A Child's Rusty Bicycle

I can't explain my attraction to this scene.  Maybe just because I love bicycles.  But the sight of a child's bicycle, left all alone leaning against a bench makes me curious.  I photographed this the day Stan and I were flying his drone at the big ball field in town.  There were no children anywhere near the ball field the time we were there.  One telltale sign for me is that the chain from the pedals to the gear on the rear wheel is so completely rusted.  Perhaps so rusted that it might not be possible to even pedal the bike.  So I hope the bike was not abandoned for that reason.  I could make the chain like new with a wire brush and some chain lube and it would work perfectly.  I will have to go by there and see if it is still there.

 

Astronomy Day!

Today was National Astronomy Day, which takes place twice a year, in the Spring and in the Fall, all over the United States.  The object is to have a means of interaction between the general public and various astronomy enthusiasts, groups and professionals.  For us it happens at the Vanderbilt Planetarium in Centerport, where our club meets every week. Usually we have solar telescopes set up out doors during the day, and then observing at night.  But it was rainy all day so everything happened indoors in the planetarium.  The place was mobbed!  I set up a small telescope, and on a far wall, taped up an image of the planet Saturn.  I would point out to the young children, and the adults, where it was, a long way off, and then I had them look in the telescope to see how much closer it seemed. The line at the telescope was constant which was wonderful.  It is so rewarding to demonstrate to everyone what a telescope does, and to show them Saturn, even if it was just a photograph.  What was astounding was how many of the young children, after seeing the photo in the telescope said: "That's Saturn!"  And these were young children!  So this photo above was mine.

One of our club members is in High School and she was volunteering at the event today.  Her mom came along as well.  I have talked to her mom because she wants to buy a new camera to replace a Nikon digital camera that is almost 20 years old.  So I brought along my 4 year old Canon T7i which I thought would be a good choice for her, and gave it to her to use for the day so she could get a feel for the camera.  She got so many great photographs with the camera!  She is a natural! And lo and behold she got this shot of me with the telescope and a child and her mom, during a moment of levity!  I love this shot!  You know I never use last names in the blog, so I will just say: Photo Credit: Mei Shyan, which is her first name, which is two names.

 

I Photograph the Drone...

... and the drone photographs me!  Stan came out again on Tuesday to try some of the sophisticated flying patterns that his drone is capable of.  It is such an amazing machine!  One of the patterns was to point the drone at the two of us in the middle of the field, and then draw a green box around us on his phone, which has the drone controlling software in it.  Then you hit "Go" and the drone flies around us in a circle while keeping its camera on us the whole time!  The first time it is close to us, then it backs away from us and continues to circle, all while doing video!  That was just one of the sophisticated methods is is capable of.  So I was photographing Stan and the drone, and he had the drone do some photographs of me!

And this is my photograph of his drone that you see me taking in the photograph up above.  Another fun day playing with drones and cameras!

 

Yukkkkkkk

OK I hope you will be able to forgive me for photographing this truck and its contents, and the text printed on the truck.  So we were headed to the beach with our Dunkin' Donuts and we were stopped at a light with this truck in front of us.  First we saw the porta potty up on the truck.  But THEN we saw the orange sign patially visible at the bottom of the porta potty.  If you can't make it out, it says "Stool bus."  Oh, Yukkkkk...  And then there is the OTHER sign with white type in the middle of the photograph.  Yukkkkk.  Ugggggg...  This is sick humor.  So why do I show it to you, to make you go Yukkkkk?  Well, I didn't want to make you ill.  I was just desperate for one more blog post!

 

Night Road Construction

Before you panic, I shot this through the windshield while I was stopped at a traffic light!  OK, the truth is, all the OTHER shots I did through the windshield were too blurry...   :-(  They are doing major road surface refinishing on Northern Boulevard,  Route 25A, and that is the route I take to and from my astronomy club meeting.  The work starts at 9PM and goes all night.  So I had to drive in the right hand lane here which is essentially in the gutter, the cars coming the other way have it the best, and the lane on the left is the lane that further on is being "milled" with heavy machinery and then will be repaved.  I will try and get a better shot next week, of the construction itself.  Stay tuned.

