Back Working Again

I'm back at work again!  Well, not exactly.  I mean I did a self-assigned portrait tonight after the astronomy meeting.  A friend of mind, Steve, needed a portrait showing him with something astronomy related.  So I set him up in front of a giant painting of the moon on the wall in the plandetarium lobby, and then I asked hin to bring his automated telescope, which is seen on the table in the background.  I used two lights for the scene, one with an umbrella to the right, and another less powerful light way in the background on the left which put a highlight on the left side of his face, and on the brightest part of his automated telescope.  That second light from the left makes a world of difference in the sense of the photograph.  How'd I do?

 

The Collector

This is another case of following another walker down on the beach, from overhead.  I photographed this woman first, then the dog walker.  So there are two different photographs and I am trying to figure out which is best.  I think it is the one above.  I like that she is pretty much in silhouette, with no details visible.  I chose one where she is leaning a bit forward.

I took this one before the one above and we can see details in the woman and her clothing.  So I can't decide if seeing the way she is dressed matters.  She is apparently collecting "something" but she was asked by someone down on the beach what she was looking for with her little white net on the end of a stick, and she did not seem to give an answer. She does have a long white plastic bag on her front to put whatever she was looking for, into.  This second photograph has more detail, including her brightly decorated leggings, but I don't think this photograph is as effective as an interesting image.  What do you all think?  Would you choose the first photograph, or the second?  Thank you in advance for you choices.  Oh, please click on each image to see more detail before voting.  Thanks!

 

"How much snow did ya get?"

This is our little cement garden angel which I love seeing in the garden all year long.  I think it is about one foot tall, more or less.  We had gotten 3 inches of snow when I took this photograph, on January 24th..

After our first large snowfall which I think was 12 inches or so, I happened to notice that just her head was visible, but this must have been a week later.  So I walked out to the garden and did this photograph.  After the second snowfall where we got 12 to 14 inches of snow, on February 23 she completely disappeared!   So the snow has been melting for 7 days now, and today I could see just the very top of her head emerging from the snow!  So the answer is, "we got a lot of snow!" 

 

Moonrise

I went out to the garage to put some bottles in the recycling container and there was the nearly full moon rising behind the trees next door.  What a beautiful sight.  Funny, I usually have a sense of the current phase of the moon, but sometimes I lose track and then I am surprised, as I was to see this.  And that is always fun.  If the sky had been brighter, I would have been able to show some detail in the moon, instead of it being just a white circle.  But it's not a bad shot.

 

How I Take Photographs

I brought my camera with me today on my walk to the old power plant, and wasn't expecting much with all the ice gone.  I was up on the sidewalk about 10 feet above the beach which I could see because the tide was dead low.  I wasn't expecting much.  I did see a woman walking her dog and it didn't look interesting because I was looking down on her.  But I followed along as she walked and took pictures.  She was close to the bulkhead, but as we got closer to Tappan Beach she moved further away from me and closer to the water.  I kept shooting, just because that is what I do. So below is the first photograph I took and it is just not interesting. I took a total of 23 photographs, and this photograph, above, is the last one. And THIS is a real photograph, not just a snapshot!  Lucky me.  There is an old saying, attributed to Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors the prepared mind."  I believe in that and that belief has served me well my whole career.  So it may be luck, but it is also hard work.  So now you know a little bit more about how I work.

 

Ice Blocks!

I thought I would drive by the beach today just to see what it looked like.  You saw the beach completely covered with huge ice blocks and people on them only two days ago!  What a change!

This is actually the first view I saw of these ice blocks today and I was stunned.  To go from the entire beach covered with blocks of ice to just this in two days is almost beyond belief.  I thought it was the coolest thing I had seen!  Some of thewe blocks are almost two feet thick.

These blocks in the distance are so thick I do wonder how long it will take for them to completely melt.  The thinner slabs in the foreground are only maybe 10" thick.  This ice on the beach is the gift that keeps on giving.  I never know what to expect next.

 

People on the Ice!

I went for my walk down along the harbor yesterday.  When I got to the bottom of Laurel Avenue at the harbor I couldn't believe my eyes!  There were two people out on the ice!  They were close to shore and carefully walking further out as they explored.  I had my camera ready and started blasting away as fast as I could as they moved around on the giant ice blocks.  OK, not to panic!  It is dead low tide, and all of the ice blocks within a couple of hundred feet of the shore are sitting on the sandbars.  They are not floating.  I was so excited because suddenly there is a human dimension to all this ice. seeing how small a couple is compared to all the ice makes for a much more interesting photograph than all the others!  Human scale can be so important in some landscape photography.  This is an extra large image so please click on it.