Fading Light of Day

Last night after the performance in the planetarium we were walking up the hill to the parking lot and I wa surprised that the sky was still a bit light.  So I, of course had my Sony a7 on my shoulder and immediately set the ISO to 6400 and stood still like a human tripod and shot about a dozen images.  Not many of them were sharp because of the slow shutter speed which was 1/15th of a second. But I did get a few sharp images, and I picked this one because of some people in the frame. There is a nice quality to the light in this photograph, which is why I took the photo.

 

Arrizza Under The Stars

We drove out to the Vanderbilt Planetarium after an early dinner to see a live performance in the planetarium of a friend of mine from the astronomy club.  Yannaki Arrizza is a musician and a composer. There was a live musical performance and an amazing visual show on in the planetarium dome.  This is a formal portrait I did last year for his first show, shot on a rehearsal day.  I was able to light him and move around to get the best composition, which I would not have been able to do tonight during the show.

 I was expecting just a laser light show, but that was only part of it. The projector capabilities of this planetarium are astounding!  This is an image of a Saturn rocket which nearly fills the dome! Look how small he is at the bottom of the picture where you can see him at his electronic keyboards.  Yannaki's  music includes brilliant electronic soundscapes that combine digital and analog synthesizer sounds along with modern textures provided by the latest digital-audio technologies.

In this image we are seeing a video of an aurora on the dome.  The music and the video projections were just astounding!

I do have to say this - the music was loud!  After a short while I had to put my fingers in my ears for parts of the program.  Imagine my surprise when I suddenly noticed the man in front of me was doing the same thing!

 

Trees and Clouds

When I do my bike rides, I have checkpoints along the way to see how I am performing.  These rides are workouts, not scenic trips!  I am hammering it all the way!  This is my second checkpoint, at the top of a small hill, just before I start down.  So I stop my ride at this spot and look at my watch to see my time.  I have memorized the time from my first checkpoint, and I carry some 3x5 cards to write down my times.  I happened to look up the other day, after noting my time and was taken with the branches of these bare trees.  For some reason there is something human about them, I think.  It feels as if the trees are reaching out.  And with these gray cumulus clouds as a background I think I have an interesting shot.

 

Cherry Blossom Time

The second I leave my driveway I am looking for photographs.  I don't wait until I get to the harbor.  So on the streetside lawn of a house about 7 houses down I saw this!  The whole Cherry tree was just starting to bloom so only some of the branches had the blossoms on them.  So i decided to pick one branch and try and make a photo of just that.mm I backed up and used a moderate telephoto lens and then used the widest aperture so that the background would be blurred to bring the attention just to the branch.  I like the feeling that this gives a feeling that Spring is close at hand.  I love how beautiful this single branch is when separated from everything else.

 

Cat Coffin

Our cats are getting older, but they are not all that old yet.  But I decided to make two coffins, just so I would have them already made when the time comes.  Right?  Just kidding!

I am actually building a carrying case for a new, old telescope.  A person who was in the astronomy club long before I joined in 1988, had bought the parts to build this 5" refractor back in the 1970's.  The parts came from a company in Lynbrook, Long Island called Jaegers.  They were a parts company that sold by mail order, but if you lived on Long Island you could drive down there and buy the parts in person.  So many amateur astronomers built their own refracting telescopes from their parts, because back then, commercially made refractors were way beyond the ability of amateurs to buy.   The builder of this scope is no longer active in astronomy, so he gave this telescope and two others to members of the club who wanted them! So this scope is battered and scratched and has been well used.  The lens is in great shape, however and I cleaned it and the scope gives nice images.  I love that although this scope does not have the value of an antique telescope, it is still a part of amateur astronomy's history, and I am thrilled to own it for the time being.  And I treasure that this scope is well used and shows it!

If you click on this photograph, you can see the scratches and scrapes on the orange tube that make this telescope beautiful to me.  I can't wait to take this to Vermont this summer and use it under dark skies to scan the Milky Way.  That will be a sight to see with this instrument.

