How to Make a Cowboy Hat

I went to the city on Thursday to meet Stan and to see a huge photo exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt Museum.  The photographer was Christopher Payne and the exhibit is called "Made in America."  His photographs of both giant factories, like at Boeing, or smaller facilities, like the Bollman Hat Company founded in 1868, in Pennsylvania are both beautiful and illuminating.  This is an exhibit showing the all the stages of how a cowboy hat is created, and there are a number of photographs on the wall in this room showing the people and the process.  But seeing a pink cowboy hat was amazing!  Who ever heard of a pink cowboy hat!  But it is something for a woman to wear when she is dressed up.

The construction starts at the lower left foreground with the wool, and then it is made into the next stage, to the right, and you can follow the procedure to the finished hat.  There are text blocks which explain each phase.  What a wonderful thing to see. And the photographs are just beautiful and astounding.

 

Waiting for the Train

I love changing trains in Jamaica.  There are  eight tracks and you get off your train, and then wait for the next train to take you to either Penn Station, or Grand Central Madison.  So I am always kind of idly looking at the passengers on the other platforms.  When I saw this woman I stopped in my tracks. I think it was the light illuminating her that caught my attention first.  There was a band of bright sunlight illuminating the platform just in front of her, and then reflecting up to illuminate her.  And then I noticed the quiet way she was standing there, moving very little.  So I took my camera out of my backpack and held it down at my side and pointed it at her blindly, and wonder of wonders, she was in the frame.  I love that is such a quiet photograph, and beautiful as well.

 

"Street Photography" in the City

I was trying to take a candid photograph of this young woman because she looked so cool, with her wonderful hair and headphones on.  I first saw her in silhouette, and her headphones were more obvious.  So I didn't look at her, but instead held my camera down by my waist and pointed the camera in her direction and took a few photos.  In most of the others she was not even in the frame!  I cannot believe I got this one!  I had seen the man but he was looking down the tracks.  So this is an accident, but, still I got this photograph in the end.  "Luck favors the very prepared."  "Street Photography" by the way is when you photograph people candidly walking down the street or on subway platforms.  It is really hard to do well.  And luck really helps.

 

A Puzzle

I was on my 2 mile walk, shortened from 2.6 miles because of the heat.  I walk by the swimming pool at Tappan Beach every time I walk, but never noticed this.  But I was walking earlier in the day and the pool was still open and this is one of the attendants I am thinking, sitting in a chair on the other side of this privacy fence. This just caught my eye and I stopped and quickly took about four frames and then looked at them on the back of the camera and figured that I got it.  I think it is unusual for me to shoot anything like this.  I called it "The Puzzle" because it looks like one, I thought.

 

Storm Warning

Today was Dunkin' day at the beach.  It was very windy and there were low gray clouds overhead. I noticed these red and green flags frantically blowing in the breeze and wondered what it might look like if I tried to take a photograph of the flags against the sky.  I really only tried one view, with a slight move from left to right to get the flags so they didn't overlap.  These are not about storm warnings at all, of course.  They are the flags posted on the beach, with one set to the right of the lifeguard tower, and an identical set to the left of the  tower, so that the swimmers know where to swim and where not to swim.  I like the photograph a lot because of the mood it establishes.

 

Flowers at Rum Point

When I was down photographing the water company workers, I wandered just a small distance down the sidewalk to look at this little park.  It is not very big, but has maybe 5 benches that people can sit on while looking out at the harbor.  I used to stop here at the end of my bike ride and cool down.  I realized recently that the park looks so much nicer!  The lawn is no longer bare and someone has made this beautiful garden of flowers.   So I spent some time looking for the best view.  I love the geese seen through an opening of the fence.  Oh, they have a sign there that says this piece of the land is called Rum Point.

 

Observing Night

This is my friend Lawrence and I out observing for the first time together.  We have been trying to get together with our telescopes for more than a year.  He found a used telescope in a shop and wanted to go out observing so that I could show him a few things about using it.  Tonight was the night and the skies looked pretty good so we went to Sunken Meadow State Park.  It turned out that there was a lot of light pollution but we saw a globular cluster and a galaxy and a triple star and a beautiful double star, with stars of different colors.  This was his first time observing and he was overwhelmed by the experience and can't wait to go observing again.  We will have to head further out east to darker skies for out next trip