The Crescent Moon

We had an in-person astronomy meeting at the Vanderbilt Planetarium tonight.  I arrived early and when I got out of my car, saw a beautiful crescent moon in the western sky.  But it was over a dark line of trees - not an interesting composition at all.  But...  I remembered this tree at the far end of the parking lot, so grabbed my camera and my 70-200mm lens out of the trunk and headed over toward the tree. Look what I saw as I got closer to the tree!  Perfect!  So I started shooting a few frames, and suddenly I noticed an airline jet climbing away, traveling from the west - probably from JFK.  I had a chance to shoot two frames with the aircraft in it.  I am not sure if the airplane matters, but it was there, so I decided to choose this frame. 

 

Just Hanging Out

                              

Well, it's Tuesday so Dunkin' at the beach.  We got in the car to leave, and this car pulled in to the next spot.  Music was playing loud and the driver sat there scrolling on his phone.  Then I saw him stand up in the car and couldn't believe my eyes when his head and shoulders came up through the roof!  What?  Then in the next instant he hopped up on the roof!  He sat there for a while, fortunately.  I got out of the car, opened the trunk, took my camera out and sat back in the car.  I managed to get about 5 photographs through the open window, and then he climbed back down into the driver's seat and drove a way.

Yeah, the Lawn's Looking Good, I Think...

Yeah, I think it does look good, IF WE LIVED IN THE DESERT!  Does this lawn look "carpet bombed"?  I think it looks like some B-52's came by and dropped bombs all over it!  The truth is, no amount of fertilizer will make this better.  I refuse to waste water to keep this green and pretty during the heat, and the drought this year.  It is just not worth is.  But it is not about fertilizer, it is about the basic soil condition.  The only fix is to make 30 gallons of "Compost Tea" as described in The Lawn Project in the NY Times ten years ago.  I did one treatement, but it is a LOT of work.  What the compost tea does (with additives like molasses and fish oil and other things, is that it promotes the growth of microbes down below the surface of the lawn, and then the grass will be green and perfect and no watering required. Oh, that orange spot on the left is me flying the drone.  Please click on this because I uploaded an extra-large image which you can study in detail, and then laugh at me...   :-)

 

What Landscape is This?

What is this landscape?  A clue?  It has something to do with the photographs I showed you yesterday.  What a strange landscape.  What do you think it is made of.  Any guesses?  Give up?  OK, this is made out of metal.  It is aluminum foil.  It is a piece of aluminum foil that I crunched up into a ball to make it wrinkled, and then I pulled it apart and smoothed it out, and then I used a spray glue to fasten the wrinkled foil to a piece of foam core.  Now I have the device I need.  It is a photographic reflector which I use to lighten up the shadows in the photograph of the Nikkor lens.  But what I like about this is that when I looked at the surface of this with my camera and saw this in the viewfinder I thought it looked like some kind of strange landscape.

 

New Life for an Old Lens

This is a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 lens which I have owned for 50 years.  It is in mint condition, or was...  I was not careful and had a lot of camera equipment stored in the basement.  Our basement is pretty dry, but...  I have had three of my lenses for my Nikon cameras end up with a fungus growing on the internal glass elements of the lens because of moisture.  I now store my cameras and lenses upstairs in the house where they are much safer in terms of damage.  I have had one of the lenses repaired - they had to change one of the internal elements, which cost a few bucks.  That lens is the 65mm Micro-Nikkor close up lens and it works perfectly now.  This lens, however, is beyond hope.  Or is it?

I have an adaptor for Nikon lenses so that I can use them on my new Sony a7 camera.  So I put the lens on that camera and went out today and did this photograph.  The fungus makes objects that I photograph low contrast and they have kind of a haze around them, which in this case, is an interesting effect.

Here is another photograph in the side garden with the same lens.  The image is much lower in contrast due to the fungus scattering the light.  But I like the effect because the photograph looks like an old, faded color slide, I think!

This is a close-up image THROUGH the Nikkor lens.  It is intentionally dark so that you can see all the fungus growing on the two lens elements.  It is painful to see what bad condition the lens is in, in terms of the internal elements.  On the other hand, it is so old that it is a manual focus lens and I am not sure it will connect properly to my Nikon D-300 digital camera.  But I have found a use for it on my newest camera, the SONY a7.  Of course exposure and focus are manual on that camera as well, but look what I have been able to do by using this lens the old-fashioned way, before autofocus and auto exposure!

