How Many Pictures of Ice Can You Shoot, Anyway?

I was finally able to start taking my walks again because the temperature was 40 degrees and there were only light winds.  But it was an overcast day so the light was not interesting at all.  I brought my camera with me but had no hopes of finding anything.  Boy was I surprised!  The harbor ice is breaking up with the warmer temps an as the tide rises and falls, it makes fractures in the ice and those patterns are amazing.  But I found this so interesting so I am posting it first.  The ice has been fractured in several different ways and the shapes and tones, light and dark are really interesting in an abstract way.  As I was composing this two Mallard ducks came out of the water up on to the ice and started wandering around and they were in the perfect place when I shot this frame!  So the answer to the question posed in the title is: "I can take a lot more photographs than you or I could imagine!"

 

A Lifesaver!

This gas fireplace is a lifesaver in this bitter cold.  Our new back room is really well insulated.  It has two radiators in it, a full size Sunrad in the big room and a small half-sized radiator in the bathroom.  That generally keeps the back room warm if the outside temps are maybe down to 32 degrees, but below those temperatures the back room, which we keep at 70 is down around 64 degrees.  So when we need to use the back room, we just turn on this amazing fireplace for a while and then the room is as warm as toast.  It is amazing how realistic this looks when burning.  And you can turn it on with one press of a button with the remote, and one click turns the fire off!  Like I said, a real lifesaver!

 

My Frozen Harbor Obsession

I parked my car on the way back from some errands today and walked to the boat launch ramp, to see how the ice was doing.  it was fun to see the slabs of ice piled up on the end of the ramp like this.  It easily shows how thick the ice was. Part of me wonders if the ice was strong enough to walk out on, if just a small way, but I wasn't stupid enough to try.  The thing is, with the tide rising and falling each day, if you looked closely, there were fractures visible all over the top of the ice.  That alone was enough to keep me from seeing if I could walk out just a "little" way.

This is a view to the right off the boat ramp, which shows how the ice was broken into blocks because of the tidal action.  And then you can see other broken ice off in the distance.  I also went up to the park that overlooks the sound and I could see that large areas of water are now visible now that the temperatures are not sub-zero.  I hope you will humor me with my obsession of the ice photos, but to me this is historic, given that we haven't had a freeze like this since 1977, which turns out to be 49 years ago!  Yikes!  I would have been only 35 years old at that time!

 

Carefully Spaced

Here's the good news - this is not a photograph of ice or snow!  I saw these gulls all lined up on the rusty railing of a structure that is used for the volunteer firemen's competitions, in the parking lot of where we have our Tuesday coffee.  I desperately needed something different for the blog.  I like that it is all rusty angles of pipe and carefully arranged birds.

 

Back In The Old Days

Back in the old days, in this case 1977, there were no such things as drones.  So when we had a long spell of bitter cold weather, I suggested that I go flying an see if I could find some interesting photographs of frozen harbors.  This was up in Oyster bay.  I would just fly around at 1000 feet and look all around until I found something interesting.  This is a meandering creek that has frozen over.  I love that it looks like a dragon.  I stumbled across this 35mm color slide by accident the other day, and so made a digital copy of it and here it is for you to see. This was one of a number of aerial photographs I did that ran in four issues of the Newsday Sunday Magazine, called "The Seasons From The Air."

 

After Dinner at McDonalds

We couldn't decide what to make for dinner tonight.  We were stuck.  So I said "Do you want to go to McDonalds for dinner?"  Kathy lit up and said "Yes!"  No cooking and no dishes to clean tonight!  We didn't eat too much bad stuff...  One small hamburger each and we split one medium order of fries, and a medium diet coke.  It actually tasted good!  As we were finishing up, I looked over at a nearby table and saw this.  Gimmie a break!  You mean to tell me that if you have something to eat here, you can't carry the tray over to the waste bin before you leave?  I do think that this is an interesting photograph, artistically.  I love that the yellow seats match the yellow paper on the tray.  And the objects are arranged in such an interesting way.  I love this photograph!  AND...   The photograph doesn't have any ice in it!

 

My Ice Obsession!

