The Dining Room is Done!

The dining room is done!  It's been done for two weeks, but I have been doing all those posts from my trip to New York City.  It looks beautiful, doesn't it?  And aren't you glad I am posting something different than my Manhattan photographs?  We are thrilled this is done.  It was a LOT of work due to the fact that wallpaper had to be removed from all the walls.   Kathy gets all the credit for removing the wallpaper which was a really awful job!  It's fun to sit back and just look at all our work, and see how beautiful the room is now!

 

Escape to New York - XV

OK, this is absolutely the LAST of my posts titled "Escape to New York."  I thought I was done yesterday but looking back over my photographs I discovered this picture of a Tiffany stained glass window on display at the Met.  The piece is called "Autumn Landscape", and the design is attributed to Agnes Northrop for Tiffany Studios.  This window is described as a tour deforce of it's medium.  This window was commissioned for an enormous Gothic Mansion in Boston, but it was never installed and instead was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It is stunning to see in person, because it is huge - the window and its frame are eleven feet tall!  And it is beautiful beyond imagining!

 

Escape to New York - XIV

This is the brand new Daniel Patrick Moynihan Train Hall that is actually inside the old post office, which is across 8th Avenue from Penn Station.  It is quite beautiful, I think, with the incredible skylights and the old fashioned styled ironwork holding the ceiling up.  It is bright and modern and airy and clean, compared to the Long Island Railroad train area, which is also being updated.  That's why the low, red, I-Beams were overhead in the photographs I showed in one of my early posts from New York.  There is a tunnel from this area, down under Eighth Avenue over to Penn Station, which is wonderful if it is raining or snowing.  This hall will allow for more access to the LIRR trains, and they are planning on adding more tracks for more trains under this hall.  This is also an additional terminal for Amtrack and New Jersey Transit as well.  They did such a nice job with this, I can't wait to see what they do with the redesigned LIRR area.  Stay tuned!

Here are two detailed photographs of the ironwork and the huge skylight windows.  So nicely done!  Be SURE to click on the first photograph because I posted it in a larger size and it will enlarge to fill your screen!

 

Escape to New York - XIII

 

It had been over a year since I had been to Manhattan, and I was absolutely stunned to discover that there is a brand new entrance down to the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station!  Whoa!  Who even knew they were going to build that?  I did show you a photograph near the beginning of this series from inside Penn Station.  So now you know what the outside looks like.  A very cool, modern stairway.  It is a direct way to get to the track level where the trains leave and arrive from.  Before this new stairway, you had to take an escalator or stairs down one level, turn a corner, and then take another escalator or stairs down to the track level.  A huge improvement!

And just as a reminder, here is a different view from the LIRR level, looking up the escalator toward the glass entrance way, above.  This is all very cool!

Escape to New York - XII

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this!  A young woman on an electric scooter, traveling in the middle of traffic on Fifth avenue, heading downtown!  In the middle of traffic, with cars passing her on each side.  Yikes!  I mean maybe it is safer riding in the middle of the street, instead of being over near the curb where busses and taxis are always pulling over to pick up or discharge passengers.  Still, I worry about this woman's safety.

 

Escape to New York - XI

After I did yesterday's photograph of the park, I continued my walk down Fifth Avenue.  This woman with her umbrella had passed me when I was photographing the the park, and I realized that there was a photograph to be had, involving the purple umbrella!  You would have laughed yourself silly if you saw me trying to get this shot.  I couldn't shoot while walking because the light was not very bright late in the day.  So I would run-walk to get closer to this woman, and then quickly stop and shoot a few frames as the woman walked away from me.  Then I would quickly run after her again, stop when I got close, and shoot some more!  Man, if you had watched me from a distance you would have thought I was a crazy person and you would have called the police!  But it is a lovely photograph, don't you think?

Escape to New York - X

Wow, I am really beating "Escape to New York" to death, huh?  I am almost out of photographs so soon I will be back to more normal stuff.  When I left the museum, I did my usual walk of 20 blocks back down Fifth avenue to the subway at 59th street.  I walked slowly, looking into Central Park hoping for a photograph for all the trees and plants in bloom.  I did find this photograph and the thing I really liked was the three skyscrapers disappearing into the overcast clouds.

 

Escape to New York - IX

So this may be one of the most bizarre photographs I have taken lately.  I was in one of the galleries at the Met.  In galleries, there are temporary walls which the paintings are hung on and because they are temporary walls, there are air spaces between them and the permanent walls.  Here there is a piece of glass fastened in one of those spaces.  One of the museum guards on the other side put his foot on the top of the piece of glass and then was bending over stretching.  I know this because I walked around the wall and saw him doing this!  Standing on this side, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the shoe appear, and then the hand!  This is so weird and funny!

