At The Lighthouse

                                                       

I thought I would show you a few last photographs around the lighthouse.  Here is a shot showing the whole lighthouse from top to bottom, with no buildings in the way.  The all white building to the left in the photo is the fire control building - more on that in another post.

And of course lighthouses not only have a light, but they always have a foghorn!  Of course!  No one could explain to me why there are four of them stacked, and then another one that sits by itself to the left

When you get to the room at the top of the lighthouse, that is below the lamp room, there is a doorway that leads to a metal catwalk all around the lighthouse.  I assume that is so that the lighthouse keeper can clean the glass windows of the lamp room.    Visitors can't walk all around but you can come out onto one small section and get a great view of everything around the lighthouse.

This is just one of the rooms in the museum which is located in the Keeper's Quarters.  Haven't they done a beautiful job with this.  There are so many rooms with all kinds of information, it would take a while to see and read everything.  In the glass cace in the center of the room there is a very important tan-colored documet that I have photographed up close, below.   

This is an astounding document written in 1796 by the federal government, authorizing the purchase of the land that the lighthouse is now located on.  If you look closely, you will see that it was signed by George Washington!  Is that stunning, or what!  The purchase agreement states that the cost for the land was $250.  I looked that amount up to see what it's value would be today, and the estimates are from $8,000 to $10,000.  I would have guessed so much more.  Be sure and click on this image because I posted an extra large image so you could examine Washington's signature closely.

The Pillbox

This is called a pillbox.  It was constructed by the Army on top of the bluff on the south side of the Montauk Point Lighthouse during World War II.  Personnel were stationed inside to keep watch over the ocean for enemy vessels.  Most of this structure was buried and a small part was above ground with a slit in the ocean-facing side, so soldiers could keep watch.  It would be very difficult to see from at ship at sea because it would have had camouflage around it as well.

This is a second piece of the pillbox.  For years, when I would visit Montauk Point, I would see the rectangular part of the pillbox in the first photograph, in the ocean just beyond the stone revetment at the bottom of the cliff.  For years since WW II It was up above the ocean on the top of the bluff but in 1976 it was hanging dangerously above the beach below. So here's the cool part...  The Coast Guard, which ran the lighthouse, used high power fire hoses to flush out the remaining sand an soil around the pillbox, causing it to topple to the beach, where it remained until it was lifted back up on top of the cliff in 2021 so there would be room to add the new rocks and boulders to extend the revetment I showed you the other day.  I cannot imagine what they used to get that box back up to where it is now!

It is wonderful, however ,that these pieces are back up on top of the cliff so we can see what they look like.  You can see that these pillboxes , with thick concrete and reinforcement rods were designed to withstand attacks by guns, and perhaps smaller artillery.  Not something that I would like to be in if someone was shooting at me, however.  You should know, however, that there was one case of, believe it or not, a submarine putting three spies ashore in a small boat and they managed to get a Long Island Railroad train from somewhere out east, and managed to get to New York City, before they were caught!  Thats why it was so important to have lookouts watching day and night for any ship activity.

 

Lost at Sea Memorial

This is the "Lost at Sea Memorial" at Montauk Point, which is located between the light house and the cliff.  It is a commemorative monument memorializing commercial fishermen who were lost at sea while fishing the waters of eastern Long Island.  The memorial was created by sculptor Malcolm Frazer over a several year period and was finished and dedicated in November 1999.  The names of those lost are engraved on the pink granite at the base of the sculpture.  The earliest names are four fisherman who all died on February 24, 1719.  The four ranged in age from 24 to 29 years of age...   Such a sobering thing to read.

This is a closer view of the sculpture of the fisherman.

 

The Cairn

I found this arrangement of rocks on the beach down below Montauk Point Lighthouse.  I am immediately attracted to these creations for some reason, even though I couldn't remember what they are called.  They are "cairns."  I guess I find them attractive because someone has taken the time and the artistry to create these, in most cases, for no particular purpose.  They are often used on trails up above the tree line to show the way to hikers.  In the case of an artistic creation like this, someone has to select some rocks and decide on an arrangement and then take the time to arrange them just so, so that the rocks are carefully balanced, not necessarily an easy task.  Author David B. Williams who wrote a book on Cairns says: "The desire to stack rocks is understandable from a practical, aesthetic, and spiritual perspective.  It seems almost primal.  As a species, we evolved in rocky landscapes. We have been building these things for thousands of years.  They're a way to say: 'I am here. I have lived'""

 

Saving the Lighthouse!