 

A Battered and Beautiful Landscape

I have been observing the Moon for the last two nights.  Tonight it was six days old, meaning it is not at first quarter yet.  It is really high in the sky because of the time of year, and the winds are calm which means that I can see wonderful detail in the surface, because I am not looking through turbulent winds screaming along at 100 MPH in the upper air which makes objects we view in our telescopes difficult to see because they are blurry from the high winds.  The last two nights have been perfect, and I have spent an hour both nights cruising along the "terminator" the area between light and dark just looking at the destruction wrought on the moon because of it being bombarded by left over material from the formation of our solar system.  It is a rugged and bleak landscape, full of craters and lava flows and ragged mountains, and it is stunningly beautiful to see.  I wish you all could come to my back yard and enjoy the view through my telescope of this magnificent world.

So this is a cropped closeup of the photograph above.  I hope you can see more detain in this image.  PLEASE click on both of these photographs to see more detail.

 

Storm Front

I was on my way to pick up the pizza for dinner, and as I got to the harbor I saw this really dark wall of cloud.  Then I drove up the hill to the main street and went by the small memorial park that overlooks the sound.  The sky was so dark I just had to pul over, park the car, grab the camera, and run into the park and start photographing.  This is my favorite photograph and I used a 400mm telephoto lens for this one.  I also shot the scene with a wide-angle lens but it was not as dramatic.  What I like is that if you click on this, to the left beyond the dark shape of Sands Point is a mansion on the point and beyond that, in the center of the photograph, is Execution Light, a lighthouse on Execution Rocks, almost invisible.  Quite the scene!

 

The Moon and Venus

We have a ritual with our friends Larry and Nancy, that began near the end of Covid.  We each order Chinese take out, and then meet at their home and have dinner together, which is always a lot of fun.  It was such a relief toward the end of Covid that we could get together with friends, finally.  So tonight we got together again for dinner.  Larry had emailed me last week and wanted to know what the "bright star" was in the west, and I told him it was the planet Venus.  So I thought of that after dinner, and happened to look out the window and there was Venus and the Moon together! I was the only one who saw it through the window, so I said "Quick, everyone out on the deck!"  And this was the sight that I saw.  Everyone "got" the beauty of this celestial pair in the evening sky not that long after sunset.  I didn't have my really good camera with me, but my "toy" camera came through for me in a pinch.  Isn't this just beautiful!

 

The Finished Table

Thank you all who wrote to me about the table project.  So I do owe you all photographs of the finished table.  So that's why I am doing a second posting so you can see both the new finish on the tabletop and the whole table after it was finished.  So this is the table top, and you can even see a faint reflection of a white window frame on the far side of the tabletop.  That is some shiny surface!

And here is the finished table in Vince and Jo Anne's sun room.  So what an amazing table this is.  You might wonder what the two spindles just under the tabletop are about.  Actually there are four spindles and they hold that square piece about 6 inches below the bottom of the tabletop.  The whole tabletop lifts off the base!  For storage, I am thinking.  I must confess I would not have the patience to refinish the rest of the table!  Can you imagine carefully hand sanding the spindles and the central post and those three legs?  Yikes!  But there are people who relish projects like this.  Like my sister Joan who faithfully reads the blog every day.  You would not believe some of the refinishing projects she has done, and she even learned how to replace rush and cake seats!  Now THAT is a project and a half!  But I just refinished the flat top.  That's just child's play compared to what a real refinisher would do!

 

Sanding Dust

While we were in Rochester, Jo Anne had asked if I could bring my orbital sander and help her refinish the top of an old table that had been in her family for a long time.  So I had to hand sand some areas where the finish had been scratched down to the wood and had darkened.  So I sanded these areas and then put varnish on the bare wood. I would hand sand that the next day to make it level, and then do another coat to bring the indentation up to the level of the finish on the rest of the table.  After several coats in the damaged areas, I sanded the whole top of the table with my orbital sander and then varnished that.  Then the next day I sanded the whole table top again and varnished the whole table top again.  When I was done with two coats the table top looked so much better, but was not perfect because there were some areas where the varnish was absorbed by the wood and was not as shiny as the rest of the table top.  Bummer.  While sanding the whole table top, I would rub it with my whole hand to see if it was smooth everywhere. When I looked at my hand with the varnish dust on it I laughed because it looked to funny!  So what did I do?  Well, I photographed it, of course!

 

The Magnolia

This is the Magnolia tree that Judy, our next door neighbor has on her property.  It may have been just a bit past it's prime when I photographed it the other day.  I couldn't decide which I liked better, a photograph of the whole tree, or this closeup.  I do love these blossoms against the deep blue sky, so maybe this is my favorite.  But I did try a photograph with more of the tree in it. You should know that to get these blooms against the sky, I stood close to the tree and used a 400mm lens to get these blossoms up close.

