of plastic and metal like most bus shelters.  And it looks freshly painted as well.