Aloe

This Aloe plant has been sitting on our kitchen windowsill for I don't know how many years.  Twenty or thirty years perhaps.  I forget when I got it, but I purchased it because I heard of its healing powers for burns, so the kitchen is the best place to keep it.  It doesn't have any truncated limbs, so no one has gotten burned recently.  But when we do suffer a burn, this stuff is magic.  This photograph could be better, but not photographed where it is.  There are reflections in the window glass, and even though I tried to make the house next door so out-of-focus that the white window trim would blur, you can still see the business of the background.  Next time I will put it somewhere else and light it the way I want, on a plain background.

 

The Japanese Maple at Night

I went out to make sure the car was locked late last night.  It was dark, but my eyes gradually adjusted to the light, and I noticed there was a faint light on the Japanese maple tree.  The light was coming from a street light about 80 feet away.  So I thought I would try a time exposure and see if I could get a good image. I got a tripod and put the new SONY a7 camera on it and set it on manual and carefully focused the image, and just tried an ISO of 1600 and a 30 second exposure at f/4.  Perfect!  I did two exposures and I got it!  You will notice that it looks like daylight because between the branches at the top, you can see blue sky and white clouds. That's what a long exposure can do - make things look like daylight.

 

The Little Yellow Truck

This photograph looks like it was taken on some other planet.  At first glimpse, it appears that we are looking at two craters on the moon, except that lunar craters are not lined with rocks.  This was down on the beach at Little Compton, RI, one of Dick's favorite places for photographs.  I was looking at the circle of rocks and then realized that it was some kind of fire pit, for a fire on the beach.  Then I saw the little yellow trick, and that seemed to complete the photograph for me.

 

The Garden Globe

When we were staying with Dick and Trauti, I would go out and photograph Trauti's garden as the light changed each day.  I was fascinated with the blue globe, and kept trying to get a nice photograph of this part of the garden and the globe.  I think after a couple of days I am really happy that I got this, finally.

 

The Haunted House

Sunday night after pasta, it is our night to go to McDonalds to get ice cream cones.  Fancy us!  On the way back home I stopped at the post office to mail some letters.  As I got out of the car, I saw the light on this house which I have photographed before.  I think there are people living here, but I am no longer sure.  There was not a light on inside the house that I could see.  The house needs a lot of work, which you could see if I photographed the house in daylight.  In any case, it was the light on the house from the streetlight that caught my eye, in addition to the house, of course.  It all makes for an interesting photograph at night.

 

The Dory

My photographs from Rhode Island were an embarrassment of riches.  I still have some photographs from that trip and this is one of my favorites.  It is a dory that two kids rowed across a pond to get to the beach, carrying their surfboards.  A dory is a small, shallow-draft boat.  It is usually a lightweight boat with high sides, a flat bottom and sharp bows. ... For centuries, dories have been used as traditional fishing boats, both in coastal waters and in the open sea.  They have such beautiful lines.  And with the warm light at the end of the day on the beach and rocks, and the reflection in the water, it made for a perfect photograph.

 

I Think the Lawn Looks Nice, Don't You?

I decided to fly my drone a few weeks ago, just to fly it for fun, and to look around with it.  While I was doing that, I decided to look straight down just after takeoff, to see how the lawn is coming.  It is NOT coming well at all!  There is something terribly wrong with the soil in our side yard.  We have suffered flooding from some houses up behind us, and perhaps that water has brought with it some chemicals that were applied to those yards, Who knows.  I have cultivated bare areas, and added topsoil and fertilizer and grass seed, and it hardly shows.  You can see the pilot in the lower right center, and the cardboard near the middle of the photo is where the drone takes off and lands, if you are curious.

 

The New Garden Inside the Tiny Fence

On August 3, I posted the start of this wonderful, fence that our new next door neighbor was building.  Now he has done three of these fences,  and the other day his wife planted all these flowers, in the two enclosures - one on either side of the steps that go up to their front door.  I can't get over what an amazing work of craftsmanship the fences are.  We both pruned the hedge that runs along our property line, and he is using all the branches from the hedge, after he trims off all the smaller branches.  It is a LOT of work to just prepare these sticks in order to make the fences! 

 

An Experiment

So on Tuesday, our Dunkin' Day at the Beach, as we were finishing up our breakfast, I noticed this clump of some kind of sea grass in the water, just off the beach.  This seemed really unusual because this is a swimming beach and this is an area that gets completely covered with water when the tide comes in.  Closer in to shore, near the bulkhead, there are large areas of this grass which I have photographed before.  But this small patch seemed unusual.  So I decided to try and make an interesting landscape photograph that included this grass.  It is amazing to see how different the two photographs are, shot in different directions.  Which photograph do you find more interesting?  I tried to find out what this grass is called, and the best I could do is that it may be "eelgrass."