 

 

The Boys in the Boat

"The Boys in the Boat" is the name of an astounding book about the University of Washington rowing crew that represented the United States in rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympics – Men's eight in Berlin, and narrowly beat out Italy and Germany to win the gold medal.  It was also made into a wonderful movie.  What made the story so moving was that the crew was made up of men from the lower middle class.  These two shells out practicing on Hempstead Harbor, with Sands Point in the background are in eight oared boats.  I really had to reach out with a long lens to get this photo. And, honestly, it is not a great photo but perhaps an interesting one.  That's the coach, by the way in the outboard boat behind the shells.

 

Abstract Expressionism?

I am so sorry that somehow I forgot to post this photograph last night!  Too many things to do.  Sorry for those of you who worried.  I am fine, it is my brain that needs fixing!   :-).   So on my walk yesterday I crossed the road to look at Scudder's Pond to see what the water level was.  I was stunned to see this!  After thinking about it for a bit, I am thinking that this is pollen which landed on the water, and then the breeze blew it over to the west side of the pond by the road.  What a beautiful design and so many interesting things to look at!  It can look like a microscope slide of a section of tissue showing cells.  Or you could think I have gone "arty" and am trying to photograph something that would look like an abstract expressionist painting.  Sorry to say it is just "pond scum."  But it is beautiful.

I thought I would include a wide angle photograph of the scene so you can see how much material collected on this side of the pond.

 

Getting Home

Well, I had to cross the Hudson River on the way up, and of course I had to cross it again on the way home.  I chose, of course, the Tappan Zee Bridge!  It was raining on the way home and the windshield wipers were going.  It was tough to time my shutter releases so the wipers didn't end up in the picture.  The wipers were in maybe 3/4 of the photographs, but I did get this photograph which I love, because of the rain and mist and cloudy gray sky.

 

Getting There

Because the North East Astronomy Forum is on the west side of the Hudson, I need to cross the river somewhere to get to the event.  I always choose the Tappan Zee Bridge.  Oh wait, that changed!  This new cable-stayed bridge was built and then the old truss bridge was demolished.  I know it is now called the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, BUT, I was surprised to learn that it is still called the Tappan Zee Bridge!  That's a relief!  The old truss type bridge was the Tappan Zee Bridge and also called the Gov. Malcolm Wilson Bridge. This is an absolutely stunning work of engineering and it is absolutely beautiful in it's design.  And it looks different every time the weather changes, which is why I try and photograph it each time I cross it.  I am VERY careful and you will notice there are no cars near me.  I do NOT look at the camera, I look at the road and point the camera with some sixth sense and sometimes I get a good composition.

 

Wall to Wall Telescopes!

Today was the first day of two days of NEAF, the North East Astronomy Forum, which I have been going to for years.  It bagan back in 1991 and has morphed into the largest astronomy show on the east coast.  If there is a telescope that you are interested in, or eyepieces for filters or books or telescope mounts or binoculars and every other thing you can imagine, this is the place to come to see the actual item before you decide to buy it.  This is a panorama from the balcony of the Field House at Rockland Community College where the exhibits are.  There are also presentations by speakers - this year a lot of astronauts from the US Space program as well as managers and journalists talking.  CLICK ON THIS PANORAMA TO SEE IT MUCH LARGER.

I love this photograph of two guys, and telescopes in the background pointing in every direction!  These are mostly Unitron telesopes which were really popular back in the 1950's to about 1975, and they were known for their high quality and beautiful construction,.  They were manufactured in Japan for the American company.

Here is a portrait of me with Russell Porter, of Vermont who was the father of the Amateur Telescope Makers movement that started with a class of 14 men and one woman in Springfield, Vermont, in 1920.  Oh, that's just a cardboard cutout of Mr. Porter.  He was not at the event.

