365 New Days

I was on my way to get us some ice cream to celebrate the new year with when I drove by St. Boniface Church in Sea Cliff and saw this tree decorated with lights.  I realized instantly that this would make a perfect blog post!  Something about the tree and the lights just seemed right for welcoming the New Year.  So I went and bought the ice cream and photographed this on the way back.  Kathy showed me a text that her friend Genie sent to her around supper time.  I have never heard a statement like this, and it seemed absolutely perfect for the new year.  Here is is:

"365 new days.  365 new chances." 

Happy New Year to everyone!

 

Palm Trees

To get to Liz' and Sarah's home, from Amy and Gus' home, you take Lincoln Blvd to the 90 to the 405 to West Florence Avenue, and then you take that East.  This road brings you to within a stone's throw of where Liz and Sarah live.  We were riding with Liz one afternoon on the way home, and I saw these towering palm trees yet again.  They are in certain places in Venice and Los Angeles, planted in long rows.  How they stay up in wind storms is beyond me, but they do!  So when I saw this scene I was wishing I could get out of the car to photograph the trees without any distractions in the photo.  Then I realized: "Wait!  This is real life.  This is what Los Angeles looks like.  Trees and cars and traffic and traffic lights..."  So I started shooting with my toy camera from the back seat of Liz' car, and the result is a snapshot of real life in Los Angeles, California!

 

LA Decorations

Christmas night, on the way back from Amy & Gus' where we spent the day, Liz decided to drive us around in a residential area to see some of the Christmas decorations on houses.  This first house was interesting because it is definitely a California style house, and the decorations were in good taste and not overdone.  It was such a pretty scene.

At another home, the decorations seemed more like those that we see on the East Coast, and in fact what we see in some nearby neighborhoods.  As in overdone!  I shouldn't be judging here, because a lot of people love to put together giant displays and take great pleasure from that.  I tend to like more subtle displays.  But it was fun to see this small house and all the decorations on it and all around it.

Pick Your Favorite, Please.

I passed by this old factory building on Lincoln Boulevard on an overcast day and the corrugated galvanized metal stood out instantly.  I thought "I need to get back here when there is no traffic, so that I can photograph this!"  That's how this building jumped out at me!  One evening just before sunset we were driving from Amy & Gus' home to Liz and Sarah's home and traffic was light.  As we approached this building I asked Liz to stop because traffic was light enough that I could get a shot.  So this is the black and white image.

I actually "saw" this photograph as a color shot.  I tend to see color photographs more than I see black and white photographs.  So this is what I shot.  One thing, by the way, is that I saw this building first in overcast light.  I did not have a chance to photograph it in overcast light, however.  I wonder what that would look like compared to this.  But I take the "gift" of this building in this light and I am happy with the photograph.  I sent both photographs to Stan to see what he thought.  I won't tell you which photograph he preferred.  But I decided to put the two photographs up for a vote, as I have done before, and I always really enjoy your choices and your comments.  OK, so here's the surprise.  This building is a club!  It says by the door, when I got close, that only 21 and older are allowed!  The giveaway, now that I know it's a club is the nice logo on the top of the facade, AND the three lights that light up the name of the club.  What a surprise.  I thought it was an old machine shop or something.

 

Lucy the Cat

Liz and Sarah have two cats and two dogs now.  Oliver is a semi-friendly orange cat who only has one front leg, but he gets around the house just fine.  This cat is Lucy, and she is like a ghost!  I will get a quick glance of her as she sneaks behind the couch or under the dining table before scurrying into the back rooms.  But as time went on, if I came into the room and she was perched here, and I moved very carefully, she would stay on her perch, so I took a chance at photographing her on this easy chair.  I love the sense of place you get from this photograph in the living room with the tree at left and one of their guitars on the right on its stand.  And of course I love Lucy, staring at me carefully. You MUST click on the photo to see Lucy in more detail.

 

Big Wave Surfing with no Waves!