 

Painting the Picket Fence

There are four sections of the picket fence in front of the ferns, and two sections needed painting.  The fence looks its worst after a snowfall, and the supposedly white paint is revealed as gray.  So September is the best time for painting because it is cool and dry, and I went out there with a scraper and paint and a brush.  After carefully working on one of the sections for a while, this is how it looked!  Good as new.

And here is a view of one entire section all finished.  I did the two worst looking sections and the fence looks os much better, don't you think?  Fresh white paint makes everything look better.

 

Moonrise, in Color

Thank you all for waiting for 24 hours to see the other photograph I took at the moonrise last night.  This the more ordinary view.  This would be a nice photograph, except the foreground is not interesting at all.  It is the parking lot of Tappan Beach, where we go for our coffee and donuts each week.   I actually did have a really great foreground in mind, but the moon didn't rise behind that.  And I knew that it wouldn't before going out.  I have this software called "Photographer's Ephemeris" which shows the time and direction of moonrise and moonset, and sunrise and sunset.  I can still make this photograph the way I want it, but it will take more time, and luck with the right with weather.  Here is the foreground I wanted the moon behind.  This scene is a few tenths of a mile north of where the photo above was taken, and it is of the Sycamore trees that line the sidewalk, and which I have taken so many photos of.  So stay tuned and see if I can make it happen.

 

Moonrise, in a Strange World

This is a "straight" photograph, not some kind of photo-composition.  I went over to Port Washington tonight after dinner because I had calculated the time and direction of moon rise.  I did have to drive onto private property, into the Beacon Hill Colony where I parked near some boats on trailers, and then I set up my tripod at the edge of the road where I had this view.  Many of you will, however, have recognized that I used my modified SONY camera to shoot this in infrared.  I also shot the photograph with a normal camera, and I will post that eventually.  I just thought this was pretty interesting.

A Cello Riding a Bicycle

I was on my way to the recycling center with newspapers and bottles and cans in the car.  I stopped to mail a letter, and saw this young man on a bike ride by and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw he had a cello in a case on his back!  Oh man!  So I ran to the car, and went after him, but I did stop at the stop signs along the way.  I got my little SONY Rx 100 out and zoomed the lens out to telephoto.  Then I got close enough to him, but not too close, and followed him while shooting through the windshield.  I got a number of good photographs, and this is the best.  Can you believe this!  This is such a cool thing to see!  It does look like the cello is riding the bike!

 

The Farmall Cub Tractor

I was looking at the farm equipment parked around the barns, and I saw this tractor and a lightbulb went off in my head.  I asked Nat what year that tractor was from, and he said around 1955.  I said that I recognized this tractor - Grandpa Spencer had one of these on the farm in Guilford!  Before he had the tractor I remember him walking behind two horses with a single blade horse drawn plow!  Then he got a Farmall Cub tractor just like this!  I remember the thrill of getting to drive it - in 1955 I was 13 years old! I started asking Nat about the specs for the tractor and he said that the engine was 11 horsepower!  That seems like so little, but the tractor when it's working moves slowly so the engine is geared way down, and 11 horsepower is enough. What an amazing thing to be taken back in history, seeing this tractor.  Nat actually has two of them and they are real workhorses and they are used all the time on the farm!

 

Nat and Dick at the Farm

When Dick and I got to the farm we wandered around for a bit, and then we met Nat, on the left.  Nat is one of the children of the original owners of the farm.  Later on Dick showed me a photograph of a group of children running around in the snow at the farm taken 50 years ago.  So Nat took time to chat with us about the farm and farming and other things.  He has a regular job, and in addition he is the one who pretty much runs the farm.  Dick had some scenic photographs of the farm on his phone he had taken at another time and he was showing them to Nat.  We had a really nice visit with him.

 

Msgr. John Martin 1934- 2021

Today we went to the funeral of one of our favorite priests, Monsignor John Martin.  He has served the Diocese of Rockville Centre for sixty years in many different capacities, as a teacher and as a pastor of a number of churches.  He retired in 2007 and eventually came to St. Brigid's Church where it has been a joy to have him.  He is such a wonderful teacher and homilist.  His sense of humor shows the spark within him and that while delivering a sermon, he finds that humor is helpful, and welcome.  He was also self-effacing, letting us all know that he struggled with the normal human traits, as we all do and that made his lessons so much more relevant.  We first got to know him when Kathy had a question on religion that had to do with one of her clients.  She asked if she could come talk with him, and she recorded the session.  The biggest lesson was that religion was not about rules, but, simply, about love, in all it's aspects.  That was the beginning of our friendship and we invited him to our house for dinner a number of times, and it was a joy to spend time with him.  We would be excited when, before Mass started each week, we would catch a glimpse of him and say to each other "It's Father Martin!" as we looked forward to yet another wonderful lesson about life from him.  We will miss him so.