 

Escape to New York - VIII

So how's this for something that makes your eyes hurt!  It is Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawing #370.  I have seen a lot of his work before - he has four floors in a building, just for his work, at Mass MoCA.  I searched and apparently I never did a blog post about his work, which seems strange.  I did a previous post about this project, back in 2014, showing the artists at work masking and painting this wall drawing.  Using the little white search box in the upper left hand corner of the blog, do a search for "Sol Lewitt."  I love this photograph because without the woman, it wouldn't amount to much, but her presence makes the photograph.

 

Escape to New York - VII

"This is Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt and the moon, artfully aiming her bow and arrow.  Posed on tiptoe, she is fleetingly static, depicted in a split-second moment of physical and narrative suspense.  The figure's graceful, simplified lines and elongated proportions reward from all angles, a note to her original public function as a rotating weathervane for the tower of Madison Square Garden (demolished 1925) one of New York's most popular landmarks."  This is actually a half-size version of the weatherane statue, created by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.  That is some weathervane, huh?  Perhaps the most beautiful weathervane I have ever seen!

 

Escape to New York - VI

So while Stan and I were wandering around the gallery where the Rothko paintings were on display,  I looked out a window in the gallery at three skyscrapers which disappeared into the clouds.  I was composing an image looking through the window when suddenly I saw a reflected silhouette of Stan, who was standing behind me!  I turned around and asked him not to move, and then I took this photograph.  An interesting collection of "things" in one photograph.

 

Escape to New York - V

 

When I am in museums with my camera, which is always, I like to keep my eye out for people looking at the artwork.  When I saw this woman and her iridescent blue jacket in the gallery, I thought it would make an interesting photograph, because she was the brightest thing in the room!  She out-shone the black and white etchings she was looking at.

So here's the funny thing - Stan and I moved on to a gallery showing abstract impressionistic paintings, and specifically four Mark Rothko works.  I have been working for perhaps five years to try and understand more, and experience more while viewing Rothko paintings.  So I stood in front of this painting which I love, and did not move for 5 or 10 minutes while I was absorbing it.  Of course what I didn't know was that Stan saw me and did this photo with his phone!  "Turnabout is fair play," as they say!  (Photograph by Stan Honda)

Escape to New York - IV

I think that this is my favorite view inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This gallery is called the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court.  When you enter the Met from the Fifth Avenue entrance, you go up the grand stairway, and turn left at the top of the stairs and head over toward some of the main galleries.  On the way, you pass several windows that look down on this scene.  I love the contrast between the white marble statues, and the dark silhouettes of the visitors

So the main exhibit we wanted to see was "Goya's Graphic Imagination" which filled three galleries with etchings and "brush and brown ink wash on laid paper."  The artworks were amazing!  What was really astounding was the incredibly fine detail in the etchings!  It was beyond imagining!  What made the exhibit exhausting, actually was the number of artworks, AND the text that you need to read in order to understand what the work was about.  The above etching is called "Thou who canst not." AND it is a CROPPED version of the whole art work.  What could this be about?  Two men with donkeys on their backs?  Here is some of the text provided by the curator:

"The print has been interpreted as a satire on the uselessness of the nobility and the clergy, whose upkeep had become a financial burden for the impoverished working population. In other prints from the series, the ass appears as a device to ridicule ignorance in professions such as medicine, education, and the law."  So you really did have to read all the text in order to understand the art.  Whew!  PLEASE be sure to click on the image to see all the fine detail

Escape to New York - III

 

So after leaving Penn station, I took the N train up to 5th Avenue and 59th street, so I can walk the 23 blocks north to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  When I got off my subway train, I looked across the tracks to the platform on the other side, and saw these bright red boots!  A picture!

This view looks up the west side of Fifth avenue heading north which is where I walk.  So nice to see so much green as the trees are leafing out.  I was wondering how I could find out what trees these are.  So I did a Google search, and get THIS!  There is a tree map online that identifies trees all over the city's five boroughs!  Wow!  How cool is that!  So the answer is, these are American elm trees.

Escape to New York - II

I can't believe this.  I haven't been to Manhattan in a year, and I haven't been to Penn Station.  I figured Penn Station would be fine without my checking on it, right?  Well, I was wrong!  In one short year, look what has happened to Penn!  These enormous I-beams have reduced the ceiling height so that it feels they are only a foot over your head.

And THEN I got to the end of the corridor and was stunned to see these chrome escalator railings leading to a giant opening in the ceiling with a light blue map of the five boroughs, surrounding a giant window to the sky!  Wow!  A whole new direct entrance to the Long Island Railroad area at Penn Station!  Unreal.  What a surprise to see this bright opening at the end of a mundane, relatively dark corridor, that I have walked through for years!  This changes everything!