When the Montauk Point Lighthouse was first built in 1796 it was 300 feet from the shoreline. Today, because of erosion and storm damage to the bluff, it is only 95 feet from the shore. The good news is that a 2 1/2 year project that cost forty million dollars has just been completed, to rebuild and reinforce the stone revetment surrounding the lighthouse on three sides.

This view is looking west, and the lighthouse is up and to the right, outside the view of the camera.  The construction consisted of removing and reusing existing 5 and 10 ton armor stones, placement of new 10 and 15 ton armor stones and providing slope stabilization with terracing and vegetation above the upper crest of the revetment.  Look at the size of these stones!  Notice how carefully they are all put together, essentially leaving a road that the heavy equipment could move along, well above the water, while installing the new stones.  The revetment was nearly doubled in breadth and width with 60,000 tons of granite boulders!  This was a massive project and the results are stunning to behold. 

I cannot imagine how they placed these giant stones, so that they are all at one height the whole way around the base of Montauk Point!  It is like walking along a sidewalk when you walk around the lighthouse from below.

This is a snapshot from a video on display showing how the work was done, with this giant grappler, which arrived with a similar one, on a huge barge towed by two tugboats!

You can see here how far up the face of the cliff the new stones go.  There have been a number of projects over the years to protect the lighthouse, but a giant storm would come along and damaged these revetments, which were then rebuilt.  This new construction was designed to protect the Montauk Point Lighthouse for generations to come.

 

A Spectacular Location

Of course the thing you need to know about Montauk Point Lighthouse is that it is located in a spectacular location!  I love the first photograph I posted the other day with just the lighthouse and the Keeper's Dwelling up on top of the hill. But you have to admit that this is a more spectacular photo showing the Lighthouse and the beach and the Atlantic Ocean.  It is the classic view of this beautiful structure.  Notice the white tower to the right of the lighthouse?  That is a "Fire Control Tower" which was built in World War II.  More about that in a future post.

 

To The Top

                                

The Montauk Point Light is now operated by the Montauk Historical Society and they are doing such a great job!  They have expanded rooms of exhibits in the old keeper's quarters and there is now so much to read and learn.  In addition, they have managed to convince the Coast Guard to allow them to return this astounding three and a half order Fresnel Lens back to the the lamp room where it was for years, until replaced with an automated lamp usually used for airports.  This Fresnel lens was made in France and it consists of a huge number of curved prisms, all of different sizes, and they take the light from the bulb in the center and concentrate it into a beam that can be seen for twenty miles.  In the old days, the light source was, believe it or not, a kerosene lamp!

This is a view from the lamp room with the Fresnel lens in the upper right corner and showing the view out the windows!  Pretty spectacular.

This is the view on the stairs which you take from ground level all the way up to the top of the lighthouse.  It is an easy walk of 137 steps.  The lighthouse is in two sections, an inner wall made of brick, and then a gap which allows air to circulate, and then the outer wall of the lighthouse made of granite blocks painted white.

And this beautiful and delicate stairway made of cast iron is the last set of stairs to the room just under the lamp room.  These stairs are narrow and steep, but easy to climb.  Once you get to the top of these stairs, they allow you to climb another set of narrow stairs and stick your head and arms up through a metal floor grating.  This allows you to see the Fresnel lens, and take photographs, but you can't climb all the way up into the lamp room.  The views from that top stairway are what I saw standing on the upper steps.  It is a thrill to go to the top of the lighthouse!  So unlike any other experience.  If you love lighthouses, of course.

Montauk Point Lighthouse

This is the amazing and beautiful Montauk Point Lighthouse.  It has an incredible history.  On April 12, 1792, construction on the lighthouse was authorized by the 2nd United States Congress under President George Washington.  It was the first lighthouse in New York State.  I have photographed this lighthouse many times in my career.  For a major project called "A Day in the Life of Long Island" I arranged with the U.S. Coast Guard to be in the "lamp room" where the actual light is, as the sun rose out of the ocean!  That was something I will never forget.  So I haven't been to the lighthouse in a bunch of years, so I drove out there yesterday from East Hampton where we were staying.  I did a lot of photographs while spending most of the day there, and I will be showing them to you in the coming days.  I may call this "Montauk Week."

 

East Hampton Architecture

                             

"East Hampton Architecture."  Fooled you!  You were expecting modern homes like the ones I photographed for the Sunday magazine years ago.  We went to dinner tonight at a favorite restaurant and I had to park the car some distance from the restaurant.  When I went to get it at the end of our meal, I happened to notice this barn near the Long Island Railroad Station in East Hampton.  I guess that the subject here is texture and color.  I love the blue window and the red door and the green stuff growing on the cedar shingles.  I think the building is used for industrial storage, which is why the window has some blue and white material blocking the window.