I am sorry for my obsession with ice on the harbor.  But I have just realized it is really the only visible sign of the many days of below freezing temperatures.  This may look similar to a post two days ago, but although it is subtle, the ice is extended further out into Long Island Sound.  Click on these first two photographs to try and see where the water is.  It is an extremely thin line of darker blue just before the shoreline where the buildings are.

And once again, Sands Point to the left and Execution Rocks in the distance.  If you compare this to the photograph from two days ago, you will see the ice is closer.  I think this is the largest ice cover that we will see.  It was not that cold last night or today, so I believe from this day on, the ice will be shrinking. But what an amazing thing we have seen.  1977 was the last time we had this much ice on the harbor.  I just did the math, and that was 49 years ago!  So these are relatively historical photographs, I believe.

And, closer to home, this is a view looking down over the railing along the sidewalk that runs along the edge of the harbor.  It is so interesting to me to see details in the ice which has broken apart and then re-frozen as the tide rises and falls.  I think this is abstract art.  Or not!

 

Theree Degrees!

Not a very interesting photograph today.  But what a story it tells!  Can you see the story?  The number 3 in the upper right had corner tells the story.  That 3 is the temperature this morning when I woke up!  Yikes!  I read in the paper the other day, that this is the second coldest winter since the winter of 1977- 1978 which was colder.  I have a 360 degree panorama that I took in 1977 when the harbor froze over.  In the panorama I was out on the ice, half way to Port Washington.  I was actually standing by a buoy! That was a cold winter and this one is too!  I want it to be warmer!

 

A Different View of The Harbor

This is the harbor looking out from Sea Cliff beach, which faces north.  A couple of days ago I did an aerial photograph of this part of the harbor with my drone.  So on this day, after I did the drone photographs I saw that there were some nice photographs to be had from the ground.  What is interesting here at Sea Cliff beach are the really thick ice blocks that we are not seeing on the beach at the foot of our hill.  The difference is that at our beach, there are sandbars that go out at least one hundred or more feet.  Here at this beach, the beach drops off quickly.  The light was perfect for this, illuminating the ends of the blocks making them look more three dimensional.

When I turned and looked to the west, the low afternoon sun showed the blocks of ice in different light and I loved the dark clouds on the horizon.

When I was done down on the beach I drove up to the park that overlooks the harbor and got a nice sense of how far out the ice is.  I love the bright light on part of the ice - that was formed by the clouds blocking the light from the dark areas.  The tall buildings you see on the skyline in the center are in New Rochelle.

Then I used a long telephoto lens and you can see Sands Point with all the trees, then the mansion on the tip of the land, and then in the distance, Execution Rocks and the lighthouse.  The ice from Hempstead Harbor at this point is way beyond the harbor itself now.

 

Same Scene, Different Weather, No.2

Well, here it is, the photograph I mentioned in my post yesterday.  How many times have you seen this scene at Tappan Beach photographed for the blog?  A lot, right?  This was the scene I saw driving by and made a note to come back and photograph this like I have never seen it before.  Ice on the harbor, ice on the rocks surrounding the point and beyond that, snow on everything else.  Such a dramatic change from all my other photographs!  The forecast is for really cold weather tomorrow night and Sunday, and then warming to 35 degrees on Tuesday and 42 degrees on Wednesday.  The snow will finally begin to melt!

 

Same Subject, Different Weather

I have been so interested in doing aerial photographs with my drone, that I haven't been paying attention to what's on the ground.  On the way to do some errands today, I drove by a familiar place that looked completely different because of the ice all over it.  It was not this place - I will show that shot tomorrow.  But on the way to that place I drove by this golf course that I pass all the time.  I did a beautiful photograph here some years ago, with fall color on the trees.  So I see this scene all the time, but there is never anything to get me to stop and photograph it. Until today.  The snow on the ground changed things and we can see the silhouettes of the tree trunks and the shadows of other trees on the snow, which adds more interest, I think.

 

The Ice Is Melting!

