The Streets of New York

Mom!  There's a creepy guy following that woman, and he has a camera!  Yeah, I know.  But it wasn't creepy, it's called "street photography" and I am photographing the woman from behind so she never knew.  I was doing my normal walk from the Met down to the subway at 59th street and I saw this woman in her long flowing coat.  And since the wind was blowing up Fifth avenue it opened up the coat and made this wonderful triangular shape, and that it what caught my eye. It only works because the coat is black in color, which matches the shadows on the sidewalk.  So this photograph is about design and shapes.   And the cool thing, which I would not have foreseen, is that with her trailing foot off the ground it almost appears that she is floating.  So I love this photograph for all those reasons.

You know, after talking about the fact that this photograph only works because the woman is wearing a black coat, I decided to convert the color image to black & white.  I think I like this version better.  No color distractions at all!  What do you think, do you like this version better?

 

Subway Dog

I went to Manhattan today to meet Stan because we wanted to see two photographic exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It is always wonderful to just hang out at the museum, because when you go to see some particular things, you also discover other things that you didn't expect to see.  So when I leave the museum on the way back to Penn Station, I always walk the 26 blocks from the Met at 82nd Street, and the subway I take at 59th street.  I walk because there are always opportunities for photographs while walking the 1.2 miles.  In any case, I got on the N train that takes me to 34th street where Penn station is located.  On my ride, this woman got on the train and sat next to me with this incredibly cute dog who travels around in her pocketbook!  He was looking at me and smiling (Dogs do smile...) and so finally I asked if it was OK to photograph the dog and the woman said yes.  I did ask about the dog and I think she said it was a Pomeranian.  I knew you would like to know that.

 

First Flight

It was a beautiful day for flying!  Clear as a bell, visibility for miles and miles, not much wind, and everything worked perfectly!  It was my first day to fly!  This is my flight instructor Frank, on the left in the photo.  He is a great instructor!  He knows when to push me just a bit and when to lighten up a bit and always asks how I am doing, "is this too much?" and I always reply "Nope, I'm great!"  I did the "preflight" on the airplane with Frank watching, and then I ran through the checklists and started the engine.  He handled the radios and showed me where to go since it has been years since I flew out of Long Island MacArthur Airport.  I did the takeoff and we went to the north practice area and I flew around doing maneuvers that he asked including steep turns (45 degree bank, and don't lose altitude!) and then slow flight and turns during slow flight.  So I began to get the feeling for the airplane after all these years.  It was a great day and a great flight!

Here we are on the ground after the flight.  We were in the air for a little bit longer than one hour.  Notice the airplane - there is nothing broken on this aircraft!  There is an old saying that I have heard so many times in flying that makes me laugh every time.  "Any landing you can walk away from, is a good landing.  If you can use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing!"  I did the landing and I can report that it was outstanding!   :-)

So this is funny.  We flew up to the north shore of Long Island, somewhere near Port Jefferson, and as we were getting ready to do some maneuvers, I saw this scene.  I said to Frank: "Can you take the airplane, please?"  He asked "Is something wrong?"  "No" I said, reaching into the back seat to get my camera, "I just want to take a picture."  This is the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson ferry just entering the harbor.  How beautiful is the white ferry and the blue water!

And I took this photograph as well.  I just couldn't get over the beautiful blue sky reflected in the water, and I bet we were seeing more than 35 miles.  That's clear!  What a beautiful day, what a beautiful and rewarding flight.  I should mention that I am more "rusty" than I thought I would be.  So it will take time for me to get up to speed, but I have a great instructor to get me there!

 

Speaking of Varnish

This is a photograph of the Sea Cliff Fire Department, which is a volunteer department located in this beautiful, historic building.  Last year I saw members of the fire department sanding these beautiful oak doors.  That went on for quite a while.  This was a lot of work for them, given how large the doors are.  Then I came by and they had varnished them.  I have no idea whether or not they did more than one coat of varnish or not - I am guessing probably two coats or more.  But the finished doors are just beautiful now that they have been refinished.  They did a lot more work on these doors, than I did on the floors of the three rooms in our house.  I guess we are brothers in arms, so to speak! 

 

Back to the Floors

So you have seen photographs of the floors in the dining room and in the front hall which have been sanded and varnished, and which look beautiful.  Here is a reminder of how the front hall looks now that it is done: Front Hall.  So I have had a good rest, and now it is time to finish the living room!  The floors were in much better shape, for a one hundred year-old house, than we remembered.  So any sanding is done by hand, for the most part, because they only need a gentle touch before varnishing. Stay tuned!