Hayfield

We are in East Hampton, visiting Mary Ellen.  We drove out here this morning and as we pulled into her street, I saw this field of hay.  After visiting for a while I said I was going down the street to the hayfield to try and get a photograph.  I tried a bunch of things with parts of a split rail fence and most of the field in the photograph and had some photographs sort of.  Then I became aware of the seed heads on the tops of the hay stalks.  The seed heads were waving back and forth in the afternoon breeze, so I tried a more detailed photograph.  But it was only when I spied this bright spot of the background hay which was bent over, silhouetting the seed heads in the foreground that I realized I finally had something.  Seeing the bright spot seemed like some kind of magical thing, which is why I thought this was a really great photograph.  It's kind of cool, right?  It is far more interesting than the more ordinary compositions I was trying.

 

Eyeing Me Suspiciously

This is one of Grace's favorite resting spots.  She looks so relaxed, doesn't she?  When I saw this I realized that I needed to post a more flattering photograph of her, after yesterday's photograph of her looking through the window screen!  So here she is in all her beauty, hanging out, as she does!

 

Another Animal Photo

Whenever we go out on the front porch to just enjoy being outside, Grace always comes to this window, climbs up on the radiator inside and looks out at us, and mews.  I guess she wants to be outside with us, but that's not happening, obviously.  Today, in the afternoon, she did the same thing, but the afternoon sun was only illuminating part of her.  When I saw this, I carefully went in the house, got my camera and managed to get this scene before she jumped down and disappeared.

 

Heh-Wo Wabbit

When I got out of my car with the groceries for supper, there was this rabbit in the lawn, eating stuff.  The rabbit loves those little white flowery things in the grass, in addition to eating the grass and the clover.  It was leery of me but it didn't move when I got out of the car and I was only about 8 feet away.  Perhaps the rabbits are getting accustomed to humans more.  Fun to look at this photograph closely and see details in the rabbit's face and ears.   If I had a bunch of them all over the lawn, I wouldn't have to mow the lawn at all!

 

Amy's Room

We had a lot of stuff temporarily stored in here while working on the bathroom, and I had cycling clothes in here as well.  Kathy had a lot of sewing stuff and the bed was covered with boxes of stuff we were going to donate to one of the charities that picks up stuff.  After everything was done and gone, Kathy went in and did a really nice job of cleaning up.  Amy and Liz will be arriving in July, so this room will be used for sleeping again.  One afternoon I just happened to look in and see all this sunlight and the reflected light in the room and realized I saw something very special, so took this photograph.  I can't even explain what it is, but I recognized something.

 

Lavender

I don't know what caught my attention today with the lavender.  I was in the side yard figuring out where to set up my telescope tonight to do some observing and I just happened to notice the Lavender.  It may have been because many of the individual flowers were bent over as if they had been covered with snow and bent from their weight.  I am not sure what did that, but it caught my eye, and so I grabbed my camera and spent some time looking through the viewfinder.  This is the best of the lot because all of the Lavender is bent down to the right.  Please be sure and click on the image to see it in more detail.  It is much more interesting in a larger size.

 

Cumulus

Last week I went to light the barbecue because I wanted to grill my piece of salmon.  When I got to the rear of the back room, I could see the western sky and here were these stunning cumulus clouds in a beautiful blue sky, just over our neighbor's house.  So I ran in the house, grabbed a camera and came back outside before the cloud moved any distance.  These beautiful and subtle grays within the clouds are absolutely beautiful to me!

 

Moon Watch

We had a successful Moon Watch tonight at Old Westbury Gardens.  One of the members counted about 40 visitors who enjoyed the view through our telescopes.  It is always a joy to set up a telescope and then when both adults and children put their eye to the telescope, most can't help exclaiming what a stunning thing that is to see!

This is the object of our affection, the first quarter moon.  And the skies were perfectly clear fortunately.  Look at all the craters along the "terminator" and how they stand out.   And then the very smooth and darker areas called "Mare" because before telescopes people who looked at the moon though they were "seas."

This young woman is observing the moon through an antique telescope which one of our members owns.  It is a 4" aperture Brashear refractor made in Pittsburgh, PA in about 1898 and to answer your question, "Yes, this telescope gives stunning views!"