                                 

I was using the downstairs bathroom and I heard water dripping outside - I think the drips were hitting something when they fell, maybe one of my extension ladders.  So I looked up and saw these iccicles and then watched a drop fall.  Man oh man, you cannot believe how difficult it was to catch a drop of water coming off the iccicle.  I must have shot about 30 images and only got two drops!  This one was perfect.  So the temperature was maybe 30 today but the sun was shining on these iccicles which is why they were melting.  But it will be another whole week before the temps get to the high 30's.  I can't wait!

 

More Ice

I went out with the drone one last time today.  It was still cold last night so I expected more of the harbor to be frozen and I was not surprised.  I went to Sea Cliff Beach and so I was much further north in the harbor and hopefully I could see where the limit of the ice was in the water.  After doing several different views from maximum altitude, I found it difficult to see where the division of water and ice was.  It appears that the sound has frozen in places separate from the Hempstead Harbor Ice, seen in the far distance.  I really love all the different tones in this - the white ice which is probably thicker and then the thinner ice which is much darker, and then the shadow of the sun, blocked by a cloud in the foreground.  A lot going on in this photograph, which to me makes it more interesting.  I have posted an extra large size image so please click on this.

 

Ice On The Harbor

I decided to get out my drone today and see if I could get a better photograph of how much of the harbor the ice is covering.  Believe it or not, this photograph is taken from my side yard.  I started up the drone and flew it straight up to 300 feet of altitude, which is the maximum altitude for a drone.  Isn't this  a beautiful photograph with the blue of the sky and the water, in contrast with the white ice.  Please click on this because it is a larger size than normal.

Later in the afternoon, about an hour before sunset, I went to Tappan Beach where we have our coffee and tried to get something different.  I love all the footprints in the snow on the beach, compared with the ice in the harbor.  But because I am much further away from the end of the ice in the distance, I didn't show that well.  But maybe this is more interesting because it is not about how much ice there is, but about textures in the snow and ice..

 

Eight or Ten Degrees

In the morning, the temperatures have been down around 8 or 10 degrees for weeks now.  I saw this pattern of ice crystals on the window in Amy's bedroom and I thought it was spectacular.  I had a dear friend in Arizona who was a terrific night sky photographer, and a great photographer of dramatic close-ups. When I would post a close-up photo, Dean would write me and say "Not close enough!"  Dean has passed now but his voice lives on in me and so this is only a small part of the photograph I took!  Look at the incredible tiny, tiny Christmas tree like kinds of crystalline formations.  These little pointy tree things are less than 1/4 inch long!  Nature still continues to astound me!

 

Grounded

When I was down at the beach photographing the iced over harbor, I saw sea gulls both flying around and also just standing in the road or in the snow.  When I saw all these gulls standing in formation, I knew I had a good shot, IF I could get it before any of them flew away!   Fortunately, I discovered that because of the cold, if  I could walk slowly, the gulls were less likely to take flight, and I was surprised that I could move around slowly making the best composition without them flying away.  Lucky me.

 

Lucky Me, Another Rehearsal

I am so lucky, Stan had an extra ticket for another New York Philharmonic rehearsal on Thursday.  That's why I was on that early train and met the conductor that I posted about yesterday.  So it was wonderful to be back in the concert hall again.  People are not allowed to take photographs during the rehearsal, but before it starts is OK.  The different musicians come on the stage gradually and then they practice just a bit together as these five violinists are doing.  It was fun to see the intereaction between them as some of them spoke to each other after pausing their playing.

This was a performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major, and the soloist standing in the center of the photo is the Spanish violinist Maria Duenas who was making her first New York Philharmonic appearances this month.  She is only 23 years old and has established herself as one of today's most outstanding artists.  Her performance was just amazing!

Here she is talking with the conductor Manfred Honeck, who is also a longtime mentor to her, after the performance was over.  During the concert, every once in a while he would briefly look over at her and she would smile back at him, and continue playing.  What a wonderful thing that was to see!  A reminder, please, don't forget to click on each of these images to see them larger!

 

He Made My Day!

