Looking for Meteors

There was a possibility of a new meteor shower that might turn into a "meteor storm" and that would have happened at about 1 AM on Tuesday morning.  Like many things in astronomy it was not a sure thing, so I didn't bother to drive down to the south shore beaches where the sky was darker.  I was lazy and decided to look for and photograph from my side yard.  I set up a lounge chair and then my camera on a tripod with a wide-angle lens on the camera set for 15 second time exposures.  Here's the problem, if the meteors are faint, then my skies are too light polluted to see them.  Well, there were reports from some club members from Robert Moses State Park and they did see some meteors, but it was not a meteor storm.  I took exposures every 20 seconds and I did not see any meteors, and there were none to see on any of my exposures.  What was wonderful. was to sit out in the dark, and the quiet of night and just gaze at the sky waiting for a white streak.  I started observing at 12:30 AM and stayed out until 1:30 AM and it was a nice experience, meteors or not.  If you enlarge the photograph, you can see the stars of the handle of the Big Dipper in the upper right of the photo, and the star Vega in the upper left.  There were cirrus clouds drifting across the sky, which you can see,  for much of my time out observing.  It is a pretty sight, seeing the stars in the photograph.

 

Memorial Day, Sea Cliff, NY

This is the annual Memorial Day Parade in Sea Cliff.  At the ceremonies and speeches when everyong gathered after the parade, the master of ceremonies stated that this parade has been held for over a hundred years!  There is such a wonderful charm to live in a town where we still have a Memorial Day Parade.  It's pretty ragtag with all kinds of people marching in organized groups behind banners, or just people marching along the route carrying children with young kids running alongside.  There is a high school band, and there is a fire truck, so it is a real parade!

I always try to photograph spectators as well as the marchers, and this year I think the spectators were more interesting subjects.

I was photographing the parade and turned to walk along with it after taking a photograph and saw this group. They were all smiling and there were adults and kids, and I got one shot!

The participants gather in Memorial Park for speeches and salutes to the fallen.  I spotted this woman and her dog, and though her way of displaying old glory was a bit different and worth documenting it!

Turnabout is fair play! When I am looking through the viewfinder, I am looking at what's contained within the frame and how my composition is balanced, and what is in the foreground and in the background and what's around the edges.  A lot of stuff to look at, and split second decisions on when to press the shutter.  Imagine my surprise when I was looking at the photographs, when I saw this woman in bright red, dead center in the frame, photographing ME!  This is a first in my experience to be the subject of someone else's photograph at a parade!  I was so surprised that I never noticed her in the middle of the frame! (this is a cropped image).  I know, let me show you the whole image, below.

I just thought she was another one of the marchers and completely missed she was looking right at me!

 

Easthampton Fog

                                

One afternoon we drove to the Easthampton Main Beach, and because it was overcast and foggy, there were very few people there.  I love the fog because it makes for really interesting photographs as objects in the distance fade away from the fog.  So I like these three lifeguard towers.  The last one in the distance is barely visible and you can't even see the ocean from here.  There were a few people on the beach, and more photographs about that in later posts.  After wandering around for neatly an hour, I sat on a bench, put my head back, closed my eyes and just felt the cool sea breeze on my face and listened to the waves breaking on the sand.  So peaceful and sublime.

Easthampton Bench

I spotted this bench the minute we arrived at the house we were staying at.  It was right outside the front door.  It appears to be a bench made out of teak, and was beautifully designed.  The teak was left to weather and now is a beautiful gray color and the frosting on the cake, so to speak, is the light green lichen which grows on the bench as well.  It is a very subtle patina and to my way of thinking, very beautiful.

 

Easthampton Nightscape

This will teach me a lesson!  Always bring a camera!  I know, I tell you that over and over and over again, right!  But tonight we were going to a restaurant for dinner, and why would I want a camera in a restaurant?  Well, because, when you park your car some distance down the street and have to walk to your car after dark you MIGHT want to have a real camera with you!  Duh!  So I saw this tree in the fog near where my car was.  No camera with me, on person or in the trunk but I do have my iPhone with me.  But it is not one of the newer ones that has "night mode."  But my trusty iPhone 5se came through with something, which is better than nothing.  I wonder if I learned my lesson this time?

