Perfect Hexagons!

I started a new project today.  Painting the eaves and the shingles on the west side of the house.  So I used my longest ladder and got right up to the peak and started scraping.  There were remains of a paper wasp nest which I scraped off.  This is one of the circular sections which are built one under the other and then the whole next is surrounded by "paper" to protect it.  These are called "Brood Cells" and they are in a perfect honeycomb pattern.

How beautifully these perfect hexagons are, formed by legions of wasps working away non stop!  It is so amazing to me, and it shouldn't be, that these flying insects can make such uniform and perfect hexagons, which will be filled with eggs.  Like other social wasps, hornets build communal nests by chewing wood to make a papery pulp. Each nest has one queen, which lays eggs and is attended by workers that, while genetically female, cannot lay fertile eggs.  The eggs hatch in 5 to 8 days.  The nest dies over the winter, with lone queens hibernating in leaf litter or other insulative material until the spring.

 

"I'v Got One!"

We have seen so many people fishing down at Tappan Beach.  Sometimes standing on this little outcropping and sometimes on the water's edge, or sitting in chairs near the water, and sometimes wading knee deep in the water. We have NEVER seen anyone catch a fish, however!  Today we did!  We were resting after our walk and then suddenly saw this fisherman's rod bend way down!  So we stood there for 5 or ten minutes while he carefully reeled the fish in and on to the edge of the beach.  We didn't recognize the fish.  I think maybe it was 14 inches long or more.  But it had triangular fins on the side of it's body which seemed strange.  Anyhow once he beached it, he got a tool out and either unhooked the hook or cut it and removed it, and then let the fish swim away!  I love the sense of action in this photograph.  Finally I have someone DOING something in a photograph!  And this is so much better with his friend in front of him because the second person adds a lot more interest.

 

Five Minutes Later...

Luck again today!  I am serious about this photograph.  We were headed to the beach for our sunset walk and when we got to the bottom of Laurel Ave, I could see this in the distance. But it was a 5 minute drive and parking the car, and by the time I got the car parked and ran out onto the beach the sunlight on the cloud was fading.  It was exactly sunset.  But there was enough color to still make it an interesting photograph.  But I still feel lucky that the color lasted long enough for me to get this.  Five minutes more and all the color was gone.

 

Sun, Clouds and a Bird

We decided to do our walk at the end of the day, earlier than usual.  You have seen so many sunsets while we were walking because we waited until after dinner.  For some reason we decided to walk before dinner.  So it was nice, and there were less biting bugs, which I recently read come out closer to when the sun is going down.  I happened to look up and see the sun being obscured by clouds and then showing through and then being obscured again.  I used my toy camera and took about half a dozen images where you could see the sun't entire disk.  And when I saw some gulls going through the picture near the sun I shot quickly trying to capture one.  I think I got it perfectly!  It was almost random, but it worked.  For some reason I really like this photograph.  Can't begin to tell you why, sorry to say.

 

Gloria Steinem 1934 – 2026

I was so lucky in my career to photograph so many famous people.  The truth is, I probably loved photographing "regular" people more because I could spend time talking to them after the shoot and I also could take more time with our photo session.  For famous people like Gloria Steinem it was more likely that I photographed her during an interview, or had 10 minutes to photograph her at the end of the interview.   I think I photographed her in about 1975.  Ms. magazine was founded in 1971 and I think I did these photographs in her office at Ms.  She was so nice and was an easy subject to photograph.

 What was interesting, that in addition to photographing her I photographed so many more women who were involved in the Women's Movement back then.  I was working for the magazine and they did a lot of interviews with those women.  I was just working at the right time to photograph them.  What is wonderful is to read the Wikipedia entry for her and read all the things she and of course the other women accomplished.  One thing I forgot about was "Take Your Daughter to Work Day." Gloria Steinem had an amazing life and did so much for other women, both young and old.  It was difficult to pick which photograph is my favorite.  The first image shows her face when she is more lively, but it kills me that she is holding a cigarette in her fingers!  So I included the second photograph.

"Man in Abstract Suit"

A week or so ago Kathy and I went down to Uniondale to visit our lawyer.  Her office is located in RXR Plaza which is a set of two giant 15-story shining glass towers of office space on Hempstead Turnpike. The lobby of the building is huge - 22,000 square feet!  When we walked in the front door the first thing I saw was this ceramic sculpture in brilliant colors.  I was really taken by it, and I can't tell you why, but I spent a bit of time looking at it closely before I photographed it.  I thought maybe it looked like Richard Nixon!  I asked the guard at the desk if there was a text block that told who the artist was and what this was called.  He said "No, there is not sign."  How weird is that, to have a serious work of art in a building like this, with no information about it.  Then I got a brilliant idea!  I would send this to Google Images because it is astounding what it can tell you about an item in a photo. And the answer is:  "This sculpture appears to be Man in Abstract Suit (1988) by the renowned American ceramic artist Viola Frey.  It features a larger-than-life, monumental figurative style crafted from ceramic and vivid, multi-layered glazes."  So there you go!  Thank you Google!  So do you like this sculpture? By the way, It was so frustrating that those three stanchions and black webbing were in front of the sculpture!

Fresh Tomatos

How do these look as fresh tomatos?  They are really delicious!  Last year our friend Larry gave us a tomato plant and we put it in the ground and got a few fresh tomatoes.  This year Kathy said "Don't pull that up it is not a weed" when the plant re-emerged from the ground.  We were not paying attention and It grew crazy fast and took over the entire herb garden and was growing out over the lawn.  I finally added a couple of stakes and tied the tomato plant up some.  These are unbelievably delicious.  They are only as large as a kid's glass marble but they taste like REAL tomatoes! And they smell wonderful as well.  How unusual given what store bought tomatoes tase like these days!

Maybe if you click on this you can begin to separate the tomato plant growing out over the lawn.  It is just growing gangbusters all over the place!

I was looking closely into the plant and found these green tomatoes down inside.  If you click on this photo you will see some astounding detail in the tomatoes, especially the green, star-shaped part at the top of a tomato which is called the calyx.  There are very tiny hairs on the calyx and on the stalk the tomatoes are growing on.  You will not believe the detail!