 

A 5 Day Old Moon

I took some empty bottles out to the garage after supper, and when I turned around to go back in the house I saw the Moon and Venus over the back room.  So I went out in the side yard to get a better look at the Moon and thought that just the Moon alone with the house and one illuminated window, and the beautiful Sycamore tree in the front yard silhouetted against the deep blue sky was a photograph!  The Moon is a thin crescent, only 5 days old.  The Moon increases in age until it is 28 days old and then it is a "New Moon" and is no longer visible because it is too close to the sun.  Since the Moon is so bright, it overwhelms the camera sensor and appears as a white ball, instead of a thin crescent.  But the photograph is still quite beautiful I think. Please click on it to see it in more detail, especially the tree.

 

Street Art

After I passed the asphalt plant, on my walk home I continued down the street away from the industrial area, and came to this area called City Stadium Park where the City of Glen Cove has 8 baseball diamonds.  Here was this really brightly painted wall on the main building at the park with a baseball player.  I went to look at this building on Google Earth and not too long ago, it was painted a dark green.  This is so much prettier than that.  Anyhow a bit of color to brighten our days.

 

Industrial Machinery

                              

I had to bring my car to a body shop today for a repair of a broken trunk hinge.  After dropping the car off,  I decided to walk home, just for the exercise.  I have been to this body shop a number of times for minor repairs.  But the beauty of walking is that I have time to look around.  I have driven by this plant before an found it fascinating.  It is an asphalt plant.  And I love industrial machinery.  So I had my toy camera with me, and since the gate was open so I could get a nice view of the machinery, and so I did some photographs.  I am not sure what part these silos play in what is produced here. 

This is another part of the plant, and this is where the asphalt is produced.  Materials come in to the top of the large, dark, cylinder on the right hand side, and that cylinder rotates and it heated, and at the bottom of the cylinder the finished asphalt is loaded onto trucks.  I took the original photographs in color of course, but decided that I liked the photographs better after they were converted to black & white.

Someday...

I was back at the airport today.  I was supposed to fly yesterday for the first time, finally, but then the flight instructor cancelled because he had a chance to fly a Citation jet to South Carolina.  That was upsetting but I get it.  He is trying to build time to qualify for the airlines, and time in a jet as co-pilot is really good time in his logbook.  So they rescheduled me for today to fly.  Only one thing, it turned out that rain was forecast for today!  So I drove out and we spent a couple of hours in the simulator, training, which is not a bad thing.  There are things you can practice in the simulator that you wouldn't do in an airplane.  So I got there early, as always, and while I was waiting, I saw the plot of this airplane start his engine and then taxi away.  Someday I will do that too!

 

FINALLY, Some Color!

Finally!  Some color at last!  I am tired, as you must be, of my photos that are just gray or brown!  Enough!  Let's try and find SOME color!  And I did today.  I got back from my bike ride and noticed some green in the garden by the house.  I thought that was better than nothing, so I grabbed my SONY a7 and the macro lens I bought for it, which does great closeup shots.  Imagine my surprise when I came in really close and found the purple buds inside the green leaves.  They will be bursting out there in no time, and I will photograph that too!

 

The Potted Plant

The Potted Plant.  Another bush that was once beautiful and had tiny flowers on each branch.  But then the flowers would fall off and then it was just green.  Until it wasn't.  It didn't get watered properly, unfortunately, during last summer.  And at the end of the season it was deader than a doornail, as my mom used to say!   Anyhow in desperation I photographed this because I love the single color pallet of brown, basically.  Oh well, it's March and everything is still brown!

One Last Building

I hope you will be patient with my obsession with these buildings.  This is the last one I promise!  It is a small building made of cement block away from the others.  Unlike the others which have flat roofs, this is an older style building with a curved roof,  as you can see from the curved trusses in the photograph above, or from the curved roof line of concrete block seen in the photograph below.  There are no large doors, so whatever went on in this building, I don't think it had anything to do with aircraft assembly.  I think the thing I found the most fascinating when I was photographing the interior of the building, with the collapsed roof in plain sight, was the construction of the curved trusses.  They are such interesting things, the way parts are bolted together.  They don't hardly make them like that any more!  So I am finally done with this story, although I will tell you what I can find out after visiting the American Airpower museum, and if that doesn't work, I will go to the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City and ask someone there. Be sure and click on each photograph to see more detail.