 

Dogs Out, Cat's In

We are visiting a friend we have known for 46 years, Mary Ellen.  Our kids grew up with their kids.  Her husband Ray was a Navy pilot and then a pilot for Pan American Airways, until he became an executive with the airline and was the person in charge of buying all the fuel for the airline!  He passed away a few years back.  So Mary Ellen, who lives in Texas, is visiting her daughter in East Hampton, and she invited us out for the weekend.  We we have the house to ourselves. because her daughter and husband are away, and they have two dogs and two cats.  I think I had only been in the house for 5 minutes before I saw this photograph.  The dogs wanted to get in the house and the cat was curious about the new visitors.  I took ONE shot, and the dogs changed position!  Yikes!  But I did get this and I love it!

 

Flying in Zero Gravity!

About 10 years ago, I was selected to receive a "Wish of a Lifetime" gift from a organization in Colorado, which grants seniors a wish.  My wish was that I wanted to fly in an airplane that by climbing and diving allows all the passengers to float in Zero Gravity!  I couldn't believe my luck when I was chosen!  So tonight I gave a talk about my experience at my astronomy club.  Don't I look sharp in my Zero-G blue flight suit?  I gave the talk to our club ten years ago, shortly after taking the flight, and thought it was time to do it again.  My talk was well-received, which was really nice.  Here are three photographs from that flight ten years ago!

On the right is my benefactor, Jeremy Bloom who started "Wish of a Lifetime" and who chose me for this flight, which he was also on.  On the left is David, one of the supporters of Jeremy's organization.  So it was really fun to take the flight with both of these people that I had just met. The flight was an astounding experience.

 

More Clouds

It was generally a cloudy day today, so I took a ride over to Glen Cove again to see if I could find something different.  I go down to the end of our street so often that sometimes I think I need to try somewhere else so my pictures will look different.  I love these lead colored clouds all the way down to the horizon.  Something about the color gray really appeals to me.  I am looking south west with Sea Cliff on the left, and Hempstead Harbor in the distance.

 

Texture

I climb Ram's Hill Road, which has a short, really steep hill and when I get to the top, which levels off, I stop to write down my time for that checkpoint and have a drink from my water bottle.  I have been doing this part of the route for maybe 4 years.  I have stopped within ten feet of this tree every time!    But yesterday, I stopped in FRONT of the tree.  I was immediately taken with the texture and the subtle colors of this tree trunk.  I guess it had to do with the side lighting that showed the coarse bark to it's best advantage!  I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this before.  So here it is for you, a tree that has been growing here for probably multiple generations of the family whose property this tree is on.

 

A Thunderstorm is Brewing...

Most of you know about the Tuesday ritual - Dunkin Donuts at the beach.  There is another, less frequent ritual.  This one is on Sunday nights, after we have pasta for dinner.  Sunday is always pasta!  We go to McDonald's for ice cream cones.  So we did that tonight, and as we rounded the building we caught sight of these clouds in the northwest.  There had been thunderstorms in the forecast for today, but I thought we missed them.  I checked my radar app on my phone, and sure enough there was a cold front in the northwest that was moving toward us and on the app, there was a solid line of red, which shows the heaviest convective activity, which means a lot of rain.  So I took this photo and got home before the rain started, and fortunately it wasn't heavy rain.- there was an opening in the cold front and the heaviest rain was just a bit north of us!  But what beautiful clouds!

 

Look Out! Amateur Chef at Work!

                            

Recently we have started having fried potatoes with some dinners.  Don't panic, they are fried with canola oil so they are healthy.  Kathy made them once and I decided I liked the challenge of cutting the potatoes in perfect cubes.  It took a few tries, but now I am pretty good at making the cubes pretty regular because of the accuracy with which I cut them.  I do enjoy kitchen challenges like this, and they are sure delicious with a meal.  It may be that with this  particular batch, I forgot to add the chipped onions which are an important part of the taste of this dish.  Some chef, he leaves out some of the ingredients!  Wait!  I just looked closely, and the onions are in there.  Whew!