Here are seven pair of giant binoculars on tripods lined up for all to see.  It must be magnificent to study the night sky with binoculars this large when you are in an area that is away from all the light pollution.

 

1948 Chevrolet Stylemaster

I went to the grocery store this afternoon and when I came back out I saw this car and was stunned!  Wow, what a beautiful car!  What a thrill to see this!  I had no idea what year it was.  I got my camera and took some photographs and started to drive away when I saw an older man looking over the car carefully.  So I backed up and drove by this car again and asked the viewer what car it was.  He knew that is was a 1948 Chevrolet Stylemaster, and said "This car has an automatic transmission in it!  They didn't make automatic transmissions back then!"  As we were talking, a younger man approcahed the car and said it was his.  Turns out his father built this car for a man who wanted an automatic transmission and a larger engine.  That men owned the car for years and when he passed away, the car was offered to the young man who now owns it.  I was asking about the engine and he said it was a NASCAR engine, and it was 500 Horsepower!  We had a really nice chat, and as I drove around the car to leave, he started the engine and it was unmistakable that this was not the original engine!  You should have heard that deep throated engine as it sat there idling!  What a sound!  What a car!

I particularly love the straight on view of this car from the front!  Notice how there is a triangular shaped dark thing right in front of the windshield - that is a vent that lets air come into the car and is distributed at the feet of the driver and front seat passenger!  All the modern conveniences!

 

Microclimate

We have Daffodils on our property that are hardly beginning to show, while our neighbors across the street have them in full bloom, which is where I photographed these.  Other neighbors on our side of the street two houses up the hill have them as well!  You know why that is?  Right!  Microclimate!  Seriously.  We don't get the sun as the other houses do.  In the wintertime, and I am not joking our neighbor Judy's property and our property get more snow than the people on the other side of the street!  I am serious.  The street is in a very shallow valley because the land behind us goes uphill, as does the land on the other side of the street!  Anyhow, our Daffodils will come, but meanwhile I have these beautiful flowers that grow at the curb across the street.  Happy Spring!

 

Before and After

The other day I showed you a photograph of a small ranch house behind a chain link fence, which I think is about to be demolished.  Let me take you back a bit to this house which I posted on the blog.  I always thought it was a nice house, a bit modern, on a large lot with tall trees all around.  What a lovely place to live!  This is a close view.

The wider view shows dumpsters on the property.  So there is trouble ahead for this nice house.  Little did I know!  I took this photograph last August.  I photographed some heavy equipment digging a foundation since then.  

Oh man, look at this!  They started the framing a month or so ago I think.  Look at it now!  "Mcmansion" is an understatement!  Yikes.  But here is the killer.  Remember all the trees?  All gone as well.  What a difference in "place" this is.  It changes everything...

 

A Beautiful Crescent Moon

After supper I went outside to see what the sky looked like.  I wanted to play with my new, old refractor telescope from the 1970's that was a gift from a long time ASLI member.  It was still light in the sky and I knew the moon would be a crescent, but I wasn't sure I could see it because sometimes it is really low in the sky.  I was stunned to see this beautiful crescent moon high in the sky.  So I quickly ran inside, grabbed my camera then went to the car and grabbed my tripod and finally managed to get this photograph.  I love how incongruous it is to see our old broken TV antenna still on it's mast on the roof.  Time to go up and take it down, but it does make an interesging foreground!

I continued watching the moon and then noticed a bright Jupiter up and to the left of the moon,  shining brilliant in the darkening sky.  If anyone is curious, the orange colored star down below Jupiter is Aldebaran.  And what is really cool is, that if you click on this photograph to enlarge it, just below the moon are a group of six stars or more - they are the Pleiades!  What a wonderful collection of objects in the night sky just after sunset!

 

Another One Down The Drain

One of the neighborhoods I ride my bike through is Roslyn Harbor.  There are or were a number of homes that look like this.  I have lost track of how many of them have been sold, then torn down and a "McMansion" has been built it its place.  I have been riding through this place almost 20 years now and have seen the same fates to so many homes.  I have shown you some homes that have been torn down, and the most recent teardown now has a completely framed new giant home being built on the property.  Stay tuned.