 

The Mystery Buildings

Well, I have been reading and searching, but I have not been able to come up with the companies that used these two buildings.  They are north of Republic Airport and across the road, and one of them could have been used for manufacturing airplanes, especially this building.  Look at the size of it!  This panorama was taken by looking through some missing panes of glass but there was no way I was going into this building.  It has to be several hundred feet long, just the thing for an aircraft assembly line.  So I will get over to the American Airpower Museum on the airport and bring these photos on my iPad and ask the people there what these buildings were used for.  There were so many aviation companies that came and went in the vicinity of Republic since the airport was built in 1928, when it was known as the Fairchild Flying Field, built by the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Manufacturing Company. 

This is the exterior of a really long building that could also have been an assembly line.  There is hardly a shred of roof left on the building.  I entered this building where the fence is bent back and got a short way into the building so that I could get another panorama.

So this is the interior of the smaller building, and although there is a wall in the distance, the building continues on after the wall for several hundred feet.  These buildings are so devastated by time and weather, I wonder when they were last used.  Hard to imagine them sitting empty for all the time I have been on Long Island since I arrived here in 1966.  One day I will find out what these buildings have been used for, and I will certainly let you all know what I find.  Please click on these larger than normal panoramas to enlarge them and to see all the details in each photograph.

 

Another Broken Tree

I guess you can tell that I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel here!  I took this photograph a month or two ago when I found this broken tree in a small shopping center where Citibank is and where I used to buy bagels.  What's funny is that no one seemed to clean up after this tree was broken.  I guess passersby just stacked the broken branches at the base of the tree to get them out of the parking spots!  Anyhow, not the world's greatest shot, but I find this interesting and a bit incongruous to find a broken tree in this setting.  And, I mean, what if it falls over and hurts someone?  They could sue!  I think I see a big payday!

 

A Different Kind of Camera

This photograph of the sky seen through trees in the neighbor's back yard looks different.  The color is a bit strange and the image is not razor sharp.  I thought it was kind of impressionistic, though and worth posting in these desperate times.  "Desperate" because this is the hardest time of year to find photographs for the blog, with bare trees and overcast skies and nothing green!  The reason this photograph is different is because it was done with a specialized astronomical camera, the kind that is used on the back end of telescopes to photograph the night sky.  This is the camera I used to photograph the Orion Nebula which I posted a while back: The Orion Nebula  But before I could photograph the nebula with this camera, I had to learn how to use it.  So I attached it to one of my small telescopes and put the telescope on a tripod in the back room and aimed it through a window that still had the screen on it!  Hardly the way to take great photographs.  Then I experimented to learn how to focus the telescope with the camera and  how to make correct  exposures.  So that's where this photograph came from.  

So the round red device on the back of the telescope is the camera.  It works differently from the hand-held cameras I have used all my life.  It connects with a wire to that small red box with an antenna to the left of the telescope.  Then, get this, that red box transmits the photographs from the camera by wireless, to my iPad!  Yeah, I know.  Crazy!  It is a brilliant setup and that little red box was designed by a genius and the combination almost works by itself.  Anyhow, now you know why my photograph, above, looks different.

 

The Mural At The Beach

When I parked my car down at the beach the other day to do the photographs of the water and waves, I noticed this mural on the concrete retaining wall.  You have to park your car facing the wall and this is what you see when you get out of your car.  The painting for the length of the wall brightens up what would be just a dirty concrete wall.  I love the child-like painting and the predominantly blue colors, with some bright color spots used for the clothing and for one girl's hair!  I probably should have pulled the weeds so you could see all of the painting.

I wondered, of course, who painted this mural, and by looking around saw this information at the end of the wall.  Apparently it was done by two Girl Scout troops with some paint donated by a local paint store, and one other person.  A wonderful project for the two troops!

 

Fire In The Sky

I arrived at the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium early tonight, because I was coming from the airport, not from home.  And we just started Daylight Savings Time, so the sky was still light.  I saw the bright band of red and orange and thought to myself, "It looks like the sky is on fire!"  My trusty "toy" camera was at my side, and the color was fading fast as I walked toward the magnificent light in the parking lot.  Elegant because this is, after all, the Vanderbilt Mansion.  I think that within 5 minutes the colors had faded enough so that I just stopped shooting.  Now that I look at this photograph, I can't decide whether this photograph is about the lights on the lamp post, or the colors in the sky. 