The Deluge

                          

Our toaster oven stopped working.  Yeah so?  Well, that meant I had to go out and buy a new one today because we have a family member visiting, and no toaster oven, no bagels for breakfast!  So I went down to the big shopping center at Roosevelt Field, and found a toaster oven.  Then I headed home and got caught in a deluge!  The rain started slowly, but then suddenly became a downpour!  Windshield wipers running non stop.  So that required that I take a photo to show you how much rain there was.  You will be proud of me - I took this photograph at a red light!  Aren't you relieved that I wasn't photographing as I drove along!  That would be stupid...

A Bug's Eye View

Remember that broken wide-angle lens that my friend Grace gave to me to try and fix, and that I did fix?  Broken Lens  Well, it works really well, and in fact, almost perfectly!  So I put it on the camera and took it out on the front lawn late in the day because of the way the sunlight was lighting up the ferns.  Of course when I got there with my camera, the sun was behind clouds.  So I started experimenting.  One of the really cool things about my SONY a7 III is that the LCD display and viewfinder can be folded down from the vertical to the horizontal, so I put the camera deep in the grass, and then looked down at the viewfinder to see what the lens is seeing.  Thus, this "Bugs Eye View" that I did on the sloping part of our front lawn.  Something different for me, at least.  Now if only there were a bug clinging to a blade of grass.

 

Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish?

So I have mentioned my 70-200mm zoom lens for my new SONY camera and how I love that lens so much.  Sony 70-200mm The one thing that it doesn't do well, is allow me to get really close to objects.  To reach focus, I need to be maybe 4 feet or so away from the closest object. There are two ways to get closer - get an "extension tube" that goes on the back of the lens - those run about $90 or $130.  Or, I could buy a set of four close-up lenses that screw on the front of the zoom lens.  Those are $16.95.  So which to buy.  The lens cost $1,600 and is made from really high quality optical glass.  Should I put a $4 lens on the front of my zoom lens?  How dumb would that be?  Well, maybe not too dumb.  I bought the set and this is one of those lenses on my zoom, and look how close I can get now! Not too bad!

 

When You Run Out of Creativity...

When you run out of creativity, then try some tricks!  In this case I got my infrared converted old SONY a200 camera out and walked around the property, looking for interesting images shot by infrared light.  This one is pretty interesting for several reasons.  The gnarly, curly branches of this ancient dogwood tree are seen against the green leaves of the Dogwood, which are white in this photo because clorophyl reflects a lot of infrared light.  It is an effect that leaves a mysterious feel to the image, as do the curly branches.  I think this is not a bad shot, trick or not.

 

Lunar Eclipse!

I managed to photograph the total Lunar Eclipse last night, but it was a close call.  The clouds were overcast all evening and the forecast was not looking good.  At 11:00 PM I went outside to look and the moon was visible through clouds and there was a huge hole in the clouds overhead!  Completely unexpected.  So I rushed to put all my equipment in the car, and headed up to the large ball field in town, which is surrounded by trees which I though might give me some kind of foreground.  These two large pine trees did the trick.  To the naked eye, the moon was very dim and not much color at all. But with a 2 second exposure using my camera, we get to see more color and the moon is brighter than it appears to the eye.  The hole in the clouds lasted for 25 minutes and I had plenty of time to get this right!  Whew!  Lucky me.  Many on Long Island did not see the eclipse at all!

 

Awaiting Water

I really lucked out in terms of photographs when I went to Glen Cove to see how the eclipse might look the other day.  First I photographed my hand against the sky, then the woman and her dog in the car, and now this - all within 100 feet of each other.  So these are yachts at a small yacht club which have been hauled for the winter months, and which will soon be painted and put back in the water where they belong.  Soon they will be under sail again, looking beautiful, heeled over by the wind, as they silently make their way through the water in that magnificent way that sailboats do.