This shows more of the Magnolia tree, but I think the thing I love the most is the small garden shed on the neighbor's lawn across the street, with the bright red door.  Anyhow, you get two photographs to enjoy instead of just one!

 

Little Brown Tree

The Little Brown Tree.  OK, I know it's not a tree, it just looks like one in some ways.  It is a flower, or the remains of one.  Kathy was cleaning the garden today and cut these down and put them in the trash can. I came by and saw it, and it reminded me of a tree, so I decided to photograph it in the late afternoon sunlight.  I attached this flower to a photographic light stand, and then, carried it around the yard to find the best place for the light and the background.  And all this time you thought it was in the garden, right?  Photographers are so sneaky!   :-). I hope you enjoy my "tree" as much as I do, and if you want to tell me what kind of flower this is, I would really appreciate it.  Thanks!

 

Wall-to-Wall Daffodils

I have been photographing Daffodils for a couple of weeks now, looking for the best photograph.  Most of them are found in groups of maybe half a dozen blooms.  When I saw these packed together like this I realized it was so different from how most home gardens are planted.  I mean, these are wall-to-wall!  I hate to ruin it for you but these were not in someone's garden, they are in a long strip between the sidewalk and a parking lot at a Starbucks!  Hate to burst your bubble, but that's where I found them.  Still, a lovely sight!

 

The Wedding Portrait

                               

Kathy and I went to the presentation at the Sea Cliff Library last Friday.  When we left and were driving home we drove down Sea Cliff avenue, which is the main street, toward Memorial Park, which overlooks the sound.  We saw these people getting out of cars and they were blocking one of the lanes so there was no room to get by.  We expected them to move out of the street and then they arranged themselves all across both lanes, while the driver on the right held up his hand to stop traffic, which was only us.  So we sat there for a bit while the photographer, seen in the distance, just to the right of the bride, arranged everyone and then had them walk down the street while he photographed them.  So we sat and watched him work and eventually he got the shots he needed and the crowd moved into the park for more photographs.  Just your average day in the life of a wedding photographer!

NEAF

So this is it!  The Big Daddy of all astronomy and telescope shows.  The Northeast Astronomy Forum.  It is the show we wait for all year long.  Any kind of telescope or mount or eyepiece or accessory can be found here. and you can see it, touch it, pick it up, and look through it!  It doesn't get any better than that when you are trying to decide whether or not to buy a new piece of equipment.  BE SURE AND CLICK ON THIS PANORAMA to see in in a larger size.

It is a "candy store" on overload for those of us in the hobby of Astronomy.

Seven telescopes in a row!  Which one do you want?

There are also lectures going on both days, and they include astronauts, and scientists and NASA administrators.  This gentleman gave a great talk about exploring the different geological features of the Moon.

Oh look!  More telescopes, and dedicated astronomy cameras to put on the back.

The amount of equipment and accessories on display is unimaginable, until you come here and see everything in person!  This is the event that charges are batteries and makes us want to get observing now that the nicer weather is here.

 

The Bridge

I drove up to Rockland county today for a giant Astronomy convention.  And of course I have to cross the Hudson river, and I did that by driving over the new Tappan Zee Bridge.  I have to tell you, each time I cross this bridge I am stunned by how spectacular it is!  I have to say, that with all his faults, which came to light after the bridge was finished, Andrew Cuomo did an outstanding job willing this bridge into existence, and picking a spectacular design for it.  

I like the first photograph best, when I was headed west across the Hudson.  But on the way home, headed east across the Hudson, this image is not bad either.

 

Meet The Author

Today Kathy and I went over to the Sea Cliff Library to hear Bill Bleyer, a former work colleague, give a talk about one of the books he has written.  After leaving Newsday, he started writing books about Long Island history and he has been very successful.  The book he was talking about today is called "Long Island and the Sea: A Maritime History."  His talk was riveting as he described some of the worst shipwrecks on Long Island going way back in history.   He is a great speaker and has so much detail about these events that we were all transfixed with the stories.

His next book due out on May 1st is "The Sinking of the Steamboat Lexington on Long Island Sound."

He has also written books on the Fire Island Lighthouse,  George Washington's Long Island Spy Ring,  Sagamore Hill, (Which was Teddy Roosevelt's home),  and his first book, written with another author, "Long Island and the Civil War."  These are all such interesting topics that I need to start reading!