 

The Farm Pond

This is the pond on the Great Meadow Hills Farm.  After walking by some barns, and over to a fence, you can look down on this pond.  I climbed over a wood fence and walked down the sloping ground to be closer to the rock in the foreground.  What caught my eye, after the beautiful green grasses and the pond reflecting the blue of the sky, were the dead trees in the background.  I think it is swampy back there and at some point the trees died off, who knows how long ago.  But I thought this made for an interesting and very subtle landscape.

 

Great Meadow Hills Farm

My friend Dick has been photographing Rhode Island for 50 years.  He knows the whole state like the back of his hand.  This is one of the buildings at a place called Great Meadow Hills Farm - it is a chicken coop, one of the many buildings and barns on the farm.  Dick has been photographing this farm for about 50 years, and he knows the family and children who grew up and worked here.  So he took me by the farm to show me the place where he has taken so many beautiful photographs, and I met one of the sons who keeps the farm running.  More on that in another post.  I just love the way that one building has had another building added to it, and how each of these buildings, including the corn crib are all so different.  I also love that the largest building looks like a face with eyes and mouth!  I think that's why I took this picture.

 

The Artistic touch

When we arrived at Dick & Trauti's and pulled into the driveway, this was the first thing we saw!  On the space between the two garage doors was this statue and the Mandevilla blossoms, and a birdhouse!  What a beautiful thing to see.  Trauti does a wonderful job with her garden and with so many other things around the house, that have her artistic touch.  And here is proof of her talent for all to see!

 

Trauti's Garden Fence

                              

Dick and Trauti built a beautiful garden right in front of their house.  In 1972 Dick started building a picket fence around the garden and finished it in about 1974. I have photographs of visiting them back then and we all posed in front of the fence, which was beautiful.  Much time has passed since then, and there is only one stretch of the fence left, made more beautiful from the lichen growing on the remaining pickets.  You know me and how much I love to photograph old things, and this shot is a favorite.  I will post some more photographs of the garden in the coming days ,so stay tuned.  Some of those photographs will actually be of living things!  Please click on this photo to see the image in more detail.

"An N.C. Wyeth Sky..." He Said...

We drove from Sea Cliff up to Rehoboth, Massachusetts to see our friends Dick & Trauti.  I have known Dick since 1965 when we both started at the Rochester Times-Union newspaper.  I was returning from my 6 months active duty in the Air Force Reserve, and Dick had just gotten out of the Army where he served in Germany.  We hit it off and we have been good friends now for about 56 years.  Dick and I are both photographers, and Kathy and Trauti are both therapists so we have much in common.  After we crossed the Rhode Island line, I started seeing these cumulus clouds and I thought they looked like clouds I have seen in paintings.  When I showed this photograph to Dick, he said "N.C. Wyeth clouds!"   N.C. Wyeth was an American artist and illustrator, and he is the father of Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, both well-known American painters.

 

Some Weather We Are Having Here!

Some weather indeed!  It snowed here today!  (No it didn't...)  I got out my old SONY camera that has been converted to an infrared detector, and you are all familiar with that.  Foliage with chlorophyl reflects a lot of infrared light, for some reason, and so anything that is green ends up really bright in a photograph with this camera.  This scene is more like a fantasyland, isn't it?  I love how different the world looks in infrared light. 

 

Speaking of Skies...

                          

This is such a coincidence!  I was driving home 5 days before yesterday's photograph of the blue sky, when I saw this license plate on this car, while stopped for a light!  I wonder if the driver is a pilot.  No way I can find out, but I loved the sentiment.  We were stopped at the light long enough for me to grab my toy camera and make two shots before the light changed.  I thought this was fun to see, and then 5 days later, I actually photographed a "nice sky!"

Blue

Today is Tuesday, so that means coffee and donuts at the beach!  And what a day to be at the beach!  It was blue sky and sunshine and a gentle breeze off the water and a temperature of 75 degrees.  A perfect day.  I kept looking at the sky during coffee and donuts, and when we were about to leave it hit me - the sky was a perfect color blue, from the horizon to overhead.  It was a picture!  Of what?  Of the color blue.  So here is my picture for you.  I hope you enjoyed your day today and had blue skies.