 

Fog Week Leftover

When I was doing "Fog Week" I never got around to posting this photograph of the Japanese maple.  I think I was getting bored with fog.  I was going through folders of photographs from my walks and realized that I had not posted this.  So here it is again, my favorite subject, in yet another weather condition.  I hope this doesn't put you to sleep.

 

The Crocus are Green!

Well, here are my "Rare Yellow Crocus" and they are as green as can be!  Whew!  What a relief!  As you might remember they had been covered with a mat of leaves left over from the Fall, and when the leaves were cleared away, the shoots were yellow.  I was not sure they were going to be OK.  Joan asked to see them in a few weeks, and here they are!  Green as can be!  I promise to be more conscientious next Fall and get the leaves cleaned out of the gardens!

 

Roots

This a curious thing.  Kathy has two giant Hosta plants in the garden next to the house.  One of them is huge and when cut back for winter, the low cut plant is 18" wide or more.  So it was crowding two other plants and so I took it out for her.  That was not easy.  I could not believe how packed the roots were together!  I had to use a narrow rectangular spade and only put half the width of the blade into the circle of roots and then stand on the shovel with both feet.  It took that much force to insert the spade into the remains of the plant!  So I went around the edge chopping up the plant in small pieces until it was all removed.  It was a deal.  What I could not imagine is the density of the roots.  There is hardly any room at all for soil between the roots, as you can see here.  This photograph is upside down - if you click on the photograph, you can see at the bottom, hints of purple from this year's blossoms.  This really is an astounding thing to look at, isn't it?

 

Edward Albee

This is the playwright Edward Albee, who I photographed on three different occasions.  This was taken at his house in Montauk where I also photographed him a few years earlier.  And he had a press conference at his home in Manhattan where I photographed him as he talked about a new play.  He is famous for the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."  Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.  According to The New York Times, Albee was "widely considered to be the foremost American playwright of his generation."  When he died in 2016 I wanted to find one of my portraits of him to run on the blog but couldn't find any.  He looks pretty stern here but he was always very nice each time I met and photographed him.  I always try to get a range of expressions so at some point I likely said something like, "Do you think I could get a photograph of you smiling?" and he probably said something like "I like this expression better." and so if he wants to be seen this way, I will photograph him as he wants to be seen.

 

Threatening Clouds

After lunch today I went out to run some errands.  On the way back I was driving along the edge of the harbor when I saw these clouds.  I thought they were so beautiful, and that they also portended a change in the weather.  I had to hurry because the clouds were getting closer, but I was having a problem with what made the best foreground.  I tried shooting with some of the trees in the foreground but then the clouds were not as obvious.  Finally I decided to have no foreground and that showed the clouds the best.  Oh, about half an hour later it started raining for a while.  But not a big deal.

 

My Pal Eppie

One more "lost" photograph found the other day.  This is my pal Eppie who is known to the rest of the world as "Ann Landers."  Why is she in a leotard?  Because the Sunday Magazine was doing a story of how Ann Landers stays in shape and I was sent to Chicago to photograph her and some of her exercises.  I was terrified!  So I wore a suit of course, and at some point in our shoot she asked if I would like a cup of tea, and I said "yes."  So I found myself in a suit sitting on a couch next to Eppie Lederer who was wearing a leotard from head to toe!  Now that would have been a photograph.  She really loved the photographs that I did of her and wrote me a letter saying "You are the best living photographer in the civilized world, and I don't know any who are dead who are better than you..."  No hyperbole there, huh?  The exciting thing was that six months later I got a call from Family Circle magazine which was doing a story on her, and they asked her which photographer did she want to do the photographs, and the art director said she wanted me!  Wow...  So off to Chicago again, and after that shoot we were pals!

 

What Dad Does This With His Daughter?