Black Hawk Over Sea Cliff

I went by the post office today to mail some letters.  After putting them in the mailbox, I went back to my car and heard this helicopter.  So I looked up and saw this huge helicopter, flying slowly, down low.  So as I watched it get closed I grabbed my toy camera on my belt, and started photographing.  This is a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. I think it is flying at about 500 feet, which is low, but not low for a helicopter.  Fixed wing aircraft are limited to 1000 feet above populated areas, but there is no limit to helicopters.  This is one of my first photographs, and the helo continued past me and then did a slow turn around downtown Sea Cliff and then headed back to the west.  It was so cool to see this helo down low.  I am guessing that the pilot or one of the crew members perhaps had lived here.  They were just sightseeing!

 

The Golf Course

I was on my way to the astronomy club meeting tonight, and enjoying the fact that it is now still light out for my drive.  Which also means I can look for photograph for the blog late in the day because the sun is still up.  I flashed by this scene and what caught my attention was the thin darker snake-like landform in the middle of the photograph.  It went by so fast I was down the road by the time I realized that I should stop, so I turned around and went back.  So glad I did.  This scene has such subtle coloration, which is one reason I like this photograph so much.

 

The Hostas Rise

Kathy has been cleaning out the garden next to the house.  There have been a lot of changes in the week that we were gone.  These Hostas didn't even show a hint of green when we left.  But the warmer weather while we were gone has brought them to this point. What a joy to see all this green!

These purple and green sprouts of the Hostas are such interesting things that I decided to put a macro lens on my camera to show them in great detail.

 

Wind Turbines

We drove home from Rochester today, and the weather was beautiful, and traffic was light.  It was a nice ride home, with blue sky and sunshine.  On the way up to Rochester I spotted several giant wind turbines on the ridges as we approached Binghamton.  On the way home I looked more closely and had my camera ready for a couple of quick snaps.  These things are huge!  I did a search on the "internets" when I got home.  These turbines are located in Windsor, NY which is about 15 miles East Southeast of Binghamton.  I did find a couple of news stories that talked about a total of 34 wind turbines located in Windsor and Sanford, NY when the project is done.  They mention that some of the turbines will 600 feet tall!  Wow!  They looked huge but it was so hard to guess how high because they were so far away.

Here is a slightly closer view.  Their blades were "feathered" which means the edge of each blade was facing into the wind, so the blades would not rotate if the wind were blowing.  Not sure why that was.

 

Easter Sunday

This is Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Webster, NY, where we went to Easter Sunday Mass today.  I was stunned when we got out of the car and I saw this beautiful church in the early morning light. I can't remember right off hand, the last time I saw an entirely brick church.  Or perhaps I have, but the bricks were darker and weathered more.  These bricks are a very bright orange, which looks beautiful against a bright blue sky. There is a plaque on the front of the church that says 1901 but I was unable to find out any other information on their website or on the web, other than that date.

The interior of the church is beautiful as well, as you can see from this photograph.

This is one of the many beautiful stained glass windows in the church.

At lunch time Vince, Jo Anne, and Kathy and I went to dinner at a restaurant downtown where we met Chris and Becky for an Easter Brunch.  It was good to see them both - we last saw them at a Thanksgiving dinner two years ago.  Here Kathy is showing them photographs on her phone of Vivian. that Amy has sent.  It was a lovely way to spend Easter Day.

 

Cattails

"Typha is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks." (Thank you Wikipedia!). They largely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, where they are found in a variety of wetland habitats.  Don't you love coming here and learning more about the world?   :-). Vince and Jo Anne's new home backs up against a small wetland, not 30 feet from their back door.  We have been watching all kinds of birds and ducks and geese every day, which is so much fun.  I wandered down to the edge of the wetland and used my 200mm lens to look at some of the plants and birds closely and these cattails in various stages of dissolution caught my eye.  It is so much fun to see what happens to the brown cigar shaped parts of the plant after going through winter.  I have posted an extra large image so please click on it to see more detail.