 

Bitter!

I had to go send some documents via Fedex so I drove to Glen Cove to do that, and then after buying gas, I decided to drive by Sea Cliff beach, hoping to find something for the blog.  It was cold and rainy and the wind was really blowing - there were whitecaps on the harbor.  So I walked along this other beach, and tried several different photograph to show how cold and gray it was.  And it seemed bitter cold.  I think the temps were only around 32, but with the strong wind, it was bitter cold, and damp.  But I think I got a decent photograph.  I hope you get that feeling from this photograph.

 

The Airplane Factory

I already posted a couple of photographs of two abandoned buildings that I think had to do with aircraft manufacturing, but maybe only parts of airplanes, at Republic Airport.  I haven't been able to ascertain what was built in any of these buildings, but I think airplanes were built in this building.  So I have a photo inside this building.  But while I was photographing the "big" photographs, I was also looking for "detail" photographs.  So I did this photograph of the end of a really long building.  I love all the glass with different colors because of the reflections of the sky, and the missing glass and then all the vines all over the windows.  I love all the textures in this photograph.  Please click on this to see it in more detail.

 

Irish Soda Bread

What time of year is this?  It's March.  What happens in March?  A holiday.  Really, what holiday?  I'll give you a clue.  It involves green.  Got it?  OK, one more clue.  What day is March 17?  Right!  Saint Patrick's Day!  I knew you would get it.  What do we have on St. Patricks day.  Well, yeah, beer of course but what else?  Of course!  Irish Soda bread!  So Kathy was saying that she never made any of this bread last St. Pat's day.  So she made a loaf today just before supper.  It is out of this world!  So light and tasty and delicious.  So it is already half gone!  We had some for dessert and I had three slices, and this was after dinner!  Happy St. Pats day to all!

 

Can't Make Up My Mind - Again!

I realized this afternoon that I needed to come up with a blog shot that is different.  I was thinking of taking a walk, but then I thought I probably wouldn't get anything new, especially because it is an overcast day and there wouldn't be any great light to make things look interesting.  So I took a walk around the side yard to see if I could find something that might make a photograph.  I found these decorative grasses and thought there was something possible here.  So I liked how this looked in the viewfinder and made this shot.

When it came time to work on the photograph, I thought that it was pretty bleak looking.  The day was overcast and so the light was not "warm" at all.  So after working on the first photograph, I decided to add yellow to the photograph because I know that a warm straw color is what these grasses look like in sunlight.  So now that I have two choices, I can't decide.  I mean, I love the warm one, but on the other hand, on a cold, overcast day, the bluish version is more true to what I saw when I took the photograph.

 

Flying - On The Ground

Flying at last!   Well, actually not.  An airplane was not available so the instructor suggested we spend time in the aircraft simulator instead.  I said "sure" but I had no idea of how cool this machine is.  I have used a number of desktop simulators on my computers at home, but this machine leaves them all in the dust.  First, as a simulator, it has motion!  When you bank the simulator, it tilts sideways and when you raise the nose, it tilts up!  And it feels more like a real airplane.  I flew this for an hour and ten minutes, and it was such a help in getting back my "feel" for the airplane.  It was an afternoon well spent.

This is the Redbird Flight Simulator, and you can see the caution tapes on the floor because no one can get near it from the outside when it is running.  You enter the door to the left of me in the photo and then the door closes and you are in the airplane.  I is a very sophisticated light plane simulator.  I have been incredibly lucky in my life and thanks to friends in the business, I have flown a Pan Am Boeing 707 simulator, a Pan Am 747 Simulator, and a TWA 727 Simulator!  Flying those was a thrill, to know what it feels like to fly a heavy turbojet aircraft.  This simulator is such a great teaching tool, because the instructor can stop it in "mid-air" and we can talk about a maneuver in the middle of it, and then continue flying!

 

The Magic Ball

Whoa!  What's This?  Looks like some kind of spaceship.  Well, in a way, sort of, but not really.  It is a "star projector," the heart of the Vanderbilt Planetarium where our club meets.  There are three different parts of creating the night sky in the planetarium after the lights go down.  This is the ball that creates all the stars on the inside of the dome.  And the stars are so perfect that you can bring binoculars and look at the man made sky with them, the stars are so well done!  At our meeting last night we had a talk by the planetarium director, about the history of planetariums and star projectors.  Such a fascinating story.