This is another photograph I found the other day.  It is a dark and faded and stained print.  I don't have any recollection of this at all!  What's interesting is that the water is not all that calm, and yet I took Liz for a ride in our dinghy, which I still have stored under the front porch.  At least Liz is wearing a life jacket.  How come her father is not?  Liz does look happy.  When we had our Lightning sailboat I had a mooring down at the end of our street, and we used this dinghy to row out to it to go sailing.  Maybe Kathy was still on the Lightning and that's when she took this photograph.  A treasure in our family photo collection that I had forgotten about!

 

One of Our Favorite Family Photos!

In 2003 my sisters Joan and Betsey joined us in New York at the Whitney Museum for the Gees Bend Quilts exhibit, which was an astounding show!  When we left the museum I wanted to get a group shot of us in front of the Whitney.  So everyone lined up at the wall and I went over and put my little SONY camera on a mailbox with the timer set.  The woman on the left, out of focus apparently saw me delicately balancing the camera, and then suddenly moving back across the sidewalk to join the group.  She kept walking as the timer counted down, looking at the camera, and we all started laughing!  What a great happenstance photograph this is!  Got her, blowing her nose at the perfect moment in the perfect place!  I had lost track of this negative but found it recently and scanned it today so you can all see one of our favorite family group photos!

 

The Comfortable Cat

I titled this photograph of Grace "The Comfortable Cat" because it doesn't look comfortable to me.  But she must be comfortable because she sits like this all the time!  It does look funny but somehow she is comfortable or she wouldn't be doing it.  Don't you love her tail just kind of draped over the top of the pillow in the chair?  The cats, infinitely fascinating.

 

A Japanese Drawing

One day recently, when there was no wind and the water was calm, I looked over the railing at these beach grasses which are all bent over because their season is long over and thought that they looked like a Japanese painting.  Of course that was in my mind because I am not that familiar with Japanese paintings at all.  But I do think these grasses make in interesting photograph in the shape that they are in now.  Soon new green shoots will appear from underwater.  I will try and remember to photograph the new shoots when they appear.

 

Escalator People

When I visit the city, I am paying attention the second I get off the train in Penn Station.  It payed off because the light was different on this day and the shiny parts of the escalator were brilliant.  And the effect was that the people on the escalator, both riding up and down, were silhouetted by those bright parts and instead of people they became just shapes. I stood in this spot for 10 minutes and took a lot of photographs until I got an interesting arrangement of shapes.  I did convert this to black & white because there were some people wearing bright colors and that took your attention off the overall scene and on to those people.

 

Urban Landscape

This is a strange photograph, and it is meant to be!  We came out of Trader Joe's and got in our car and I started the engine.  The headlights came on and I saw this scene.  How strange is this - it looks as if we are at the seashore or parked in front of someone's garden, and yet there are all those buildings with stores in them in the distance.  It just seems like a strange disconnection.  Wait, wilderness or shopping mall?  Both, I guess.

 

The New Library

When we got inside Costco, Kathy wanted to shop for some small things, so I said I would hang out in the book section.  I came around the corner and there were these two really cute kids sitting on the floor enjoying two of the books on display.  I immediately thought about taking their photograph and was reaching for my toy camera on my belt when I had a thought: "What if a parent saw me taking some photographs of their kids?"  I am harmless of course, but you never know.  So then a brilliant idea hit me - I got out my iPhone which doesn't seem like a camera.  I was leaning forward on the shopping cart and I think it would appear that I was just checking email or something on my phone.  I only took two exposures - this is my favorite and then I moved on.  No confrontation, no worries of "what is that guy doing?" and a cute photograph in the end.