 

George Eastman's Home

I went to George Eastman House, as I have called it, since going there for the first time in 1960, as a freshman at RIT.  The name has changed to better reflect what it is these days and it is now the Eastman Museum, just to set the record straight.  I go there to see the photographic exhibits on display as well as seeing some of the cameras they have on display as well, some types of which I have owned in my career.  But for some reason yesterday, I decided to walk around the house itself where the photographs used to be on display.  They have since built an entire new museum and research center behind, and connected, to the house that George Eastman lived in.  I was taken to stop in each of the rooms I visited, and tried to imagine what it was like when George Eastman lived there.  It was a very relaxing time for me and I enjoyed carefully observing the furniture and paintings in each of the rooms.  This is the amazing conservatory where George Eastman had breakfast every morning while an organist played music for him on one of the two pipe organs built into the house!

This is a view of the "oculus," an eye-shaped window in the ceiling of the third floor of the home.  Don't you just love the elegant curved railings everywhere?

Here is his desk in the living room of the home.  Fresh flowers from the large gardens on the property at the time, were  throughout the home.

When George was growing up, his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm they were running and moved to Rochester.  His father died of a brain disorder. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders.  As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him.  She came to live with him in his home where George took great care of her.  This is her closet, just outside her bedroom where she lived until she died.

This is the magnificent garden as seen from his mother's bedroom window.  It has just been completely restored after a project lasting a few years.  I can't wait to see this when it is in bloom. 

And this is the coolest thing.  It is a "camera obscura" and it is a small, completely darkened room with a lens in the blocked off window which, as you get used to the dark, projects a view of the scene outside the window, upside down, because that's what lenses do.  You have to sit on a bench inside and let your eyes grow accustomed to the dark, and then you begin to see the scene outside..  These are only a few random photographs from visiting the house - there are so many more, but I hope this piques your interest, should you have a chance to visit Rochester, NY one day.

 

 

And What's to Become of This Home...

We were headed north on the way to Vince and JoAnne's when this house flashed by on our left.  I couldn't help notice all the boarded up windows and doors on this house.  Naturally, I am always looking for old and abandoned things to photograph along my way.  I didn't stop in my first passing, but today I went to the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, and saw this as I passed by this morning, and vowed to stop and photograph it on the way home.  Which I have done.  What is interesting about this house is that it appears to have a brand new metal roof on it, which means it won't rot and collapse after 30 or 40 years as the Ovid farmhouse did.  There is a lot of agricultural land around this area, and a lot of it has already been developed with large housing and condominium projects.  So perhaps this land is destined to suffer the same development.  I will keep you posted, but it may take a while to see what happens here. This house is in a spectacular setting, by the way, it stands alone on the top of a rise and so is silhouetted against the sky in both directions.

 

The Red Barn

Vince and Jo Anne moved to Webster a few years ago, and so I am slowly learning the new neighborhood.  I was on the way to Wegman's to bet some salad fixings to go with dinner tonight when I drove by this barn.  I have driven by it before but never really noticed it.  But I did today.  So I stopped to photograph it.  I always look a building, or any subject, actually, a number of different ways before photographing and I usually shoot it from different points of view.  This is one of the last photographs I did and it is different for me, because I put the tree right in the middle of the front of the barn!  Normally you want distractions away from the subject.  But my heart tells me this is the most interesting view, because it is unexpected.

Here is one of the other, more traditional views, and I thought it would be interesting to see one of the other ways I photographed this red barn.  It's nice because you can see the whole barn and all the windows and there is a white fence in the photograph for added interest.  But I like the first shot with the tree best.  Everyone is allowed to tell me which one they like best, however.

 

The Farmhouse Fading, Now and Then

We are now in Rochester, and on the way up today I had to stop and photograph my favorite farmhouse.  It has been over a year since we have been up here and I was not even sure what I would find.  The last time I came by, the entire roof had collapsed and it was looking pretty sad. I wondered if it was even still standing.  I was shocked at how dramatically different it looked this time, and then I realized that someone had stripped the clapboards off the front of the house!

This is a view through a window of the inside of part of the house and of course you can see the sky from within the rooms now.

I really love this photograph, of the tilted door and screen door.  Not sure why, but it is subtle.  I photographed this the last time, but it was illuminated by the harsh light of the direct sun.  This is more beautiful because of the soft light.  Apparently there was a side porch, in the foreground, but it has collapsed as well.  I would love to be able to see what this house looked like when it was newer and still occupied.

Here is a view I have photographed many times in the past.  Someone even cut down one of the trees in front, and I wonder why they did that.

And to put things in perspective, here is a similar photograph of the farmhouse in 2009, 14 years ago.  It was the oldest photograph I have on this computer, but there may be older photographs in the desktop computer at home.