 

Dog, Arm, Cigarette

Yesterday when I went to the beach to calculate the altitude and direction of the moon during the eclipse, I parked in the parking lot, one space away from this car.  I was sitting there switching lenses when I saw this dog with his head sticking out of the window looking at me!  I quickly got the lenses changed so I had the 200mm zoom on the camera.  But by then the dog was no longer looking at me and it had retreated further into the car.  Oh no!  But I was patient and kept the camera handy and just sat there.  The dog moved over to the window again, and was not looking at me, but then suddenly this arm came out of the window, with a cigarette in it's hand!  I started shooting and the arm moved around a bit and I kept shooting.  This is the best of the lot because it almost looks like the arm belongs to the dog!  This is a nice one, isn't it?  Please click on it because it is so much better seen larger.

 

Measuring

What the heck is THIS?  I'm measuring.  Measuring?  Measuring what?  Good question.  I am using my hand with my fingers outstretched to measure an angle of about 25 degrees above the horizon.  OK, why would you want to do that?  Because there is a total eclipse of the Moon, Sunday night into Monday morning.  The Moon, when it is totally in the shadow of the Earth will be about 25 degrees above the horizon when it happens.  Thus, the hand angle mesaurement.  Astronomers use this system all the time to calculate either the height of objects in the sky, or the distance between objects.  It is a very cool system, AND, you always have the measuring instrument with you!

 

The Ferns in Spring

The ferns in Spring.  Such a joy to watch them from when the fiddleheads first come out of the ground and then unroll and the shoots begin to grow upward.  Actually the ferns seem to shoot upward because it happens so fast which is amazing to watch!  Our front bank looks awful at the beginning of spring with weeds and dead leaves all over and then the ferns start to appear.  Within a week the whole front bank is covered in ferns and is beautiful!  How lucky we are!

 

Copycat

Recently a famous photographer named Jerry Uelsmann died at the age of 84.  I have been a fan of his since I was in college at RIT.  Jerry Uelsmann graduated from there, where he studied with Minor White, who I also studied with.  Uelsmann was the master of combining multiple negatives into one finished image and those images were both beautiful and surrealistic.  Way before Photoshop and digital imaging, he worked with multiple negatives in multiple enlargers in his darkroom, and carefully registered the photographic paper carefully under each enlarger, and would make the image by moving one sheet of paper down the line of enlargers, making a final print that might be made from 6 or more different negatives.  Anyhow, when I learned of his passing I fooled around in photoshop and made this image, which is quite different from his, but may give you a sense of the surrealistic nature of some of his images.

 

Nightscape and Water

                               

Last week I did a photograph of a tree at night in Cold Spring Harbor.  I was kind of on a roll looking for more night landscapes as I continued my ride home.  When I got to Hempstead Harbor the water was very calm and lights on the other side of the harbor created long reflections on the water.  The gray overcast sky was reflected in the water as well, and to me, this lovely feeling of gray completes the photograph.   Please click on it to see it larger.

And Now for Something... Completely the Same

The usual beach, the usual sky, the usual trees. But on this day there was a piece of driftwood on the beach, which, for me, made the scene something completely different.  It was a tree, and as a design element it added a lot to the beach. So had so much fun trying different compositions with the branch in it.  But this is my favorite view that makes the photograph more interesting, in terms of design.  This tree makes the composition more complex. 

 

Happy Mother's Day!

Amy sent us this photograph several weeks ago.  She and Liz and Sarah and another friend drove out to Joshua tree spend a weekend camping and of course Miss Vivian came along!  How cute is she, with her little vest and her own headlamp!  This is now my favorite photograph of Vivian and her mom!   This photograph reminds me of what a wonderful and loving mom Amy is!  So Happy Mother's Day to all of you Moms out there!

The Usual Suspects

 

Three of us from the astronomy club volunteered to spend part of the day at the planetarium for their "Astronomy Day."  Because it was raining we were all indoors.  Our two tables were part of a collection of tables with different astronomy activities.  The event was for families, most of them with younger children who enjoyed demonstrations of how craters were formed on the moon, and of how to make galaxies with paint on a spinning on a disk, and how to make a little paper rocket that could be launched with a soda straw!  There was so much energy in the room as we explained how telescopes worked and one member showed how the Moon has phases and gave the children a quiz on the planets.  What was fun was many of the children already knew the names of the planets!  It was a great day!