 

Michael's Odyssey

This is my friend Michael and his wife, and I have a story to tell.  We met through a mutual friend about 10 years ago.  He wanted to brush up on his studio lighting before he taught a course at a photography school in Montana, and so when he was in New York he came by and we spent a wonderful day with lighting and photography and great conversation.  But I am getting ahead of myself here.  Michael worked for one of the big New York tabloids as a photographer, and about 12 years ago decided to leave the rat race and move to Montana with his wife and children.  He was doing freelance photography, and then had a chance to teach.  He is a wonderful teacher because of the man he is - someone who, as he explained to me later, "goes deeper."  Sitting in my living room I realized that he was really someone special because of his love of people and his outlook on life.  It was a joy to meet him for the first time, and we have kept in touch since that day.  So after a year in Montana, he decided to build a log cabin for he and his family!  He had some help, but he pretty much built most of it himself.  So after about 10 years out there, he and his wife decided they wanted a change and to be around more people, so they moved to Vermont 2 years ago!  When I talked to him 6 months ago, he said he was learning to make bread and sell it!  He was renting what had been an empty bakery shop and kitchen and making the most amazing breads.  So when Stan and I went to the Stellafane Convention in Vermont, we stopped to see Michael and his wife one evening.  Stan and Michael knew each other when Stan was at Newsday in NY, and Michael and he covered the same assignments sometimes.  So it was a wonderful reunion for us all, and we got to see their house.  Oh, and the zig-zag fence in front?  Michael built that himself, of course!  Quite a trip for such a talented man, and such a lovely person.

The Mysterious Moving Umbrella

I saw this umbrella on the sand, all by itself near the breakwater at Tappan Beach.  I wondered why it was there because there was no one sitting under it.  The wind was really blowing at the time, and then I started to wonder how the umbrella got there.  Then I saw the two tracks in the sand.  This umbrella must have been blown there by the wind!  Somehow it ended up rightside up at some point and was blown up the beach.  I walked down to the power plant and on the way back looked at the umbrella again and it was right up against the rocks.  Mystery solved!

 

A Single Fern

I was backing out of the driveway this afternoon, on the way to the store.  I glimpsed this single frond backlit by the sun, and jammed on my brakes.  I got out of the car and started walking up the driveway to get my new camera, and then realized I had my Canon T7i in the trunk, and if I took the time to get the SONY camera the light might change.  How right I was!  I got the Canon out of the trunk and took this photograph, and then four more.  In the next images, the light was slowly going off the frond - it wasn't evenly illuminated from top to bottom.  So I was lucky that I didn't take time to get the new camera.  This is a beautiful photograph, isn't it?  I love the bright green frond against the dark green ferns in shadow.

 

The Thin White Line

My new camera and I were walking along the harbor and I was admiring the blue sky and the white cumulus clouds.  It was then that I noticed the thin white line on the water from the sun.   I loved the subtlety of that bright line in the landscape.

 

WASHOUT!

As many of you know, those of us living in the northeast lived through a horrendous rainstorm as the remains of Hurricane Ida came through the area.  We have had two large storms, one in July and one in August, with rain totals of 3 or more inches.  Last night's heavy rain gave us over 7 inches of rain.  We had flooding from the neighbor's yard up behind us but just on the property.  This morning I was stunned to drive by this scene.  This is a piece of property close to where the old power plant was located.  This particular area is at the bottom of a mile-long hill which I ride up and down on my bike. The road survived but the sidewalk and other area on the side of the road is completely gone!

I cannot imagine how much water was flooding down the hill, given that the hill is a mile long, and other streets feed into it.  The water must have been beyond imagining!  It ran across the road and under a fence, and washed out all the soil that was behind both a bulkhead, and a concrete wall!  This is truly unimaginable!  The water took out the sidewalk as well!  And, notice the leaning utility pole at the upper left?  Apparently only the power lines on top have kept this pole from falling over!

What's funny is that I couldn't quite recall exactly what was there so I went to Google Maps, and found this image.  Who could imagine what would happen to this if water ran down the hill!

 

"Caring" by Chaim Gross, 1987

This is another amazing sculpture at the Museum  It is called "Caring," 1987 by Chaim Gross.  It also says on the plaque:  "Gift of Solomon K. Gross, In memory of the children of the Holocaust."  Oh man... This is such a beautiful sculpture and then reading the dedication changes everything.  It is hard to add anything else.