 

Escape to New York!

Today I escaped!  After more than a year, I finally have my Covid vaccinations, I waited the proscribed time, I masked up, and I headed to the Long Island Railroad station at Glen Head, and I took a train to the city!  I was the only person on the platform when the train came!  

It was kind of cool to see the train pull into the station!  There were about 6 people in the car I was in and we were all spread out.  I felt completely safe traveling on the train.  What was surprising were all the changes I saw along the route in the year's time since I rode the train last.  In Jamaica, there are half a dozen or more new buildings right near the tracks, and the effect is astounding - it is a completely new skyline there.  Tomorrow I will tell you more about my trip.

 

Point of View

I think the dining room is coming along nicely, don't you?  The green around the bay windows is the color the room was painted when we bought the house.  Kathy has stripped that, and I need to look for any holes or scrapes and go over them with joint compound.  Then BIN sealer, then gray primer then the final coat of red.  I know, I know, I am over-doing it.  Hey, but that's who  am!  So why did I title this "Point of View?"  Because if I stand over by the windows and take a picture facing the other way, you see this!  It all depends on your point of view.

OK, so that looks much better, doesn't it.  It looks like maybe we are 3/4 finished with the room.  It does look much nicer than it did with fresh paint on the walls and trim.

 

Purple Haze

Purple Haze indeed, with apologies to Jimi Hendrix!  When you see our Japanese maple from a distance the last two days, it seems to be enveloped in a purple haze.  It is actually the buds starting to open.  So I grabbed the Nikon with the 60mm Micro-Nikkor closeup lens on it, which will do photographs of things so close that they are twice the size in the photo, than they are actually.  So I spent some time and took three different photographs and couldn't make up my mind which I liked best.  So here are three photographs, for the price of one!   Which one is your favorite?

 

"Film Photography Day"

 

I received an email this morning from Hunt's Photo announcing that April 12 is "Film Photography Day." Who ever heard of that?  Is that real, or made up?  Well I checked and it is real, but I was not sure if it meant I could not shoot digital images on Film Photography Day!  So I decided to dig through my archives and find an unpublished image shot with film.  You can tell this is a real film image because it was shot with my 4x5 camera on Polaroid Type 55 P/N film and you can tell that by the borders around the image.  This is a famous petroglyph which I photographed at Sears Point, Arizona.  There are hundreds of petroglyphs here that lie next to the Gila River.  Petroglyphs are difficult to date, so archaeologists have no way of knowing their age.  But what is amazing about this one, is that the rock has fractured since the Petroglyph was chipped in the surface.  How's that for a mind bending exercise in the passage of time.  Can you find a person in this photograph?

Saved By The Cat!

It was raining today, and I didn't have any ideas for a blog post.  Then this afternoon, Kathy said "Come see this!"  And here was Grace, sitting on the top step of the new 6-foot step ladder!  I could not believe my eyes!  I slowly picked up my small SONY camera, took it out of its pouch, turned it on and slowly lifted it to my eye, and hoped that Grace would not move or change how she was staring directly at me.  She didn't change a thing, and here is my photograph!  Wow!  Saved by a cat!  You might be interested to know that eventually she turned, put her front paws on the next lower step of the ladder, but instead of going all the way to the bottom, she then jumped onto the dining room table, and then jumped to the ground.  Smart cat!  Be sure to click on the image to see it larger.  Her expression is priceless!

First Boat on a Mooring

 

In the middle of summer, the harbor will be wall to wall yachts on their moorings, from both the Sea Cliff Yacht Club, The Hempstead Harbor Club, and private owners.  When I was photographing the monster condos, I continued down the road to a small beach and boat launch ramp just to take a look.  Then I noticed the yacht on its mooring and as I raised my camera to take a picture, two people wandered up from the beach and added more interest to the photograph.

Ghost Daffodil

OK, I promise this is the last Daffodil photo for "Daffodil Week."  It is one of the images from my indoor studio in the back room.  I am posting this because the soft, flat lighting of the Daffodil blossom against the gray wall makes everything ghostly, I thought.  I think it is not as strong as the other photographs but I was attracted to this rendition for some reason.  It is worlds away from my first dramatic image of a brilliant blossom, illuminated by sunlight against a black background.  

 

Daffodil Week

Do you like Daffodils?  This is the third Daffodil photograph this week, and each time you get more Daffodils in each image.  How cool is that!  I had to go to Home Depot to buy some more joint compound and a new step ladder.  On the way home I took this road, but I had forgotten that each Spring there is an explosion of Daffodils on this hill.  What a magnificent sight!  The fun thing is that this photograph looks as if it was taken deep in the woods somewhere.  Here is a photograph, below of where I took this!  Funny, huh?  It is hardly out in the wilderness.  Thought you would enjoy this.