There are other parts that add to the ability to project the night sky onto the dome.  Here the lighting is designed to create the fading light after sunset, on a brilliant clear night.  Looks gorgeous, doesn't it?

And this is the stunning reproduction of the sky, from the star ball projector.  Because we all live under light polluted skies, to sit and see a jet black night with brilliant stars is an absolute joy.  Other parts of the projection system can take us out of our solar system to places thousands of light years away.  And another part of the system projects the sun and the moon and the planets.  It is an amazing system. 

Here, as part of the presentation last night are two people who came to the lecture, and they are looking at a paper star map handed out to everyone, and they are illuminating it with a red flashlight so as not to ruin everyone who has become "dark adapted" after sitting in the darkened planetarium for half an hour.  Using red flashlights and the star maps, people were encouraged to try and find some of the constellations.  It was an amazing evening with the history lesson and the stargazing together on the same night.  A real treat!

 

Blue Window, Blue Wall

I must be going through my "Blue Period" after glancing at yesterday's post and then today's photograph!  I went out to the airport, and parked my car facing an airplane hangar.  Didn't really pay attention, until, suddenly, I noticed that the wall was blue and the window was blue, and the combination was just perfect!  Jumped out of the car with my toy camera, and bingo!  A blog post!

 

The Snake

Sometimes it is just the slant of the light, or a certain tone of color, or in this case, the curve of the yellow oil boom.  Down by the old power plant, there is an oil terminal.  Huge barges are brought to the terminal by big tug boats, and then the oil is offloaded and the barge and tug go back where they came from.  There is also a huge tank farm across the road from the terminal with giant white tanks storing different grades of gasoline, diesel fuel, heating and heating oil.  Just in case there is a small accident while unloading they put these oil booms in the water and if there is a small spill it can be contained by the boom.  I just liked the curve of the boom and its resemblance to a water snake.

 

Ground School

Pilots need to have something called a "Flight Review" every two years in order to be a "pilot in command" which means you can fly an airplane by yourself.  Every pilot has to under go a flight review.  So you sit down with a flight instructor and he asks questions and you give answers, and if you don't remember the correct answer, then the two of you discuss it.  It is a learning process.  So I spent three hours today with Michael, a flight instructor and we discussed all kinds of things, like FAA rules and regulations, and aircraft performance and reading charts and types of airspace, among other subjects.  I haven't been a pilot in command for at least 15 years.  I have flown with other pilots but that's not the same as flying as pilot in command, solo.  So it was a really rich day, and fun to discuss aviation, something I am so passionate about, for three hours.  I will go back for perhaps two more hours of this.  Then the second part of the flight review, happens in an airplane, and that's the next step.  when I was flying regularly, a flight review might take an hour on the ground and perhaps two hours in the air, so that the instructor can see you are a competent pilot and that you haven't developed any bad habits.  This is a brilliant FAA program that was started after I first started flying and it adds a great deal to aircraft safety to have everyone have to take this time and to "get reviewed."

Just in case you wondered how I approach the Flight Review, this the dining room table where I have been studying all the materials I need to know!  I know, it's a mess, but Kathy is away, and it will all be cleaned up by the time she arrives home tomorrow night!  And, you should know that I have actually been studying for the past year, taking an online course with videos,  reviewing all the topics and reading books like "The Airman's Information Manual"  and "The Private Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, and the "Pilot's Operating Handbook" for the Cessna 172 R the aircraft I will be flying.  I am really serious about really knowing all the subjects well.  It is exhausting, and, it is absolutely wonderful at the same time!

An Inhospitable Landscape

I was grinding my way up our hill on my bike, almost home, and as I passed a neighbor's house I happened to glance down and see these Snow drops (thank you, Ginger!) coming out between the rocks next to her driveway.   It just seemed like an impossible place for them to grow, completely surrounded by these rocks of all sizes.  In fact, the small area of soil is probably perfect for them, but they just look as if they are such a predicament, living where they are planted.  So I had to keep moving up the hill, but then I grabbed my Sony a7 III and the 50mm Macro lens, which allows me to get really close, and I made the shot!