 

The Rose Garden

I have taken other photographs of the Rose Garden at the Vanderbilt Mansion and Planetarium.  As June days pass and we get closer to the summer solstice, the days are longer.  Only a month or two ago when I arrived at my astronomy meetings, it as dark out.  Now it is still daylight.  I think the thing that stopped me was the smokestacks from the generating plant with the background of the gentle clouds.  Then I looked around at the garden and fountain and noticed the columns to the left and the fountain to the right and decided I had a lovely landscape photograph of the Rose garden.

 

You Choose, Please

I was waiting for my friend in Bryant Park and we were going to take the subway uptown to the restaurant together, for the "Boy's Dinner."   As I sat there looking around I saw this woman sitting with a friend having a conversation and she seemed animated, and she smiled a lot while talking.  I thought it was just a lovely moment in the city,  so with the camera in my lap, I took about a dozen photographs and this is my favorite.  But here's the thing - I shot it in color, of course, and while editing it, began to think that the color in the photo was distracting, so I converted the image to black & white.  But when I was done I was not sure if I liked it better than the color version which is below.  Which is your favorite?

 

What IS This?

I was mowing the grass and in the small lawn right in front of our house, I saw a Mushroom growing, so I reached down and picked it, and then placed it on the front porch railing.  I did that because I didn't want Mushroom pieces scattered all over the lawn by the mower.  I forgot about it until the next day, but it was still there, so I photographed it.  Look at the delicate underside of this fungus!  This is beautiful!  So when researching this subject, I discovered that these things are called  "gills," which are defined as "wide and thin sheet like plates radiating from the stem"  Sounds about right!  So is it a Mushroom or a Toadstool?  Let's ask Wikipedia:  "A Mushroom or Toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil or on its food source.  Toadstool generally denotes one poisonous to humans."  "The term mushroom and toadstool go back centuries!"

This is a view of the whole plant. The gills produce microscopic spores which help the fungus spread across the ground.  What an astounding thing these fungi are!  And I only know this because a random one was growing on my lawn and I became curious.  BE SURE AND CLICK ON THESE TO SEE ALL THE DETAIL.

 

It's the Hat

Sometimes I have no idea why I take a photograph.  Seriously.  But I was standing at the corner waiting for the light to change and I noticed this woman's hat, because of how floppy it was, and then there was the Target shopping bag..  Something about the hat made me raise my camera and take two frames before the light changed.  Sometimes when I get home and start editing, I ask myself why I took a particular shot.  But not this one, so here it is!  Another of life's mysteries!

 

"Made Ya Look"

I was walking up Seventh avenue and when we all had to stop for a red light at a crosswalk, I looked at this man's hat, and was stunned at how brilliant the saying is on his hat.  "Made ya Look, Black Lives Matter."  How clever is that, he wears a red baseball cap, and you know who's symbol is a red baseball hat and then when people look at what it says, it has nothing to do with the red baseball hat man!  This is just brilliant!  YOU MAY HAVE TO CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO READ THE TEXT ON THE HAT.

 

The New Look of Penn Station

I have been showing you the changes inside Penn Station for some time now. starting back in 2021 when I made my first trip back to Manhattan after the worst of COVID was over.  The first time I got off my train at Penn I was stunned to see what was going on:  Low Beams! They had made big changes to the outside as well, with this new entrance and spectacular escalator which you have seen, but the outside was partially obscured by scaffolding and there were plywood barriers so you couldn't see what was happening to the outside of the building itself.

So on this trip I could finally see the new outside entrance in all its glory, with no scaffolding and everything like the glass panels cleaned.  And I could also see the giant steel supports that make up the new entrance to Madison Square Garden, and the main entrance for the Long Island Railroad, which I have not photographed yet, because there is still construction going on there.

I had read that they were replacing the cement sidewalks with marble paving and it was amazing to see the finished result.  What a cool entrance, right?  It has been a long wait, but what an incredible difference.

The Saxophone Player

I took the Number 1 subway from Penn Station up to 72nd street to get to the restaurant at 77th street where the group was having dinner together.  When I came up out of the subway I found myself in a small park called Verdi Square which has a statue of Giuseppe Verdi, which I never noticed!  I was running a bit late so I was walking quickly through the park.  As I walked by a bench I saw this man who was holding an old saxophone that probably had not been polished for 30 years, but I kept on walking.  I probably got 20 feet away before I thought "I need to photograph the man and his saxophone!"  So I went back, and put a few dollars in the hat he had on the ground, and asked the man if I could photograph him, and he said "yes."  So here is the portrait.  I think that it was the patina on the saxophone that first got my attention, believe it or not.  The instrument is beautiful because it is not perfectly polished!  And stupid me, because I was in a bit of a hurry, I never thought to ask him his name!  I love this portrait, one of the nicest I have done in a long time!