 

A Sweater for Vivian

Kathy has been knitting a sweater for Vivian.  She has been working on it for a couple of months now.  It is unusual in the way it is knit, which is from the top down, instead of from the bottom up.  Kathy said this is the first sweater she has knit since she was in nursing school and she knit two sweaters.  It has been a bit of a challenge with some of the complex parts. The sweater is also being knit on circular needles - they are connected by a plastic line. She has knit some parts and then has had to undo the stitching and re-do that section.  My sister Betsey helped with some advice at one point.  The sleeves are knit along with the body of the sweater, and not separately.  She is now at the bottom and has to do the ribbing, and then, off to Miss Vivian!

 

Silly Cat

This is one of Grace's favorite places to lie down.  Usually the inside door is wide open and she lies there looking out at the world.  She likes this place a lot.  But it was so strange to see her this way today.  I guess the inside door was nearly closed, but she wanted to be in there so she just fit herself between the opening and took a nap!  As I approached her, she woke up, and I got this shot.

 

Night Comes On

I was driving out to the Vanderbilt Museum & Planetarium for an observing session, and I was ahead of schedule.  A friend of mine sent an email saying she wanted to get out to the grounds of the museum to shoot the sunset.  So believe it or not, I drove right by this scene!  Duh!  Then I remembered Grace saying she wanted to shoot the sunset, and so I thought "if she wants to shoot it, I should want to shoot it!"  So I did a U-turn and went back and made this photograph from Cold Spring Harbor at the boat launch ramp, and then continued on my way.  When she arrived at the Planetarium, the sun had been long set, so she never got her photograph.  But I did, thanks to her!  I guess I was not tuned into sunsets last night until I read her suggestion.  I will take help whenever I can get it!

What a Difference a Day Makes!

So this is Tuesday, Dunkin' Donuts day at the beach.  The view is similar to the view yesterday of Sands Point, on the left, and Hempstead Harbor.  I was stunned by how beautiful these cumulus clouds looked in the clear blue sky.  It is unusual to see towering cumulus around here because usually the haze and moisture in the air obscure clouds way in the distance.  Are you impressed that I know the name of these clouds!   :-).  Anyhow, just a beautiful scene and the clouds are so different from those of yesterday.  

 

Low Clouds

I went over to the Apple store in Manhasset to pick up my MacBook Pro which needed a new battery. The battery is built in, so they have to change it.  On the way home, driving by the harbor, I saw this thin line of low white clouds in the distance.  That was an unusual sight for me so I stopped and made this photograph. Then I wondered why these clouds formed so low.  I have a friend, George who I know from the Astronomy club in Manhattan, and he also joined ASLI.  He began his career as meteorologist in his native Romania, and then he and his wife emigrated to the United States years ago.  He now works in Information Technology - he saw the future coming when he saw his first computer!  So I asked him why these clouds formed.  Here is his answer:  "Those are stratocumulus clouds, possibly like the ones above you, but you see them from a distance. There also seems to be a bit of enhanced convective activity that pushes some of the tops higher. And the wind at that higher level blows the tops to the right.  What caused these stratocumulus? You're saying it's been raining, so I assume some nimbostratus (think rain clouds) are now breaking up and leaving these behind."  So there you go.  How cool is it that I have a friend who knows all the answers!

 

A Tender Moment on the Subway

It is always fun to ride the subway, because you see so many people on the trains.  I always enjoy sneaking a glance at the faces of everyone on the train with me.  But this scene was different.  There was this young couple riding across from me and she was using her phone while lying down on the subway seat with her head in her partner's lap.  While she read her phone, he was stroking her hair.  I just thought that it was a tender moment in the city.

 

Dinner With Friends

My apologies for going to bed last night without posting on the blog!  I promise it won't happen again!

So this is a photograph from our most recent "dinner with friends," in a restaurant in Manhattan.  All of us in attendance are photographers of the night sky, and some are landscape photographers, and some love to do portrait photography.  So the conversations are always stimulating and wonderful and varied in subject matter.

Because I wasn't in the first photo, I am taking the liberty of including this second photo.  I always bring my camera, and a small tripod which I set up on a nearby table, and then a wireless remote to trigger the camera.  What makes this photo strange is that it was the best place to crowd together out of the way of other diners.  It is the entrance way to the rest room!  But we all fit, so it worked for a nice background.

 

American Vernacular

Stan and I have this "thing" when we are photographing, wherever we are, and we have called it "American Vernacular."  The official definition is "Vernacular architecture is an architectural style that is designed based on local needs, availability of construction materials and reflecting local traditions. At least originally, vernacular architecture did not use formally schooled architects, but relied on the design skills and tradition of local builders." We photograph things that are commonplace whether they are buildings or other things people have built.  Our definition is not really accurate, but we have this thing where we know it when we see it.  We are photographers, not philosophers.  I have photographed this house in Sea Cliff before - it is across the street from the Post Office.  But on this day, everything seemed different because of my white car in front.  I have no idea why, but the scene felt different, and so I went to the car, got my camera and made this photograph.