 

Who Wants to Live Here?

I have shown you this complex when it was under construction.  It is nearly finished, and it appears that they are finishing up a child's playground and some park like places and a walkway along the water at Glen Cove Creek.  But look at the sheer number of buildings and apartments!  It is way out of scale for the place it is built in.  It is monstrous.  And architecturally it is ugly.  You can see it from various places in Glen Cove and Sea Cliff and all of this overwhelms the landscape.  We heard from some friends of ours that the units are not selling well.  I wonder if that is true.  Now wouldn't that be a mess for the builders!  Be SURE to click on this and an extra large file will open that will fill your computer screen!

Daffodils in The Wild

I forgot that we have these Daffodils growing in the ivy on the bank behind our house.  They are in shadow almost all of the day, until about an hour or two before sunset, when they are illuminated by the setting sun, as they were this afternoon.  I thought this would be a nice change of pace to show these flowers in their natural habitat, instead of in my "studio" in the back room.  Kathy said she never planted them here, she thinks the squirrels might have had something to do with it.  I liked this photograph because I thought the blossoms looked like notes on a musical staff.

 

Forsythia

I saw this Forsythia which has just been planted, in front of my favorite wall, just up the street.  The person who lives there is a gardener and has spent a lot of time working on this one foot deep garden between the curb and the concrete wall.  Originally the wall was plain concrete, then he painted it white, then he put a white painted lattice in front of the wall.  That looked fine at first, but then the lattice warped and pulled away from the wall.  So he took the lattice down, and left the now two year old painted concrete, which looks beautiful in my eyes, because the white paint has been gradually stained some off white and gray colors from weathering.  It looks European, I think.  It is subtle and looks really old.  So the other day he planted a whole bunch of Forsythia plants.  I love this for the yellow of the Forsythia, and the curving dark shapes of the other plants that are already in the garden. Please click on the image to see it in a larger size - it is much more interesting when you can see more details.

Easter Sunday 2021

What a strange Easter Sunday it was this year.  I forgot to buy an Easter lilly for our dining room table, BUT, my sisters told me that Easter lilies have no business being in a home with cats!  Whoops! The best part of Easter Sunday was that Kathy got her second Covid vaccination!  I painted some more in the dining room.  Then we had a Facetime chat with my sisters in Connecticut.  A bike ride on a sunny, 60 degree day, and then Chinese takeout with our friends the Gordon's for dinner at their house.  They are vaccinated so we were able to sit around the dining table feeling normal for the first time in over a year.  How nice that was.  At dusk I looked out their window at the harbor and Long Island Sound and thought it was worth a photograph.

 

The Other Daffodil Photograph

When I decided to photograph the Daffodil indoors the other day, I tried a number of things.  I started by putting it into this bud vase that I bought somewhere years ago.  I was using the soft natural light in the back room for this photograph.  I particularly liked the almost ghostly feeling of the flower which is so softly lit, against the pale gray background.  I did some closeups of the just the bloom and the background but the photograph was not complex enough.  But this image is my favorite.  Until Kathy saw me working on it, and said "Where is the closeup of the flower from the side, against the black background.  It is so much more dramatic."  Wow.  She was right, of course, so that's the version I posted the other day.  So now you see my more subtle photograph.  Maybe it is too subtle.

 

My Second Shot!

I am fully vaccinated!  Yeaaaaa!  It seems as if it has taken forever and the process was very frustrating.  Kathy gets her second shot on Easter Sunday!  So I mentioned before that both of my appointments were in Mattituck, which is an hour and a half away.  So today was funny.  I am a maniac about not missing my second appointment.  So we left Sea Cliff at 9:00 AM sharp, for a 12:15 PM appointment.  Three hours and fifteen minutes for an hour and a half trip?  Well, sure.  I allowed some extra time for possible traffic on the Long Island Expressway, or for a flat tire, or for a bridge collapse, or a snowstorm or the car exploding.  You can never be too careful...  The great news was that we got there in record time - two hours early!  So I thought I would go into the CVS and tell them I had driven a long distance and was two hours early, and could I possibly get my shot early.  They were wonderful and got me right in - I didn't have to wait at all.  They are such nice people in Mattituck!  And I am thrilled that I now have my Covid vaccinations done!

 

Daffodil

I have seen some groups of Daffodils on my bike rides within the last couple of weeks.  But the Daffodils in our garden next to the house only came up the other day, and that area doesn't get a lot of sunlight, so it is harder to make interesting photographs of them.  So today I went out and cut one flower which I brought inside to photograph.  That way I could find more interesting light and control the background.  This photograph is more dramatic because of my ability to control both of those things.  The Daffodils are in bloom, Spring is here!