 

Faces in the Crowd

 

I arrived at Penn Station at 5 PM yesterday afternoon, because I was having "Dinner With the Boys."  We were going to a restaurant at Broadway and 77th Street, so I started walking up Seventh Avenue, but it was rush hour so crowds of people were coming down Seventh Avenue to Penn Station.  At each corner there would be a pack of people waiting to cross the light, and anxious to keep walking south.  So I started taking a few photographs of the crowds.  It is amazing seeing so many different faces!  Such a rich experience for me because I love looking at people's faces and there were so many to see.  I have posted a larger than normal image so if you click on it you will see this photograph much larger than normal and you, too, can study the faces.  New York, New York!

 

Two Thirty in the Morning!

So I mentioned the other day that I was setting up two of my Go-To telescope mounts to refresh my memory about how to calibrate them.  I was finally successful with both mounts and it felt good to be familiar with them.  Unfortunately the weather forecast for the next 10 days calls for clouds each night.  There was one more thing I wanted to re-learn, and that is how to set up and operate a dedicated astronomy camera, and the little controlling device that makes it run.  Both of those are operated from software in my iPad, and trust me on this, the software is really complicated and it does not have an intuitive interface which makes it doubly hard to operate.  So last night it was supposed to be clear by 10 PM but it was not so I abandoned the idea of relearning how to set up the camera and controller.  But then at midnight it cleared!  So I quickly set everything up, the mount the telescope, the camera and the controller.  I slowly figured out what to do and so after an hour or so I was ready to try to take a photograph.  I did not expect much.  I made the first exposure and saw two faint blobs so I knew the subject was in the field of view.  The way this works is, that the device keeps taking photographs (at about 10 seconds of exposure each) and then the software "stacks" one on top of another. Well after a few minutes, each time a new exposure was added the galaxies got brighter and brighter, until after abut 5 minutes I got this!  I was stunned, and really thrilled!  I finished up at 2:30 in the morning, exhausted, but thrilled at what I had been able to do, finally!  This is a photograph of The Whirlpool Galaxy which includes two galaxies that are interacting with each other.  It is believed that the smaller galaxy passed through the larger galaxy and you are seeing the results of this "tidal interaction."  In any case, this is perhaps one of the most spectacular galaxies that we can see.  So now to  completely diminish my small accomplishment, please go click on this Hubble image by the European Space Agency of the two.  It will knock you socks off!

 

Abandoned

 

There are a bunch of abandoned buildings on both sides of Sea Cliff Avenue, in Glen Cove, down the street from the Sea Cliff Railroad Station.  I have just discovered, in doing some online research, that this area which included five different closed manufacturing facilities is now called "The Sea Cliff Avenue Industrial Area."  I thought I had photographed and posted at least one of the buildings on the blog, but apparently not.  So this is a parking lot overgrown with weeds, and one of the buildings in the distance.  Both these photographs were done with my infrared camera, as you can see.  I love the unworldliness of the scene. 

So this looks like the executive offices of this site, you saw from the distance. There is a huge facility behind these offices, of only one story where manufacturing took place.  This was Slater Electric which made electrical switches and outlets and outlet boxes.  I may have go go back here and photograph these scenes again with a normal camera.  This photograph makes the site look beautiful, instead of run down and abandoned.

300,000 Stars

Last night I set up one of my larger telescopes in the side yard.  It is a computer controlled telescope which I was not a fan of years ago, but now there is so much light pollution in the night skies that I can't find a thing because even the brighter stars are hard to find because the night sky is so bright. So this object is an astounding thing.  It is called a "Globular Cluster."  These clusters are some of  the oldest things in the universe.  This cluster contains at least 300,000 stars, and maybe as many as 500,000!  Under really dark skies this is a spectacular sight in a telescope!  You can't even see it in my side yard, though.  So I told the telescope what to go to and then I could see a dim gray fuzzy spot in a dark gray sky.  Then I got an idea.  I wondered if I could put my Sony a7 camera on the telescope and shoot a photograph.  I didn't have much hope, though.  I was astounded when I saw the results!  That's what this object, Messier 13, should look like under dark skies!  I was thrilled.  The above photograph is a cropped version of the whole frame.

Even with my powerful telescope, this object is pretty small.  This is the full frame image from the camera and the cluster is almost insignificant. So I thought you would enjoy the closer version.  This is really something, isn't it?  Here is a link to a professional photograph of Messier 13, taken from Mt Lemmon outside Tucson, Arizona.  M-13 from Mt Lemmon