When we were down on the beach at Santa Monica yesterday, Christmas Eve, I saw this young man on some kind of really small surfboard. He would stand and watch the waves come in and break and the water would come up the wet sand, and then when it started to go out, he would throw this little surfboard  ahead of him on to the remains of the water on the beach, which was only about one inch deep.  Then as the board raced in front of him he would run after it, and jump on it, and would surf on what seemed like no water at all!  He was really good at it.  He would stand there for a couple of minutes waiting for the right wave, and then he would ride his board for twenty or thirty feet and he looked like he was having fun.  The process is called "Skim Boarding" and apparently has been around for some time.

 

The Princess and the Power Drill

Well, Vivian got her wish!  Santa Clause brought her a new princess dress!  She has been wearing her other princess dress for days on end, Amy says.  Vivian just loves being a princess and wears a tiara each day.  So this was a good Christmas for her.  And then...

Believe it or not she got an electric power drill!  Yes, for a three-year old!  I mean, who ever knew that they sold things like a battery powered drill for young children.  It comes in a box that has giant plastic screws that the drill screwdriver bit pluts into and so Vivian was screwing in and unscrewing the plastic bolts! What was astounding was how quickly she got the idea of forward and reverse on the drill!  She is just amazing.  So a princess who one day may do repairs on her own car!  Everyone felt better and so we had the Christmas dinner with all of us together which made for a wonderful day. 

 

Merry Christmas!

                                                   “Candles of Advent”

                                         Light one candle in the night, 

                                         Light one candle of hope.

                                         Hope for the world to calm its fear,

                                         Hope for the news we long to hear,

                                         Hope in a child who will soon appear.

                                         Light one candle of hope.

                                          Advent candles warm and bright, 

                                          fill the world with radiant light. 

                                          Help us find the Promised One; 

                                           guide us to the child who will come.

                                           Light one candle of hope.

Merry Christmas to everyone!  We are here with family gathered around.  We are all feeling better and clearly on the mend. We feel so lucky at this time of year for all our many blessings, and we pray for peace in a world that needs it more than ever.  We hold you all in our thoughts and wish you all well.

 

COVID !!!

We finally figured it out! Kathy and Amy and I have COVID!  Oh man...  There are people in Sarah's family coming to visit, two from Utah and three from Georgia and so we thought we needed to test ourselves, just in case, because of our visitors from away.  I KNEW that all we had was the flu.  That was easy to see, but I thought "OK, we need to be sure."  But when I saw the second red line on my little white plastic "flash drive" on the table, I was stunned!  COVID?  What the heck!  It was surprising that Kathy had it, even after all this time.  Her line is very thin but she is still infectious, as is Amy.  So it was a brilliant idea to test.  

Here Amy and Liz are looking at the test results.  The great news is, that because Liz and Sarah have been wearing masks since we got here, they, so far, are not infected.  How smart of them!  But what a surprise for the rest of us!

 

Some of Us are Sick

A few days before we left New York, Kathy came down with something.  Probably a flu, given the symptoms.  She wore a mask the whole time of the trip and the flight and was starting to feel better after we arrived.  But then I didn't feel well, a day after we arrived, and it felt as if I had the flu, with my nose running like a faucet, and my skin hurting, and all I wanted to do was take naps which I did.  So four days later I am beginning to feel just a bit better, and yesterday, Amy started to feel poorly.  So she took naps when she could, which is not easy with Vivian wanting to be with her all the time.  We have been wearing masks around the house, and so far, Liz and Sarah have avoided our fate.

So today we all went over to Amy and Gus' home and Kathy and Liz started making gingerbread for cookies and of course Vivian was really excited and wanted to be a part of it all.  Here they have rolled out the gingerbread dough, and Vivian has placed cookie cutters all over the rolled out dough before separating each cookie.  Then the cookies were transferred to a cookie sheet for baking.  The gingerbread cookies are delicious!

Somehow last night I forgot to include this photograph!  I had selected it and worked on it and cropped it and then when posting the other two, left this behind!  I think it is cute because you can see Vivian kneeling on the bench in order to work on the cookies.

 

Vivian the Gorilla

When we arrived at Amy & Gus' home after leaving the airport, Liz brought the gorilla head into the house, but she was really careful not to be wearing it, thinking that it could possibly terrify Vivian.  So it was kind of squashed under her arm, and Vivian asked what it was and Liz told her.  So then Vivian asked if Liz could put it on, and she laughed seeing Liz as a gorilla.  Then the next thing, which was wonderful, was, that Vivian wanted to wear it.  I grabbed my camera and was instantly ready to start photographing because I thought this would be so incongruous for s 3 year old child in a dress to have the had of a gorilla.  I was not wrong!  This is an awesome photograph!  I laugh every time I see it.