Nightscape and Tree

This scene is on my route home from my astronomy meetings on Wednesday nights.  This is Route 25A in Cold Spring Harbor.  I have seen this tree since we started having in-person meetings of the club about a month ago but I didn't have my SONY a7 camera with me, which is an amazing camera for night photography.  So on Wednesday night, I was ready as I came through here and stopped to photograph the scene.  This is about the tree itself, but the rest of the scene has a nice quality to it, I think.  Not one of my greatest photographs, but I think interesting to look at.

 

What's This? Another Abstract Photo?

OK, first things first.  You all guessed correctly yesterday that it was Ikea where I did those pictures.  And what's in the bag?  Four 16"x20" white wooden picture frames!  

So what have I given you today?  Another abstract photograph?  Well, yeah, but.  This is the result of my hard work today.  I did my yearly power washing of all the bricks on the patio and the brick walkway up to the entrance of our new back room.  I wanted to take a photograph of my handiwork, just as a record but then I realized that it did make a nice abstract photo with the light and shadow.

This time I got smart and put on some blue rain pants and you can see what a mess the power washer makes.  As it blasts the moss and other stuff off the bricks, there is also some backscatter from grains of sand that the power washer blasts out from between the bricks.  What a mess, but it is so nice to see how much nicer the patio is.

 

Where Did I Go Today?

OK, so here is another quiz for you.  Where did I go today?  Sadly, there is no prize company who will present the winners with valuable prizes, like the last time, if you guess this right!   :-)  So don't hurry to read below to find the answer, because I am going to tell you the answer right now.  I just have to put a lot of text under this photograph so you don't accidentally see the answer while you are trying to guess where I went today.  OK, enough time yet?

Does this help you figure out where I went?  What's in the bag and why did I go there?  WAIT!  I have decided not to tell you what the answer is today!  Bad Ken!  You can think about the question and I will give you the answer tomorrow night.

 

A Dogwood Tree

On my first bikeride in several days, I passed this Dogwood tree not far from our house.  It just grabbed my attention immediately.  I thought of stopping and riding back and photographing it with my iPhone, but kept going.  On the way to the grocery store after my bike ride, I stopped to photograph it with my SONY Rx 100, which really does a beautiful job, and I always have this camera with me.  We had two beautiful dogwood trees in our yard which came with the house, one next to the garage, and one at the end of the front porch.  The one by the front porch is about gone, but still manages one branch of blooms each year, so I am reluctant to cut it down.  The one by the garage died years ago.  I really miss them because they are so beautiful, and that's why seeing this tree what so meaningful to me.

 

Needs A Little Work

I am attracted to old things, as you know, and I keep driving by this porch almost every day.  You will be surprised by my reaction.  It is not to criticize  the condition of this house.  It reminds me of all the work I need to do around our house!  Fortunately I don't have to do this much work around here.  I did have to rebuild part of our porch by ripping up a lot of the floorboards,  and adding additional floor joists next to the old ones.  Then I added brand new floorboards and painted everything.  That was a lot of work!  So I feel for the people who have to get this porch replaced eventually.

 

Looking for Mercury

It was a crystal clear day yesterday, Saturday, and so I decided I was long overdue to go observing out at Custer Institute in Southhold Saturday night.  I got an email from a friend in the astronomy club and she wondered where a good place would be to go see, just after sunset, the planet Mercury and the Pleiades as the sky darkened, and before they set.  So I did some checking and found a beach in Southold that would give a view down Long Island Sound that would work.  So we decided to ride together to the North Fork.  This is Grace with binoculars, trying to find Mercury and the Pleiades.  We both had cameras set up with telephoto lenses, but we couldn't see our celestial targets.  But as it got darker, we did manage to find them first in our binoculars, and then with our telephoto lenses.  They were very hard to find, which is unusual for Mercury because it usually is brighter.

So you are going to look at this photograph which appears to be of nothing, and you are going to say "THAT is what you were looking for?"  Yeah, well, if you are an astronomer, a thing like this is pretty cool!  After we managed to get our photographs, then we went to Custer and spent three hours looking at galaxies and star clusters with one of my telescopes before heading home after midnight.  All in all, a great day in astronomical observing!  Please click on these photos and you will see more detail.