The Hotel Pennsylvania

So after I made my post the other day about the "black cloth building" I came home to research the building and as I wrote, I discovered the building was the storied Hotel Pennsylvania.  So I was in the city tonight for dinner with friends and I brought my wide-angle lens with me.  I also wondered if there was anything left that was not covered by cloth, that would speak to how beautiful the building once was.  I was overjoyed when I stepped out of Penn station and saw this view of the hotel, and I could see the columns at the front entrance.  I would have some evidence in my photographs of what once was.

Here is a close up of the entrance and the beautiful Ionic columns beneath the name of the hotel carved into the marble and lined with gold leaf.  I now have some evidence of a building that soon will be no more.

 

Garden Sign

I went to the Sea Cliff Post Office the other morning, and when leaving, as I got to the corner I saw this scene.  I was taken by the beautiful garden of decorative grasses, and who knows what else, backlight by the sun.  Then I saw the one way sign!  I guess the village requires the sign to be there, but it ruins the view of the garden, and the signpost is not even vertical!  So this is about how incongruous this scene is.

 

The Black Cloth Building

I came out of Penn Station and started walking along 32nd street toward Herald Square where I would catch the subway down to the International Center of Photography.  But the first thing I saw was this building completely wrapped in black fabric.  This is the side of the Hotel Pennsylvania which faces Penn Station.  The Hotel Pennsylvania was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad and it opened on January 25, 1919. Its 2,200 guest rooms and baths made it the largest hotel in the world, a title it would hold for nearly a decade. Once the largest hotel in the world, it was the 4th largest hotel on the list of hotels in New York City in when it closed permanently on April 1, 2020. It is currently being demolished and will be replaced by 15 Penn Plaza, a 68-story tower.  So that's what the fabric is for!  It will keep the dust and debris from escaping during demolition.  What a sad ending for a storied hotel.

 

Red and Yellow and Red and Yellow

Such is the life of those of us who use the Oyster Bay branch of the Long Island Railroad, that we have to change trains at Jamaica.  That's because the Oyster Bay branch is not electrified, and our locomotives are diesel powered.  Well, except for one "dual mode" locomotive that can do both.  So the diesel trains have to stop at Jamaica and we transfer to electric trains to go through the tunnels to Manhnattan.  So I always get about 10 minutes to look around as I stand on the platform waiting for the other train to arrive.  So this photograph shows the yellow non skid pads on the platform, and the red material is pieces that are a couple of inches thick which fill the gap between the passenger cars and the platform.  There used to be a gap wide enough that in some cases passengers had fallen or their leg had slipped between the rail car and the platform.  I just enjoyed the pattern of the red and yellow pieces from platform to platform.

 

The Blue Tower

The new ICP that I went to on Thursday is part of a redevelopment area called Essex Crossing.  It is an under-construction mixed-use development in New York City's Lower East Side. The development, at the intersection of Delancey Street and Essex Street just north of Seward Park, will comprise nearly 2,000,000 square feet of space on 6 acres. The development will cost an estimated US $1.1 billion. It will sit on a total of nine city blocks, most of them occupied by parking lots that replaced tenements razed in 1967.  So that explains all the buildings with graffiti.  And this building is amazing how it stands out.  It is called the Blue Tower and was built in 2007 and is part of the redevelopment and all the buildings in the foreground will be town down.

 

The Weeds!

When I arrived at the train station for my trip to New York, I was surprised to see all these weeds, when I looked over the fence!  I couldn't believe how high they were!  I don't ever remember seeing weeds like this before, at any LIRR train station  I hope that they take care of them soon.  If there are more of them, and if they get taller, the locomotives may not be able to make it through the weeds!  I won't be able to get to New York!

 

Gift From a Neighbor

Our new neighbors are away for a bit, and today the wife's uncle stopped by to water the plants.  I always enjoy talking to him about everything and we had a nice chat.  I was outside working and 5 minutes later he came back carrying two cucumbers and the sweet peppers, he called them.  Then after handing me those things, he asked if I wanted some Basil.  I said "Sure, we could make pesto!" and so he bent over and started pulling leaves off the plants at his feet.  I thought that was such a nice thing to do!  A gift from a neighbor! So Kathy will make pesto tomorrow, and I will buy a baguette to slather it on. 

