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! 

 

The New Security Guard at the Museum

They have never had a uniformed security guard at the museum before.  They have had employees dressed in suits who keep an eye on visitors and the paintings of course. So I was so surprised to see this guard when I entered the museum.  I was surprised for only 30 seconds, however!  It turns out the guard is a work of art!  It is an amazingly realistic sculpture by the artist Mark Sijan, who is a Serbian-born hyperrealist sculptor, who creates figures that are unbelievably lifelike and graceful.  Working from a live model, he captures such realistic characteristics and features as tiny as hairs, veins, skin pores, and blemishes with extreme realism.  His figures are gritty and naturalistic and are a tribute to real people.  You cannot believe the detail and the realism until you see something like this in person!

 

More Snow Overnight

                                       

We got about 3 inches of light snow overnight.  It was a light snow so it remained on the tops of all the branches because, fortunately, there was little to no wind.  This first photograph was taken from the upstairs bathroom window.  And I carefully positioned the camera so that I got the sun shining through the tree giving us a starlight effect.

                                       

I went outside to clean the driveway before breakfast with a shovel, and to get the newspaper at the end of the driveway.  But then I kept seeing photographs all around me.  I like this a lot because it is beautiful and interesting and is not a landscape photograph.  I love seeing this blue vase sitting on the glass picnic table, and you should know I epoxied a 2" diameter round wooden piece to the bottom of the vase, so the vase could never be blown off the top of the table.  The wood piece goes in the hole in the top of the table used for the giant umbrella over the picnic table.

                  

And last, but not least is this photograph of the famous tree, but this time photographed from the side, when I was standing on the front porch.  If I stand on the porch then the higher angle lets the tree block part of the neighbor's house and any view of the street. making for a "cleaner" image without distractions.  Don't forget to click on each of these. They are spectacular seen larger.

The Glove on the Fence

When we went to the beach with our coffee and donuts last Tuesday, after I parked the car and we had been sitting there with our breakfast for a bit, I noticed this glove on one of the metal fence posts for the drift fence.  I didn't see it right away - this drift fence is some distance onto the beach from the parking lot, and this photo is done with a telephoto lens.  I thought it was funny to have one hand waving at us as we had our coffee and donuts.  It was definitely a photo.  It is on the fence post because there is a sidewalk between us and the beach, and obviously someone found this single glove and put it there so it would be found eventually by whoever lost it.  I tried some different shots, closer, further back and lower angle and this slightly higher angle to see which version I liked best.

Later in the afternoon I went for my 2 1/2 mile walk, and knowing that the light had changed and that it was cloudy, and I was walking right by the parking lot, I walked over to the glove and tried doing some  more photographs in the different light and sky background.  I think my favorite is this one.  I am closer and the glove is higher and so it is way more obvious than the first photograph.  So I will accept any opinions on which photograph of the glove everyone likes!  My favorite thing, a vote on my photos!

 

A Gentle Snowfall

We had a bit of snow late this morning and I think it lasted two hours or so.  I drove to recycling after shoveling maybe 2 inches of show off the driveway.  Why shovel 2 inches of snow?  Because if there is any snow on the driveway, we don't get back up it with the car!  But today's snow was really slippery because the temperature was right around 32 degrees.  When it stopped and I shoveled again, then what little was left melted.  I am thankful for that.  Meanwhile I shot this from our bedroom window because I thought this was a pretty scene with the snow coming down.  For those of you out there with cameras, I spent a fair amount of time picking the best shutter speed.  1/125 froze the snowflakes in flight so I also tried longer exposures of 1/60 and 1/30th of a second to see if the blur was better.  The blur made the snow so blurred that it seemed to disappear.  So this was 1/125.  After all that technical stuff, the photograph is really pretty, isn't it?

 

A Monument to My White Shirts!

I went to an exhibition at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn this afternoon to see an exhibition titled "Real, Surreal, and Photoreal."  It is about different types of "realism" in art.  Near the end of my visit I spotted this folded white shirt in a display case behing glass, and nearly missed it.  I thought "why is that shirt there?"  When I looked more closely at the object, it turns out that it is carved from marble!  That is astounding.  Finding that out makes my mind flip!  Finding out the shirt is marble made me think that it is a monument to my propensity to wear white shirts!  The artist and sculptor for several objects on display including this shirt and, get this, a roll of toilet tissue, also made from marble is Jud Nelson, and the category of his work is called "Sculptural Realism."  From the curator: "His three-dimensional depictions are always white and carved out of marble. Ghostlike surrogates of the real thing, they assume a special authority because of their appearance of being real: color mostly true to the subject, and hand carved to its exact size, in a material mostly associated with classical art.  Nelson’s work always questions the reality of physical existence and appeals to some alienated modern sense of the existentially absurd."  Hope that helps understand this a bit more. 

 

Portraits by Helene Schjerfbeck

A brief word about Helene Schjerfbeck.  Beloved in Nordic countries for her highly original style, Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is relatively unknown to the rest of the world. Overcoming immense personal struggles and working in a remote location for decades, she produced a powerful body of work through sheer force of will. This exhibition affirms her rightful place in the story of modern art.

Here are some portraits by her.  A couple of you thought the two other portraits she painted, one of two women, and an abandoned self portrait, which I posted two days ago,  had a sense of being sad. I am thinking that perhaps these portraits bight be less dark.  This first portrait is interesting because she was trying for something different.  After all the paint was applied to the canvas, then she started scraping some of the paint off to get a different effect.  You can see on the left where some of the paint has been scraped away. She thought that this was the most tender of her paintings.