I have an amazing story to tell.  Back on December 4,  I wrote about going to the NY Philharmonic rehearsal.  To do that I took a 7:36 AM train to the city.  There was a conductor on that train who was so friendly, and had such a sunny disposition and talked to each of the people as he checked their tickets, like he knew them personally, which of course he did.  When he came to me he asked how I was doing and said he hoped I had a nice day.  I was amazed to see how great he was in the way he did his job! Above and beyond!  Well this morning I went to the city again for another NY Philharmonic rehearsal, and guess who the conductor was!  So I listened to him as he greeted everyone with a smile and asked people how their kids were, or inquiring why he hadn't seen a customer in a while,  and I just felt the happiness and the connection he had as he went through his work day. What a wonderful way to go to work!  I was sorry later that I didn't ask to take his picture.  Well, don't you know that after I exited the train in Penn station, as I walked by the end of the car, there he was in the window, and he greeted me again and wished me a good day.  So I kind of explained what a saw and how it made me feel so good, to watch him with his passengers, and I said that he made my day!  And then I asked him if I could take his photograph, and he said "Yes,"  What a wonderful start to my day!

 

The Harbor is Freezing!

While we were having coffee and donuts I could see that the harbor is freezing over!  I don't remember the last time I saw ice on the harbor.  I can 't tell how far across the ice goes, but it looks like it is half way!  The forecast is for temperatures to stay low until next Wednesday, so the freezing will continue.

You can see that the ice does not go that far north.  I guess because the harbor is so much wider there.  I made those footprints so that the photograph would be more interesting.

With the sun to the south,  the backlighting brings out the texture of the ice which makes it more interesting.

This is a closer image of some of the raised up parts of the ice.  What I need to do when I have a chance, is to bring my drone down here and then the view from altitude will let us see how far across the harbor the ice goes.  I will try and do that the day after tomorrow.

 

They Didn't Plow Our Parking Space!

We went to the beach today with our coffee and donuts. We were surprised that they hadn't plowed the whole parking lot, like they used to do. They had run a plow twice down the length of the lot, but there was no room to park!  Our parking spot was not plowed!  So I backed our car into the snow from the plowed road and that's where we sat to have our coffee and donuts.  Looking out the window I realized that I liked the tree seen against the clear blue sky, with the snow in the foreground.  I will, of course, be writing an angry letter to the town, complaining about the failure to plow our spot!

 

Snowstorm, More Photos

 

This first photograph is from this morning, when I woke and saw how much snow we had gotten overnight.  All I could think of is "There's a car under there!"  The next few photographs are from yesterday.

This is the old Sea Cliff Water Company building that was a pump house at one time.  It had not been used in years and then the Village bought it from the water company and it is being refurbished to be used for village activities.  It is a classic building and looks so nice in the snow here along with the large tree in the foreground.

I think that this is kind of an exercise in composition.  The fence and the bench look like they are made of similar pieces of wood, and when I saw the crossed rails I realize that was what made this photograph interesting.  Without the crossed rails it would have been just a bench and a fence.

After walking along the shore I started up the long hill to the center of town.  Halfway up I saw this house and loved the monochrome color scheme - white and gray, and the American Flag made it all more interesting.

This house is the iconic Victorian home in Sea Cliff.  It is called "The Woodshed" and I have photographed it over the years, but always from the other side so that you can see all of the building in its stunning architectural beauty.  So I thought this was an interesting way to look at it in a snowstorm, with the tree in front of it.

And so back to today.  After breakfast I got out the monster snow blower that I love dearly!  It makes short work of what used to be a couple of hours of shoveling snow by hand.  I was done clearing the driveway and around the cars and the walk to the back door and a path to the BBQ.  Then I used a shovel and broom on the front porch and the steps, and then the back porch and steps.  An hour and a half and I was done.! Then I headed over to our neighbor's house.  Her neighbor across the street is really good with doing her driveway with his snow blower, which I used to do.  He cleaned her driveway yesterday afternoon, and so this morning I cleaned off the snow that had fallen after that.  What do they say?  "Many hands make light work!"

Today's Snow Storm

A lot of photographs from today!  I won't say too much about each.  We woke with about 4 inches of snow on the ground.  At about 1 PM I ventured out while it was snowing moderately.  When the snow is falling, there are wonderful "atmospheric effects" that are kind of like fog, where distant objects begin to fade into the distance.  Anyhow this is a way to see how deep the snow was in the driveway, with the car as a good "measuring stick" where you can get a sense of the snow's depth.  Today I am going to post the more practical photos of the storm.  Tomorrow the more artistic images.