 

"It Never Rains in Southern California..."

It has been overcast or raining since we got here.  This is the scene this morning and actually, all day long.  And I think this is the forecast for the rest of the week.  Looks as if there is a huge low pressure system off the California coast, and it doesn't appear to be moving, just rotating around and bringing long curving strings of rain up from the south.  Fortunately we were not planning anything in particular, just hanging out together, so rain doesn't get in the way for that.  And California sure does need rain, after all the drought they have gone through for several years.  So no complaints here!

 

Grandparents Day at Vivian's School

Vivian attends a pre-school three days a week.  What's really cool is that everyone uses the French language there.  Viv soaks up French like a sponge, and it is amazing to hear her use that language.  Amy is studying French as well, onlinr, so they talk to each other at home.  So they have a program once in a while where grandparents come to the school for lunch with their grand child.  We can't normally attend the usual  events because we are not here in Los Angeles.  So Amy asked the woman who is the administrator, if we could come today, because we are on the west coast.  So the woman agreed.  She was absolutely wonderful and gracious and was so proud of this school which was established over thirty years ago, showing us around the school and grounds, and then we were seated at a table with 8 three-year olds during lunch.  What a treat is was to see so many children Vivian's age and see how they are both the same in some ways, and different.  It was such a great day!

 

There's a Gorilla in Baggage Claim!

We flew from JFK to LAX today for our Christmas in Los Angeles.  More on the flight tomorrow.  When we got to baggage claim, I happened to see a guy dressed as a gorilla!  What?  I didn't want to make eye contact so I kept walking, staying to the right of him.  

Then he put his arms out and started moving toward me!  I thought "I'm just going to get past him."  Just as he got close to me the gorilla lifted it's mask off, an it was Liz!  She finally realized that Kathy and I had not recognized that the gorilla was HER!  Well we laughed and laughed together at her impersonation.

What a great welcome to Los Angeles!  When I first saw the gorilla standing there to one side, I thought: "Well, this IS Los Angeles after all!"

 

Christmas Decorations

I showed you a photograph of the walkways and street lights at the Vanderbilt Museum, a week or so ago. I also did this photograph of the giant Christmas tree which you see as you come through the gates to go to the Planetarium and the Mansion.  I love that this is so beautiful and simple, in a way.  My favorite kind of decorations for Christmas.

 

A Pastel Sunset

I have framed this view so many times on my walks.  In all kinds of weather, in bright sunshine and in rain and overcast skies, in daylight and at dusk.  I have taken this photograph so many times, but I don't think I posted any of them before.  But yesterday, there was this lovely pastel afterglow and finally I felt I had a really nice photograph of this scene.  I love that it is peaceful here.

 

Last Yacht on the Mooring

I actually took this photograph about a month ago.  It was a Tuesday, of course, Dunkin' Donuts at the beach.  I like how this yacht stands out because it is brilliant white and because of the haze, everything else is gray and we can barely see across the sound.  I saw the yacht and the little breakwater in the foreground then I just had to move back and forth until I liked the balance of everything in the photograph.  I think this composition works.  The yacht has been hauled for the winter by now.  I am gad I got a good photograph before it went away.  I used a 400mm lens to bring all the elements together and to give a larger image of the boat.

The Light!

I went for my walk today while the sun was still shining, which was unusual.  I have been walking under overcast skies, or well after the sun had set. Today was different!  The sky was crystal clear and the late afternoon sunlight was a brilliant golden color.  It was amazing light and everything it illuminated stood out brilliantly!  I couldn't get over how everything familiar, looked so different.  These trees are the Sycamore trees that line the walkway along the harbor.

And here are more Sycamore trees, seen looking along the sidewalk, rather than looking up.  I love the way the sun lights them so that there are dark shadows on one side and bright highlights on the other, which makes them look more three dimensional.

