Landscape Lessons, 1

I have been to this place before. And I didn't get a good picture then either! This picture is not posted because I think it is a real photograph, but rather to show you what the place looks like. I was here last spring and everything was green and when I drove by, caught sight of it and decided to look for a photo. I didn't get one. This morning I passed it again, and with the muted colors of fall, mirror-smooth water with some mist on it, I thought for sure I would find a real photo. Well, I started looking and I was not finding anything. So I thought it would make a good blog to tell you that sometimes you CAN'T find a photo, just because you want one. Then I thought: "That's ridiculous, you can ALWAYS find a photo!" So I went looking, just to prove a point. So tomorrow, and for a few days after I will show you what I found, and you can tell me what you think.

The Bird & The Cat

I was having breakfast at the dining table, which faces these windows in the living room. It was the curl of the cat's tail that grabbed my attention. I think if it was hanging straight down, I would not have gotten up to make the shot. As it was, this was dicey - I got up to go into the living room and get my Canon point-and-shoot, and of course the cat turned around and watched me, even though I was moving very slowly and quietly. "Please don't move." I said to myself, and the kitty didn't. I stood there with the camera, and she got bored with me and went back to looking out the window, and I managed to get this shot.

The Only Casulty

Some of you will be thrilled to know that I am down off the roof for the rest of the winter. The front half of the roof is done! In spring, or fall, I will start on the back half, which will be a bit easier because there is less area of roof to tear off and re-roof. So the good news is that I didn't fall off the roof, or break any parts of myself in the process. There was one casualty, however. I had this really nice pair of silver Air Nike running shoes with a bright red swoosh, in mint condition. I found when I started roofing that I needed softer soled shoes than I had on my work boots. The roofing material is relatively fragile when it is warm out, and the harder soled shoes damage the granules and the asphalt underneath. So these shoes were perfect. I spend a lot of time sitting on the roof working and so the granules wore away the fabric on my nice new shoes. And they are black from the dirt when I was tearing off the roof. When I saw how beat up they had become in a short time, I decided to make a studio setup on my dining room table and drag in the big strobe unit and try several different kinds of lighting to see which lighting showed off the shoes the best. I like this one.

Cleaning Up The Yard

Obviously this is not a photo of cleaning up the yard, which is what I did today. I Loaded wheelbarrows full of the shingles I had torn off the old roof before putting on the new one, into the dumpster on the street. How interesting a photo would that make? Right, not very. So instead, here is a photo I made in Rhode Island a month or two ago while we visiting friends. My friend Dick is a landscape photographer and knows all the good spots all around Rhode Island, so he drove us here one night, knowing I would enjoy having a chance to shoot this. It is the Mount Hope Bridge, designed in 1927 and is a prize-winning suspension bridge over Mount Hope Bay between Portsmouth and Bristol, RI. With a main span of 1200 feet, the Mount Hope Bridge was for many years the longest suspension bridge in New England. So I thought you might like to see this shot at night, instead of me working in my yard.

Looking Up

I had stopped to visit my friend Steve in Northport, and when leaving his building, happened to look up as I was getting into my car. I saw this, and it stopped me. Not sure why, once again. I had not found my picture for the day though, so figured I would shoot this. After I got closer to home I found something I liked better, so this has been sitting in the "possibles" folder for the blog, and since I didn't find anything today, here it is for you. This kills me, though - in the original the yellow is very bright and the blue much more saturated. You should know that I am now looking at a couple of website building apps, and if I am smart enough to actually LEARN them, I will begin a new site which I host, and which will have pictures that are both larger, and more brilliant in their color. Stay tuned...

Our Mailbox

Now that daylight savings time is gone, it is dark when I get home from work. I pulled over just short of the driveway and parked the car on this particular evening, and the scene outside the window grabbed my attention in some way. I grabbed the camera and did a few exposures, then put the headlights on high beam to see if I liked that version of lighting better. There was something about the scene that seemed a bit strange or unusual or mysterious. So I shot it! After all, that's what I do...

Not Wine

It was back to the vinyards today. The story is that 2007 is looking like one of the best years ever for wine on Long Island. Of course we will have to wait to 2010 for the wines to be released. I did some portraits of winery owners, then decided to do some kind of generic wine photograph This is a glass of wine that was drawn from the fermentation tanks, which is the first step in the long process of wine making. I played with this glass of not-wine-yet for probably half an hour in different situations and using different compositions. I think this composition is the most interesting.