This appealing early self portrait was painted in 1895. By 1912 she began to manipulate color, shadowing and self-espression in ways that shared very little of her inner self.  A near masklike visage ensued.

This portrait from 1912 is prominently signed and dated.  This representation declares an image of increasing self-possession.  This was the first self-portrait that she exhibited publicly.

This "Self-Portrait with Silver Background" is less a study of self than an investigation of drawing materials in combination with silver leaf.  As with so many of Schjerfbeck's self-portraits, she provides few clues to her inner self.  I found that the dozen or so self-portraits were some of the most interesting paintings in the exhibit.

 

Four Trees

                               

This scene is only a short way into my 2.6 mile walk, and as I am just starting out, this scene is something I pass by, but looking in the other direction.  It is only on my way back that I see this and I often stop and look at it to see if, depending on the light and the sky, it might be something I want to shoot.  I did that yesterday and decided that I liked the shot, even though it is a subtle photograph.  What always holds my attention are the four trees.  Each one a different size which makes the scene interesting I think.  I have photographed this before, but I am not sure how many times.  The three benches also add interest to the composition.  The sky can be so subtle on many days, and I think that may be the thing that makes me click the shutter.  And, by now, you know the drill - Please click to see it larger.  Thank you!

The Hidden Self Portrait

There is an amazing exhibit of paintings by the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck 1862-1946. It is pronounced "SHAIR-beck" - it is easier to pronounce than you would think!  The title is "Seeing Silence."  This is a painting called "Factory Girls on the Way to Work."  What is astounding is that on the back of this painting, is another painting - a self-portrait of the artist, which she painted first and apparently didn't like and abandoned it.  Because canvas was so expensive back then, she turned the canvas with the portrait around and painted this on the other side.   

This is the back of the frame of the "Working girls" The abandoned portrait was hidden for years because the back of the frame was covered up.  Can you imagine how excited they must have been to discover this hidden painting!

Here is a close-up of the hidden painting, with a number of scratches across her forehead.  It has been said "There are several ways to interpret this painting - as a work in progress ultimately abandoned, or perhaps as a sign of externalized emotional turmoil.  Absent the aggressive scratches, the portrait is a telling example of Schjerfbeck's process and the degree to which her inner life is manifested in paint."  Please click on this because it is a larger sized image and you can see more detail.

 

Triad of Osiris, Isis and Horus

This group of three gold Egyptian statues of Gods is amazing!  You know why?  Because these statues are only 3 and 9/16 inches high!  When I saw the announcement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art about the exhibition they are in, I assumed they were 3 or 4 feet tall!  What a surpise to find these detailed tiny figures in a glass case that I needed a closeup lens to photograph.  The exhibit is called "Divine Egypt" and is about the images associated with the most important deities in ancient Egypt's massive numbers of gods.  There are 250 works of art in this exhibition!  The detail is so amazing that I have included another photograph, below, so you can see these three statues much closer.  Please click on each photo because I have posted a larger image that will show you more detail.

 

The Angel of Death and the Sculptor

We were leaving one of the dining areas where we had lunch and I looked straight ahead as I was walking and saw THIS!  I was stunned!  It has been on this wall since 1924 and I had never noticed it before.  It grabbed my attention instantly!  It was not clear exactly what was going on, but rteading the text on the wall was amazing.  This sculpture is titled "The Angel of Death and the Sculptor" by the sculptor Daniel Chester French and was done in Marble between 1921-1926.  It is a memorial to a Boston sculptor and his brother.  The original bronze sculpture was done in 1893 and is in a Boston cemetery.  But here is the story!  This is the Angel of Death on the left, and it is the moment the she interrupts the sculptor's work, staying the chisel in his left hand.  She also holds a bunch of poppies symbolizing eternal sleep.  This memorial is a profound statement on the creation of art and the cessation of life.  What a stunning sculpture and I still can't believe I had necver seen it before.  Please click on it to see it larger!

 

Studying Art

I noticed this woman in other galleries, looking carefully at the art and she was studying each piece far more than most people, and she was taking notes as well.  I saw her several times, and then when I walked into this gallery, she was seated on the bench, looking at a painting and taking a lot of notes.  Then the young girl came in and sat on the other end of the bench and I thought it made some kind of photograph, so I used my phone and surreptitiously took two photographs, without being noticed. Now that I am thinking back on all this, I think I should have walked up to her and asked about all her studying and her note taking.  I am sorry that I didn't.  That is unlike me.

 

"Man Ray: When Objects Dream"

There were two shows that were "must see" at the Met and the first one was Man Ray, (1890-1976) who was an American Artist who was known for radical experiments that pushed the limits of photography, painting, sculpture and film.  Most of the work was painting and photography.  But this was fascinating - a "sculpture" made out of coat hangars hanging off of each other and then there were spotlights that projected shadows of the hangars on a white floor.  It was such a cool thing to see.

This is what he was known for, something called a "Rayograph."  He would go into a darkroom and with the lights out, put a piece of photographic paper on the counter and then place objects on the paper.  Then he would quickly turn on one single light bulb in the ceiling for a second or less, and then develop the paper.  Any objects would show up white because they blocked the light and where there was nothing it would be black.  Some objects were obvious, but many were not, as in this composition.  There were perhaps 60 of these on display.

This is another Rayograph, and much easier to see because the objects are familiar - the fronds of ferns.  This is quite beautiful as you can see.  So this exhibition was quite different than what you might expect ordinarily.