 

My Life in the Sky

                                      

This is my first pilot logbook which I bought in June of 1965 when I began my flight training.  I was on active duty with the U.S. Air Force at Niagara Falls International Airport.  After I graduated from RIT,  I worked at the Rochester Times Union for 6 months and then took time off to do 6 months active duty with the Air Force. I had always wanted to learn to fly since I was a kid and finally I had the means to do that.  A pilot's logbook is kind of like a Bible where you, or your instructor, enter every flight you make, describe the training and maneuvers, record the number of landings, and record the time you flew in hours and tenths of hours.  Every pilot needs this because you need a certain number of hours minimum for each type of license, and a certain number of hours to be "current" meaning you can carry passengers, or you can fly on instruments in bad weather.  I haven't looked at this logbook in years, although I always know where it is.  It was finally filled, and I bought a new one to continue recording my flying experience.  It is so cool to really look at it and see how dusty it is, and that the binding is worn.  What a beautiful thing this is, showing its age!

                                      

So this is what you see when its open.  Please click on the photo to see it in more detail.  On the left I can see the places I lived, and on the right the numbers of the two Student Pilot Certificates, and then my Private Pilot License. 

              

Starting at the top of the page, on the upper left you can see the year, 1965, and my very first lesson was on June 15.  The aircraft registration is N4221M, and I would never forget that airplane.  It was a tailwheel airplane made of steel tubing and covered in fabric, and painted with dope.  You can see the flight was from Niagara Falls, and to the right, the maneuvers I was taught.  Reading  these words brings back that first flight as if it were yesterday!  I was in an Air Force flying club, so the costs were reduced, but I believe the airplane cost me $20 an hour to rent, including fuel, and the instructor, Phil Musiccio received $15 per hour.  I flew with Phil for 9 hours and 30 minutes and then I made my first solo flight! We flew together one more time for 45 minutes and that's the last entry by him in my logbook.  My time was up in July and I returned to Rochester and began training with another instructor in another airplane.  Then I flew with my first woman flight instructor, Ninita E. F Bogue.  She was a wonderful teacher and so thorough, making sure I understood everything she was teaching me.  I won't forget her.  I just decided to do a Google search and discovered that she died in June of 2020, in Amherst, NY.  That has to be her!

         

And this is the last page in this logbook.  The date of my last flight in this book is a memorable one.  I flew up to Capt Cod to meet my friend Malcolm Wells, an architect who did earth sheltered buildings.  I had photographed him for an assignment, and we became friends.  That flight was October 11, 1989 and the round trip was 4:00 hours exactly.  My total number of hours shown in this logbook at the time was 548.8 hours.  By that time I had also earned my Seaplane rating, and, as a really big deal, I had earned my Instrument Rating which meant I could fly in bad weather, which I did and which I loved.  Reading random entries in this logbook was such a powerful experience - I could re-live the flights because of some of the details in the comments section of each entry.    A vivid trip back into the experiences I had as part of my life in the sky.  What a powerful document this wonderful book turned out to be!

Mirror Image

On my walk the other day there was no wind at all, which turned Scudder's Pond into a perfect mirror.  I was standing around looking for a photograph, while holding the camera horizontal.  For some reason I turned it vertical, and then it had the tops of the trees in it, both in the sky and in the water, and it was then I realized I might have a photo.  I intentionally kept it dark, so the photograph didn't just look ordinary.  I wanted some tone in the sky, not a brilliant white sky.  I guess it doesn't hurt that this is a bit spooky looking with the white cottages nearly hidden in the woods around the pond. In all my years of looking at, and photographing Scudder's pond, I never saw this photograph before!

 

The Magnificent Japanese Maple, Again...

I already mentioned taking the garbage can down to the curb when it was snowing the other night.  In addition to the long photograph of the driveway and car and house, I took the time to do this one.  From the exact spot where I always photograph it from.  The tree is pink because the scene is illuminated by the mercury vapor street light and those gas filled lights give off pink light.  I just had to photograph the tree again because it was coated with a frosting of snow, and it was too pretty to ignore, don't you think?

 

Skyscape

I have never heard the term "skyscape" before, I am pretty sure.  I wonder if it is really a word.  I have a wonderful editor friend and she will let us know if I am brilliant or stupid.  Well, actually she, and we, all know the answer to that, but I meant in terms of making up a word!   :-)  I went by the beach this afternoon and the sky had all kinds of things going on with the clouds.  They were changing rapidly and so the first thing I saw was gone once I got close to the water, but I just watched and waited.  I loved the shapes of things in the sky here and I also wonder what is going on.  Believe it or not this is a composite of three photographs all connected together by software, one posted above the other.  So it is a really wide-angle image.