 

Costco Sunset

We went down to Costco after dinner tonight for just a few things.  I had not noticed the sunset because we were driving south.  But when we turned west on Old Country Road to get to Costco, I was aware of it.  Fortunately, I drove closer to the building to find a parking spot, and when I got out of the car I saw this!  Yikes!  OK so that's a photo.  So I moved around a bit  to position the tree against the sky.  For my first photographs I kept the camera pointed higher to eliminate anyssense of all the cars in the parking lot. But then I thought that the cars were part of the scene so included them in the later shots, and I decided to chose a photograph with the car tops reflecting the light of the sky.  Funny, I guess beauty is where you find it!

 

Purple Crocus Flower

 

When I set out on my walk today, on a gray overcast day I didn't expect many possibilities for photographs.  So imagine my surprise when I looked down and saw these Purple Crocus flowers not two houses away, only 2 feet from the curb.  They were in amongst the big exposed roots of a huge tree and there were a lot of leaves around, just outside the picture area.  I loved the flash of subtle color when everything else was dark around them.  The big problem was, "What are these called?"  Well, Google to the rescue and I hope Google is correct!

Contemplation

 

I was finishing up one of my walks, back before the arrival of Daylight Savings Time, and it was getting really dark.  I saw this person standing on the boat launch ramp at the foot of our street and as I got closer hoped he would not move.  I got close enough, and leaned on the railing and held my breath while the camera did a 2 second exposure.  I was as still as I could be and the person did not move and I got the shot.  Something about looking off in the distance, out over the water that brings on a sense of quiet and a sense of contemplation.  I have no idea what the person was thinking, but I know the feeling well to just stand and gaze out over the water.

R.H. Macy & Co.

I never noticed this before!  Whenever I am headed up to the Metropolitan Muyseun of Art, I walk fromn Penn Station one block over to Herald Square where I take the N train up to 59th Street.  But I usually walk over on 33rd Street.  On the reverse trip the other day, I decided to walk along 34th Street to get back to Penn.  I was on the south side of 34th, street, and R.H. Macy & Co occupies the entire north side of 34 street!  I happened to look over at Macy's and was stunned to see this formal entrance, which I have never, ever, noticed before!  What a stunning, formal entrance.  This is astounding, right?  Look at all the architectural details.  This building was built between 1901-1902.  It was not the first Macy's building and not the first in Manhattan.  It has been said that this building has a Palladian facade.  So believe it or not, the first Macy's store was opened in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1851, to serve the mill industries employees in the area.  All the mills eventually failed, and so R.H. Macy decided to move to New York City in 1858.

 

The Rare Yellow Crocus

Every Spring I await the arrival of the first Crocus in the garden next to our house.  I hadn't seen any so far, but...  In the fall with weather changes and rain, we never fully cleaned out all of the leaves from the garden next to the house.  I mean I did it once, but that was before all the trees had lost their leaves so the garden filled up again.  Anyhow, Kathy started cleaning the side garden, packed with wet leaves underneath, and here were the Crocus.  But they were yellow not green!  That is apparently because they were so covered up.  So there is no such thing as the "rare yellow Crocus" I just made that up!  I am guessing these will eventually turn green now that they are out in the air and sunlight.  We will see.

 

Moonrise over the Planetarium

This is the Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium at the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, which is where we have our weekly meetings.  The light was perfect, after sunset but while there was still some light in the sky, and as I approached it tonight, there was the nearly full moon rising behind the building.  Notice the beautiful clay tile roof, which is in keeping with other buildings on the property, including the mansion which was built in stages between 1910 and 1936.

 

The Transformation of Penn Station

In June of 2019 the Long Island Railroad started construction on a new concourse at Penn Station.  They wanted a wider corridor and higher ceilings than what they have had since I came to Long Island in 1966!  You have seen photographs of the interior construction and the finished result, which is just stunning!  Well, now the outside is pretty much done as well, I think.  This swooping entrance on the 33rd street side of the station leads to spectacular escalators that lead to the main concourse.  On the outside everything has been changed from the exterior of the building from top to bottom and then this large overhanging roof supported by giant white steel columns, and the finishing touch was resurfacing all the walking areas with marble.  It is an amazing transformation!