First order of business was to find the buried newspaper in the driveway.  I finally figured out how to do that with this four-tined garden tool, dragged gently through the snow at the bottom of the driveway.  I was about to give up since I was about 25 feet up the driveway from the street, but then I found it!  In the past I have given up looking and then completely shredded the paper with the snow blower!

I love the foggy look of the trees in the snow.  The further they are from me, the fainter they are.

I call this photograph "One Rock, Nine Geese."  And that's what you are looking at!

I loved this pairing of one bench and one small tree with the rest of the harbor completely obscured.

And of course, any photographs of Shore Road needs to include one photograph of the line of sycamore trees, either from this direction, or from the other direction.

I was pretty bundled up with my LL Bean "mad bomber hat" which is the warmest hat I own for this kind of weather.  I wanted a shot of myself in the storm but I hadn't brought a tripod, of course so there was nowhere to put my camera to use a self timer.  But at the top of the street after turning the corner there is one of these convex mirrors that a neighbor uses to check traffic.  Perfect!

The snow stopped about suppertime, and then a very light, almost misty rain began and continued until about 11 PM.  This is a quick shot with my cellphone of Kathy's car with snow up to the centers of the wheels.  Today was a wonderful day for walking in the snow for my photographs.  I did about 2 1/2 miles and spent an hour and a half out walking around.  Felt wonderful to be out in the snowstorm, which I carefully dressed for, of course.

 

Ten Degrees!

I checked the temperature this morning when I woke up and was stunned to discover the temperture was 10 degrees!  The different upstairs windows had different patterns on them, and strangely the south window in our bedroom had the most interesting pattern.  Perhaps that was because of the two of us sleeping in that room our breath created more moistue than in the other rooms devoid of people.  In any case, I grabbed my SONY a7 and the macro lens that I have for it and went to work trying to make a nice composition of the crystalline image. How astounding is mother nature!  As I write this tonight we are are waiting for the snow beginning to fall all day Sunday, and then of course the cleanup on Monday morning.

 

A Desperate Man

I was desperate.  I had no photographs for today's blog.  At least nothing new.  I was using images from two different exhibits at two different museums and needed something new.  So I grabbed my camera and headed out for my 2.6 mile walk, desperate to find a photograph.  I got to the bottom of Laurel Avenue and saw the clouds and the sunlight over the water, and thought "Well, at least it's something" And I started shooting.  And what to my wondering eyes did appear but some seagulls flying around!  What luck!  I clicked as fast as I could and managed this as the best of maybe 4 photographs with a flying seagull in it!  Whew!  I have something, and so won't let you down.

 

More About "Realism"

I have posted about the exhibit of paintings and some other works about "Realism" in art.  Walking into the gallery and seeing this painting stopped me in my tracks.  What an astounding idea, the artist's face within the branches of the tree.  And I love the background with the river and mountains to add to the realistic effect.  The artist, who's face in pictured in the branches is Hadi Falapishi who is Iranian-born.  The title of this painting is "Professional Painter in a Dream."  This is from the curator: "Evoking Surrealist psychology, Falapishi portrays ambiguous scenarios that prompt us to contemplate our own sense of meaning and morality.  He frequently uses self-portraiture in such artworks as this painting to question the cultural status of the artist."  I hope those words are useful to us all to help understand what the artist is up to.  But to first see this painting on the wall, I was stopped in my tracks to see it across the gallery, and then to immediately view it up closed to see it in more detail.  It was one of my favorites in this large exhibition.

 

A Snowman!

A Snowman!  I was driving down to Home Depot by neighborhood streets and in Glen Head, I saw this snowman out of the corner of my eye as I drove by.  Get this...  I kept on driving!  Duh!  What is wrong with me!  I stopped 100 feet later and turned around, fortunately!  What a dolt!  It occurred to me that I can't remember seeing a snowman in years!  So this was fun to stop and shoot it.  I love the arms and the hat and the carrot nose and the grin on his face with some kind of rope as a smile!  Perfect!  This smily guy made my day!