Tappan Zee Bridge, and Moon

This is the new Tappan Zee Bridge, which I have photographed before.  And I photographed it today as we crossed it again on the way home.  DO NOT FREAK OUT!  Kathy was driving, which was really great and I could photograph the whole time we were crossing the bridge.  "From the day it opened in December 1955, the Tappan Zee Bridge powered significant economic currents on both sides of the river. Its impact was most dramatic in Rockland County, which evolved rapidly from a predominantly rural and agricultural area to a diverse and bustling suburb."  I never knew that!  It was a clear day driving home and the sun was near the horizon as we crossed the bridge, and it illuminated the bridge with this golden light. And look at that, I got the moon in the photograph as well!

 

Finally, the Wetland at Sunset

The condo that Vince and Jo Anne live in backs right up against a wetland with trees.  It has to be the best location in the whole complex to be able to see this.  I did a New York State birding program here in two days, having seen Wood duck her for the first time in my life. So I have taken a number of photographs like this view in the four years they have lived here.  But none of the photographs were goo enough.  But today, sitting in their sun room, looking out at this scene, I finally photographed a moment that I felt good about.  The sun room is such a lovely place to have a cup of tea late in the day and watch the sun go down in the woods.  We leave here tomorrow, and I can't wait to come back here and watch sunsets in the comfort of this warm, sunny room.

 

High Flight

I have a two mile walk that I do when up here staying with Vince and Jo Anne.  So I was out yesterday and it was later in the day with blue sky and cirrus clouds.  I had seen several contrails and photographed some.  Contrails are "condensation trails" that are the exhaust from the turbine engines on aircraft.  In the cold air at 36,000 feet, the moisture in the exhaust freezes and makes these long, thin clouds.  So I loved this shot with the man made contrail and cirrus clouds.  So I have this very cool app on my iPhone and you click on it to open it.  It uses the GPS in the phone to see where I am and centers me on the screen and then it shows all the aircraft in the sky near me!  So I looked this one up.  It is Delta 2479 from Boston to Chicago!  I mean how cool is that!  When I am home and out riding my bike, there are all these aircraft inbound to JFK.  I check some of them out, and always get kind of a far away feeling when I see a flight arriving from, for instance Paris, France or London.  It is fun to know where aircraft are coming from and going to.

 

Portraits of a Doe

I don't remember being this close to a deer, maybe ever.  I have seen them briefly by the side of the road when driving by, but never had the chance to study them for such a long time.  I was inside the clubhouse with large glass windows and one of the members said that there was a Doe outside!  I am guessing it was maybe 20 to 25 feet away and I only had a 24-70mm lens on the camera.  But I took the photos anyway, through the glass window even though the image was not very big.  I was able to crop into the image to get these larger images of the Doe.  What a magnificent animal these White-tailed deer are!  Just beautiful!

I had no idea that they would like to eat the grass!  They were really wary, keeping an eye on me and so I moved very slowly even though I was inside the building and even a slight movement would get them to stop and look at me very carefully.

They looked at me like this! 

And this is a beautiful view.  How rarely do we become face to face with nature, other than perhaps birds.  This was such a nice moment to have time to study them closely.  There were two Does but I think all my photographs are all of just one of them, but I am not sure.

 

What's Missing Here?

Here is a place I have photographed before.  But something is missing.  Any idea what it is?

An entire house is missing!  I photographed this derelict home when we were last in Rochester, back in April of 2023.  What is not obvious is that behind this house is a large area of farmland that has been bulldozed flat, and there are now a series of streets that have been installed.  And now there are buildings that are under construction.  They are multi-story, so I am not sure if they are condominiums or some other kind of living structures.  This house is on about 90 acres, so that's a lot of homes!

 

The Camera Club

Since Vince and Jo Anne have moved to their new condominium, I have become friends with two of their neighbors, both photographers.  How cool is that!  As luck would have it, it turned out there was a meeting of the Arbor Creek Photo Group today, and I was here!  So Vince invited me to the meeting of all these photographers.  What a great time I had!

It is such a wonderful group of people, from all professions who are interested in photography and can share their joy of photography with each other.  Some have pretty advanced equipment and others are doing astounding images with their iPhones!  It doesn't matter what you shoot with, it is what you see, and people in this group are all learning from each other and photographing so many different subjects.

They each have at least one photograph on the gallery on the wall of the community room.  It was nice to see the sharing of information between members.  What was also impressive to me is how knowledgable they all are about the world we live in, and many who have traveled extensively.  Not only do they do photographs, but they have a depth of understanding about their subjects and about history.  This room is filled with really smart people, and they were welcoming to me as well.

There had been a photo assignment for members, and they showed examples of their work on the assignment during the meeting.  There was also a detailed demonstration of a couple of new techniques that come in the latest version of Photoshop, and how to use these to best effect with some of your images.  I had heard of one of these techniques, but had no idea about what it did and how it was used, and I was stunned to see it used in the hands of an expert!

And of course there were all kinds of individual discussions among members during the break.  The meeting went on for over two hours, and it seemed a much shorter time than that.  It was such a rich esperience.  This group makes me wish I could go to all of their meetings!  Hey, it's only an 8 hour drive to get here!

"There's a Cow on the Front Lawn!"

We were driving up Route 96 a few miles south of Geneva. We were driving by farms and small houses and suddenly Kathy said "There's a cow on the front lawn!"  I said "What" and she repeated it.  She said she had never seen a cow on the front lawn of a house.  She said I should go back and photograph it.  So I turned the car around and drove back, and sure enough, there was the cow.  Only thing, it wasn't quite a "lawn."  And the house was abandoned.  You can see that a giant tree limb has fallen on the rear of the house.  But I did think this was a good photograph for the blog.  We are upstate, having driven up today, and so you will be seeing photographs from up here for a while on the blog.