And here is the magnificent Scudder's pond, lit by the setting sun!  And of course what makes this photograph is the mirror image of the trees and the phragmites, reflected in the smooth-as-glass surface of the water.  What a day!  What wonderful images!  It's as if the world has come alive again.

 

Behind the Airplane

What do you mean, you are in front of the airplane.  Yeah, I know I am standing in front, but when flying the airplane today I was "behind" the airplane.  That means I spent much of the flight trying to "catch up" to the airplane and preferably be a step or two "ahead of the airplane."  It was a very frustrating day!  We flew from Brookhaven airport across Long Island Sound and landed at Bridgeport airport, then took off and flew to Long Island MacArthur airport then back to Brookhaven.  There is SO much to do as pilot when flying.  In a car your drive down the road and stay in your lane, and watch your speed.  In an airplane you have no boundaries, the entire sky is yours, BUT, you want to fly a straight course to your destination, AND you want to be at the correct altitude, AND you want to do various parts of the flight at the correct speed.  AND THEN, you have to adjust the communication radios and the navigation radios and talk to controllers and change engine power and headings.  It is so easy get behind air aircraft and not be able to catch up.  And that's not a good feeling.  I need to be "in charge" of the airplane, not hanging on my by fingertips as it races ahead of me.  Let's see if I will be better on my next flight, which will be in 2024.  Oh, the black thing covering the engine cowling?  That is a blanket that insulates the engine cowling, and there is an orange extension cord that connects to an electric heater in the engine.  So the engine stays warm, and starts more easily in the wintertime.  Even engines get cold in the winter!

 

Searching for Food

On my walk the other day, late in the afternoon, I saw this seagull flying low along the shoreline carefully scanning the rocks and water looking for food.  It was windy and bitter cold.  When the gull got a bit further north it turned around and came back over the water's edge and flew south.  All I could think of was, man it has to be hard to be a seagull looking for food at this tie of year!  There were other gulls flying the same route at the water's edge.  Can these birds find enough to eat at this time of year? Flying takes a lot of energy and food creates that energy.  Can they find enough to survive?

 

Murmuration

I was on my walk today and it was still light.  I don't remember what caught my attention - I think that maybe out of the corner of my eye I first saw a cloud of birds coming into view from the right.  There were a LOT of birds!  Then they kept coming and kept coming and I realized it was a swarm of birds and they were changing direction and the swarm was going up then down then turning as then disappeared in the distance.  It happened quickly and I only managed to get two exposures before they were out of sight.  I am guessing they were moving at 30 to 40 miles per hour because they disappeared so fast.  So I had to look up this behavior, and it seems that these are Starlings, and what they are doing, all flying together like this, is called "Murmuration," which is the name for everything that I just described.  What an amazing thing to see!  Please click on the image to see it larger and to see more of the birds.

 

Larry's Ear

We had dinner with our friends the Gordon's tonight.  It is our ritual for both of us to get Chinese takeout and then meet at their house for a dinner together.  After dinner, Larry asked me "Do you want to see my ear?"  "What?"  "I can show you my ear." and he showed me this slice of the trunk of their Christmas tree which he cut off before putting the tree up.  It really does look exactly like a human ear, doesn't it?  Look at all the amazing things you can learn, viewing my blog!

 

December Skies

When I went for my walk yesterday, late in the day, I only got about 30 feet down the street before I looked up and saw these clouds behind the empty branches of trees.  My thought was ""Yes, that looks exactly like a December should look!  When I saw this I thought of these first four lines of Robert Frosts's "My November Guest:"  “My sorrow, when she’s here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane.”  I almost want to print the whole poem, but I won't because you can find it using Google, of course.  Even though his poem was about November, and even though it's not raining, I still think my photograph and his poem go nicely together.

 

Grasses

There is a woman who lives two houses down the street that I know.  She is a cyclist, and a gardener. It is always interesting to see what she does with gardens around her house.  I have been walking by this scene every day I do my walk, and the other day it finally looked worth a photograph.  The greases were leaning over the ivy planted alongside the street, and the light was soft, and my sense was that the grasses looked like a breaking wave.  I have seen this before but it didn't look just right for a photo, but it did the other day!  What is the quote? "Good things come to those who wait."