 

Fun in Fun City

I went to Manhattan today to see an exhibit at the International Center of Photography with Stan.  This is the first time we have gone to the new ICP since it opened two years ago.  We both arrived at the same subway stop and then walked to the museum.  Along the way we saw so much graffiti spray painted on buildings we couldn't believe it!  ICP is one of the new buildings that is part of the Essex Crossing Development, so perhaps these buildings are not in use, awaiting redevelopment. But I haven't seen this much graffiti since the 1970's.  So I walked to the curb and composed a photograph of the wall, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw this man dressed in bright orange approaching from my right.  I paused half a second and when he walked into the frame I pressed the shutter release!  He couldn't have been wearing any better color than this!

 

Amost Modern Art

I love this scene for a couple of reasons.  This is a fire door in the old Sprague Electric Company buildings which the designers of MASS MoCA left as is when they designed the museum.  Someone saw this and said, "This is so rich in its painting by happenstance - an old door somewhere that didn't matter, that we need to leave this in the new building design!"  It is surrounded by newly painted white walls which makes it stand out, and at first glance you think you are looking at an abstract expressionist painting!  But you are not, it's just an old door.  The fire extinguisher gives it away!  They have done similar things in another gallery or two where three walls have new white paint and they left one of the old walls as is.  Just brilliant design!

 

S-334473, First the View, Then the Machine

This is the view through the instrument created by the artist Sarah Oppenheimer, titled S-334473 which is installed at MASS MoCA.  It is described this way:  "Sarah Oppenheimer creates precise instruments for manipulating our built environment - altering our frame of spatial reference, displacing our experience of inside and out, and inverting out sense of what is near and far, here and there."  So this is a view through the device, pointed at the windows which face north from one of the buildings.  It is a bit like a kaleidoscope in a way.  So that's what you see.  And this is the instrument:

It consists of two very thick pieces of glass in parallel, and a metal top and bottom, and it is mounted to the floor and ceiling with heavy pipe.  If you grab one corner and start moving it, eventually it will point straight up and down.  It is massively heavy and takes some effort to turn it, but it is worth it, to move it around while looking through it.

 

My Yearly Visit to MASS MoCA

MASS MoCA is one of my favorite museums, and it never disappoints.  Sometimes, given the large numbers of exhibitions on display, I will find an exhibit that I just don't get, or dislike for some reason.  but then there are other exhibits that really move me.  That happened on this visit as well. The largest exhibit is called "Ceramics in the Expanded Field" and it brings together a group of eight artists who are changing the way we think of clay. Their ambitious works integrate ceramics—a medium long  marginalized—with disciplines ranging from photography and video to painting and performance. Ceramics as a medium, it’s as old as the hills, or at least humankind. The prejudice against it was rooted less in its newness than the heavy historical freight it carried. Ceramics were decorative, or utilitarian, or women’s work, or ethnographic craft, and often all of the above, So this exhibit set about to change all that.

Well many of the artworks were dramatically distanced from what I have always thought of as ceramics.  Were they ever!  So I was taught by a brilliant professor of art in college to be very careful about dismissing something new that I may not understand the point of.  Apparently there are deep philosophical issues which many of these works are dealing with.  I did try hard to experience it, but because I am not a sophisticated observer, many of the pieces failed to move me emotionally.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Some of them I felt were ugly and so I was put off by them.  But that's on me, not on the works.  And maybe that's the point.

This is a view of one of the larger galleries which gives you a sense of the size of some of these pieces, in the background, while perhaps slightly more traditional pieces are shown in the foreground.

I did find some pieces that I got to enjoy a great deal.  This is one of them, and the richness of the details and the brilliant colors and the whimsey of the watering-can head were really a joy to behold!

But the piece below was lost on me.  Perhaps a curator could explain it to me, and the purpose of the upside down chair as foundation as well.  I am always willing to listen and to try and understand.  Perhaps the best example of that in my life is that I always waited to see how I felt when looking at paintings.  I found some that moved me immediately, and some that left me with no strong feelings.  But then I came to Mark Rothko and his paintings.  I was not moved by them, but then heard an art historian talk about how when he viewed some of the Rothko pantings, he swooned at the power of them and what he saw and felt.  And so that has set me on an exploration of his works for perhaps the last 7 or 8 years, and now I have a completely different sense about his work and enjoy the experience of being in their presence.

I really enjoyed this work, which is a dock and a neon sign, underneath which are a bed of oyster shells.  I can't explain it, but I really enjoyed this work.  And there are other exhibits that I saw as well, and I will be talking about and showing those in later posts.

