A Different Way to See

I walk this route so many times, and I kind of know all the best views for photographs.  Which is good because if I am walking in a snowstorm or rain or fog or see orange light from sunset, I know right where to go for the best shot.  But I am always looking for "different" ways of seeing these wonderful Sycamore trees.  And I found this view the other day.  I. cannot remember how I came to this, but it is really unusual to have the tree trunk split the photograph right right down the center.  I love how there is a tree shot on the left and a sidewalk and harbor shot on the right.  It is interesting and a nice exercise in an unusual composition.

Salt Cod???

I was in line at the fish counter at our grocery store.  While I was waiting I happened to see this - I mean it is really hard to miss - seeing some hard, pure white "stuff" in a box in the fresh fish section!  It hardly looks like something to eat at all!  I could not imagine what someone could make to eat starting with this!  Dried and salted cod has been produced for over 500 years in Newfoundland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands and in Norway!  I thought it was dried and salted on the fishing boat, but it was actually dried and salted on shore, so that it could be shipped long distances and stored up to a couple of years!   So, below is an excerpt from "The Joy of Cooking" about what to do with the salt cod in order to turn it into a meal!  Coming from New England, I had heard about salt cod all my life, but I had never seen it before!  Wow, 48 hours of rinsing it to get all the salt out of it!

A Brilliant Young Man!

This is Mak, and his mom Valerie.  They first came to ASLI in January of 2025.  He was interested in astronomy and of seeing galaxies.  So he learned some things about astronomy from many of the people in the club and decided he wanted to be able to photograph faint galaxies and nebulae.  So his mom went to an astronomy store and bought him a semi-automated telescope which finds objects in the sky and then it starts taking long exposures of them.  It "stacks" one image on top of another and then another until a faint objects is captured, and you can do this for an hour or 3 hours or 6 hours, or for a number of different nights until you have a good photograph.  That's because some objects are so faint.  Then you have to use some sophisticated software to work on the photograph to make it better.  Mak did that, gathering 14 hours of exposures on something called the "Eagle Nebula."  He worked on it for days and days in an image program like Photoshop, but more complicated and only used for night sky images.  In the end he got a stunning photograph and at the urging of one of our members, he entered it in a contest called the "Youth Imaging Award" from "The Astronomical League" and he won Second Place!  This included amateur astronomers and imagers from all over the United States!  His mom asked me to present him with his plaque at the meeting tonight, which is what I did.  What an astounding compliment this was to his skill and determination and patience to create his prize winning image!  We are all so proud of him!

 

The Power Grid

I stop at a number of places on my bikeride.  I have checkpoints along the way that I stop and write down my times to see how I am performing as I ride.  The last place I stop is near the old power plant.  This time I just happened to look up toward the sun and saw all this electrical infrastructure.  I am not sure what is in here but it is definitely still in use, with lines leaving there and going up to a tower where they are connected to really high voltage lines.  I think there may be transformers behind the wall.  But I loved seeing all the high voltage wires and ceramic insulators everywhere within this framework. So this is all part of what brings electricity to our homes.

 

Vivian Lost Her First Tooth!

Today was Vivian's birthday!  She is six years old!  So we had a Facetime today with Vivian and Amy and Gus.  We knew that she had a tooth that was hanging for a day or two, and it finally came out about two days ago, and so today we see it for the first time.  How could I forget that Liz and Amy went through this, with one by one their baby teeth came out and were replaced with permanent adult teeth.  So it is fun to see this again with Vivian!

 

Rainstorm

At the beginning of last week, we had two days of good rain.  I was standing on the front porch looking out when it started raining hard for a bit, so I took my toy camera and made this photograph.  I love the atmospheric effect of so much rain that it almost looks foggy as you look further into the distance.  And I like the feeling of this photograph as well, whatever that is.   Please click on this to examine it in a larger size and you can see the streaks of raindrops throughout the picture.

 

Lucia and I

It was time for a haircut today, so I called Lucia to see if she had a spot this afternoon, and fortunately she did.  Kathy and I have been coming to Lucia for haircuts I am thinking, for about 30 years plus. Kathy asked a friend who suggested Lucia and originally she had her salon in the basement of her house. I think neighbors complained about the cars parking there, so she rented a salon and we have been coming here ever since.  I love coming here for the life that goes on here. There are several hairdressers that have been with her for years, and Janet who does the shampooing,  who we have known for as as long as Lucia has been in this location.  She has a lot of Italian customers and the shop is usually full and there is so much conversation back and forth in Italian and Spanish and the shop always feels so alive with conversation.  There is always the offer of an espresso when I arrive.  So at the end of my haircut I asked if I could do a portrait of the both of us and she said "yes."  So here we are, friends after so many years.