 

Beautiful Lights

Our astronomy club meets at the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium.  The museum was the home of William K. Vanderbilt II who loved the oceans and the natural world. In his seagoing global travels, he collected fish and other marine life, birds, invertebrates and cultural artifacts for the personal museum he planned to build on his Long Island estate. It is a gorgeous place with an amazing mansion and several museums, as well of the planetarium.  This year it is beautifully decorated for the holidays.  I just loved how these lights are decorated and the reflection of the light off of the Belgian block paved driveway.

Traffic in the Abstract

I have some good news here, and some bad news...   :-)   The bad news is that I am back to my old tricks of trying to photograph while driving...  I was on the way home from Brookhaven airport after flying today, and traffic was moving slow at rush hour.  I thought I would try a photograph to show all the lights of the traffic going off into the distance.  So with one hand, I held up my toy camera and took one shot.  When I quickly looked at it, I realized that the ISO, or "chip sensitivity" was no way near high enough and so the camera used a long exposure and all I got was this blur.  There is no way I was going to try changing camera settings on my little gem of a camera, so I quit after one shot.  That's the good news!  Turns out I have convinced myself that this shot is artistic or something and so I am posting it.  You may decide that I am delusional!

 

A New Island on Long Island

I really love this photograph because of its subtlety.  It was really dark, as you can see, when I finished my walk the other night.  When I got back to the bottom of my street I was so surprised to see this sandbar surrounded by water.  In all the years I have lived here, since 1966 I have never seen a sandbar going in this direction.  Usually they are parallel with the shore!  So I photographed it, and when I got home I found that I really loved this, both for its design but more for the deep gray color and the few lights from across the harbor reflected in the water.  I had no idea that I would like this photograph so much, when I took it.

 

Look at the Histogram!

Here's a secret.  Yesterday's photo of this tree in the fog was way underexposed because I was careless with my exposures.  When you take a photograph in the dark and then look at the image in the dark outside at night, the photograph looks brighter because it is dark out.  When you bring the camera into the lighted house, then you realize it was too dark.  So I was able to get something out of those photographs but that wasn't the photograph I wanted.  Wonder of wonders, last night it was foggy again and, knowing my previous exposures, I tried again.  There is a little graph you can select on the screen on the back of the camera and it tells you where the tones of the photograph are, and that's how you know if your exposure is proper.  My friend Stan says you ALWAYS need to look at the histogram.  Uhhhh...  Sometimes I don't follow his orders, and look what that got me.  I was lucky that the weather was such that I could have a "do-over!"

Here is a second photograph I did in the backyard in the fog the first night I was photographing.  I like this on a lot, even though it is more subtle.  I think there is more a sense of the fog in this one.

 

Night Fog

Last night I turned out all the lights before heading upstairs to bed, and when I looked out the window, as I always do at night I saw that there was fog.  So then I had a big decision to make - get sleep, or take photographs.  You know the answer by now...  So I grabbed a tripod and the 18mm wide angle lens and went outside for half an hour.  I took two photographs that were both all right, but not great.  You get to see one tonight and the other tomorrow night.  Then you can tell me which you enjoy the most.

 

The Pond at Dusk

So I am having fun with my late day walking and photographing.  I saw these phragmites at Scudder's pond yesterday when it was really dark and I wanted to draw attention to them by focusing on them and leaving the background of the pond and trees in the distance out of focus.  It was really getting dark, but my Sony a7 III was up to the task.  The ISO was 1600 and the exposure was 1/60 at f/5.6.

 

An Imperfect Tree

I love to photograph trees and I am always looking for perfect ones to photograph.  They can be so beautiful and I have photographed hundreds of trees because of their form, or their perfect shape.  I was walking again this afternoon, always looking as is my way, when I saw this strange, kind of distorted tree silhouetted against the darkened sky.  Its strange shape really captured my attention after I first saw it.  It is not beautiful in the normal sense, but it has such a fascinating shape.  It has clearly been trimmed at the top.  It is located on a small patch of ground in an oil terminal where tanker trucks come to be filled.  In a way, this tree is more interesting because it is imperfect.  The thought I had was that the tree is imperfect, just as all of us are a bit imperfect, so I shouldn't ignore it because it is not perfect.  How's that for a train of thought that you would never expect!