Fathers and Sons Learning to Fish

On our walk tonight we saw two young boys who I think were learning to fish.  I think they were with their fathers, but I am not sure.  There were two adults and two children, and the children were casting their lures out into the harbor and their skill was impressive.  Every once in a while one of the adults would come over and offer a suggestion to the kids, but mainly they were on their own.  It was so wonderful seeing the fathers and sons interact as the young boys were learning about fishing.

  The other dad was just outside the frame of this photo and I reluctantly cropped him out because he was at some distance from the others.

I liked the first photograph because it gives a sense of place and a sense of what was going on.  In photography, when working on a "photo story" that first photograph in the layout is usually an "establishing shot" which gives the reader this information.  Then you move in and do a more detailed photograph, as here, where the dad is showing the son something specific about, in this case, how to control the direction of the cast.  It was really nice seeing these fathers and sons together.

 

A "Sea" of Grocery Carts!

I have never seen so many grocery carts all together like this, ever in my life!  Of course this is at Costco, where there are lots and lots of shoppers, and they need lots and lots of carts.  Kathy and I went down there at suppertime which we find is a great time to go because it is much less crowded.  So with less people inside, there are more shopping carts outside.  I was stunned to see this many carts.  Usually there are less than half the number of carts when we have gone at busy times.   I was just stunned!  So, I did not have the "toy camera" with me - My Sony RX100 VII.  So I quickly got out my iPhone and did three quick shots.  I counted the number of carts in the row starting with the cart right in front of us here and it is 28 carts to the building.  Counting from left to right is just impossible.  IF there were 11 rows from the left to the right, that would be a minimum of 300 carts!  Astounding!  Please click on the image because it is an extra large size with more detai.

 

Which Wires Can't I Touch?

This is the "service entrance" for the electricity in our house.  The two black wires coming in from the top left are 120 volts AC each.  They are wrapped around a bare braided ground wire, so in the house, depending on how you set up the circuit breaker panel, you can get either 120 volts AC, or you can get 240 volts AC.  So you are looking at the newly painted siding on the house as well as the pipe that carries the wires into the house.  So I had to put my aluminum extension ladder in and around these wires in order to paint the house.  Which wires should I not touch?  At the bottom is the incoming fiber optic feed from Verizon FIOS for our internet, phone and cable TV.  OK so the answer is I touched them all because they are all insulated, so no risk to me.  But I sure was mindful of the voltage present.  Mainly I took this photo because it looked like some kind of artistic composition and I was fascinated by both the shapes of the wires, and the shadows of the wires..

 

Time to Revisit the Japanese maple Tree

I always glance at the beautiful Japanese maple tree by the side of the driveway every time I walk down to fetch the newspaper, which, of course is Newsday.  The tree always looks a bit different depending on the light and the weather.  For some reason it stopped me in my tracks this morning and I returned to the house to get my camera.  When we moved in to this house in 1970 it was a young tree and I sometimes still think of it as a "small tree."  But it is not!  Look at the size of the main limbs that join in the center!  This tree is just amazing and so beautiful.  I do worry that it is getting old, just like me, and that one of these large branches could break off and dramatically change how the tree looks.

You have seen photographs taken of this tree before using my camera that has been modified to only capture infrared light, and this is yet another photograph.  After doing the first photograph in color, I went back into the house and got the infrared camera, just to see once again how it transforms everything.  The most dramatic change is that any living plant with chlorophyl in the foliage reflects huge amounts of infrared light, and so those plants glow as white in terms of brightness.  It makes some scenes magical.

 

And Now For Somethng Completelhy Different

Well, here is something different, after seeing all these landscape and seascape photos, huh?  You will never in a million years guess what this is!  Or will you?  We were having dinner tonight, chicken marsala, and I went to the fridge to get a glass of Reisling.  The bottle was nearly completely empty!  So I got another bottle from the basement but dinner was ready so I did the unthinkable - I put three ice cubes in my wine glass and poured the wine.  So the wine was deliciously cold - colder than normal, of course because of the ice cubes.  And then, of course the moist air in the room condensed on the outside of the glass.  I thought nothing of it.  Until the wine was gone. Then I held the glass up to the light and saw the water drops closely.  So I put a macro lens on my SONY a7 and started photographing the side of the glass.  The actual photograph was much wider than this but as I worked on the photo and enlarged it I was stunned at how each water drop was a different shape.  A few drops ran down the middle of the glass, making that miniature river in the center.  No one was more surprised at what I got, than me!  Oh, this is an extra large image so please click on it and be amazed.  Thanks!

 

The Nor'easter Today

You would never really know that we were having a nor'easter pass through, at least at Hempstead Harbor.  I went down at about 10 AM.  About an hour earlier the winds were gusting quite a bit and there was some heavy rain for a short while.  This is what I found.  The winds were calm and there were really no waves at all.  Other parts of Long Island had a lot of flooding.  There was fog, so in the distance you are faintly seeing Port Washington across the harbor.  These grasses are beautiful waving back and forth in the water and so I thought it worth a photograph.

I did run into other people walking because it was actually nice out with no winds and no rain to speak of.  I also found a father with a young daughter and son.  He said they just wanted to get out of the house and go for a walk!

 

The Nor'easter, So Far...

The forecasts were for high water and strong winds for the nor'easter which arrived today.  So I looked up high tide, which was at noon and walked down the street in my foul weather gear to see what I could see.  I needn't have done that because there was no rain to speak of.  The winds were not all that much and the waves, because of lack of wind were nothing to speak of either.  But every once in a while there would be a larger wave smashing into the boat launch ramp and then shooting up into the air, which was impressive.  At least I got something interesting.

So I did take this photograph before the one above.  I think the first photo was more impressive but I like this better because it is prettier to look at I think.

Then there are always "these guys!"  Every time the road floods from rain or in this case, salt water spilling into the road, most people drive through the deeper water slowly.  And then there are these people who do not.  I have to be so careful, because on the other side of the road where I photographed the crashing waves, I had my back to the road, and my camera and I could have been splashed with SALT water!  So I kept a wary eye out for the hot rodders.  This is kind of a stupid thing - this is not rain runoff but salt water you have seen washing up the boat ramp.  So do you want your car to have salt water splashing up into the engine compartment of your nice car?  Most people would not want that.