 

Vegetables

I love this!  On two separate mornings I noticed vegetables organized in a row on the furniture on the side porch of the B&B where I stayed!  The first morning it was the squash, and the second morning it was the tomatoes.  I am so glad that the red tomatoes were in the red chair.  That is perfect!  It looks like their garden which I showed in an earlier post, is producing well this summer.

 

The Peel by the Fireplace

I mentioned having stayed at this B&B before.  When I came into the dining room where we have breakfast, I saw this antique peel leaning on the wall by the fireplace.  It stood out at once, and I think that was because of the light on the scene.  I am pretty much always tuned into the light.  I examined the peel closely and found it interesting to see how the handle was fastened to the flat part.  If you click on the photo you can see that detail more easily.

 

A Morning Walk

The Bed & Breakfast I have stayed in for the last 10 years or so was sold, and not open last year.  But this year it opened under new owners.  They have done a lot of work on the historic farm house and the grounds as well.  So I spent time looking for photographs on the property and in the house.  I snapped a few things on the afternoon I arrived, but nothing that I liked enough. But on the second morning I met this couple at breakfast and we chatted.  I went to my room and gathered my stuff to take with me.  When I came out to my car, the couple was in the restored garden, and I thought everything was perfect as they stood in the garden and then looked around.

And then, to add frosting to the cake, after we chatted, they headed down this path the owner had mowed through the field, that led to a small pond in the distance.  Of course I never know where the couple in this scene should be for the best photograph, so I stood here with my zoom lens photographed them as they moved along the path.  I thought this was the best image, because it made the photo more about the scene.  When I took photos when they were closer to the camera, the picture was about them.  I like this version best.

 

Some Women of Stellafane

I am going to get low marks for my reporting because I am really short on details for these photographs.  But the best thing is, these three women are telescope makers and they entered their home made telescopes in the competition and won!  But what matters most is that these women are building telescopes!  How cool is that!  The two women above are sisters and built this telescope themselves with a little help from their dad.  I love that after they built it, they decorated the outside with wonderful designs and made their telescope distinctly theirs!

This woman is an engineering student at a university, and shame on me for not getting more detailed information.  She used computer aided design software to design this telescope, and then used a 3D printer to produce the black plastic parts that connect the aluminum tubes to the wooden part of the telescope.  If she wanted a different size telescope she would just put the new numbers in the program, and it would design all the new parts and THEN print out the plastic parts with the correct dimensions!  It is so wonderful to see so many women building telescopes!

 

The Photographer

So here's an amazing story.  This is Frankie, a photographer from Brooklyn.  She is not an astronomer, she is a professional photographer.  And she got to Stellafane in such an unusual way.  Because she is a photographer she became interested in lenses and optics.  And I am not exactly sure what happened after that, but because Stellafane is about telescopes and optics, she ended up here!  I saw her photographing the front end of a telescope with a medium format digital camera, which is a serious piece of equipment, and what was even more amazing was that she had this portable studio flash unit on a light stand as well!  Nobody does that!  So that's why I started talking to her and learned her story. So I asked if I could take her photograph and she said "sure!"  I hope I get to see some of the photographs she did while there.

 

Recording the Scene at Stellafane

This is the hill at Stellafane where the famous pink clubhouse is located, and where all the telescopes built by amateurs are located.  I usually spend the first half of the day here, looking at all the scopes on display and talking with the builders, and photographing all the different designs.  I was leaving the hill and heading down the road to the other side when I turned and looked back at the spot I just left.  What grabbed my attention was the silhouette of this man, photographing the scene, because he was in silhouette it seemed, against the background scene.  He was recording what he saw, as I record what I saw.  Turnabout is fair play!

 

A New Friend

This might look like an ordinary snapshot, but to me it is part of an extraordinary story. I was checking in to the B&B in Vermont when this gentleman arrived to register as well.  The short version is that he was one of the speakers at the gathering the next day.  So we agreed to meet for breakfast the next morning because we were both going to the gathering at the same time.  His name is Nimesh, and he is an astrophysicist and a project engineer at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard and Smithsonian and a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration.  So he is at the cutting edge of radio astronomy and I am an amateur astronomer, who doesn't know very much about radio astronomy.  Over breakfast he was very patient in explaining how the Event Horizon Telescope worked in terms I could understand.  While he was explaining all this, it occurred to me that this is an absolutely amazing thing that I get to have breakfast with such a brilliant scientist.  Where else could that happen, but at the Stellafane Convention!  We got to spend more time talking at the convention when we had lunch together and talked about our personal histories.  What an amazing thing!  This photograph, below, is what the first photograph of a black hole looks like, when it was released to the public back in April.