How I Take Photographs

I brought my camera with me today on my walk to the old power plant, and wasn't expecting much with all the ice gone.  I was up on the sidewalk about 10 feet above the beach which I could see because the tide was dead low.  I wasn't expecting much.  I did see a woman walking her dog and it didn't look interesting because I was looking down on her.  But I followed along as she walked and took pictures.  She was close to the bulkhead, but as we got closer to Tappan Beach she moved further away from me and closer to the water.  I kept shooting, just because that is what I do. So below is the first photograph I took and it is just not interesting. I took a total of 23 photographs, and this photograph, above, is the last one. And THIS is a real photograph, not just a snapshot!  Lucky me.  There is an old saying, attributed to Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors the prepared mind."  I believe in that and that belief has served me well my whole career.  So it may be luck, but it is also hard work.  So now you know a little bit more about how I work.

 

Ice Blocks!

I thought I would drive by the beach today just to see what it looked like.  You saw the beach completely covered with huge ice blocks and people on them only two days ago!  What a change!

This is actually the first view I saw of these ice blocks today and I was stunned.  To go from the entire beach covered with blocks of ice to just this in two days is almost beyond belief.  I thought it was the coolest thing I had seen!  Some of thewe blocks are almost two feet thick.

These blocks in the distance are so thick I do wonder how long it will take for them to completely melt.  The thinner slabs in the foreground are only maybe 10" thick.  This ice on the beach is the gift that keeps on giving.  I never know what to expect next.

 

People on the Ice!

I went for my walk down along the harbor yesterday.  When I got to the bottom of Laurel Avenue at the harbor I couldn't believe my eyes!  There were two people out on the ice!  They were close to shore and carefully walking further out as they explored.  I had my camera ready and started blasting away as fast as I could as they moved around on the giant ice blocks.  OK, not to panic!  It is dead low tide, and all of the ice blocks within a couple of hundred feet of the shore are sitting on the sandbars.  They are not floating.  I was so excited because suddenly there is a human dimension to all this ice. seeing how small a couple is compared to all the ice makes for a much more interesting photograph than all the others!  Human scale can be so important in some landscape photography.  This is an extra large image so please click on it.

 

I am reading a book now by a woman photographer who is maybe 10 years younger than I am, about art and the creative life.  I have known about her for years, and I own a couple of her books of photographs.  She uses a huge 8x10 inch view camera and a really old lens that is not as sharp as modern lenses but that is part of the richness of her work.  So I started thinking about and remembered that a college friend had sent me a really interesting small lens perhaps 30 years ago.  It is essentially a magnifying glass lens in a funny mount so that you could tilt it in different directions to make some parts of the photograph sharp and others out of focus.  Well, I found the lens in my bureau drawer and wandered around first thing this morning shooting out of the house windows, hoping for a photograph that seemed similar to hers.  Well, I was not successful exactly in doing that, but I did get this photograph which I think is really interesting in a kind of haunting way.  Because the device has only one optical lens, it is only sharp in the middle.  I will have to go back and find some posts I did with the lens years ago on the blog.  Oh, I took the color photograph and made it look sepia in color, because the photographer with the large camera does a similar thing. 

So this is the lens on my SONY camera. The three screws can be turned to tilt the lens in any direction for different effects of sharpness.  This device is called a Lensbaby, and they have many new, more modern versions, but mine works just fine, thank you.  I am glad I could find it when I needed it.  If you are curious, here is the link to the first time I used this lens, and it turns out I was trying to do the same thing with this lens! Lensbaby Photo

 

Lines and Stripes

Today, of course was Dunkin' at the beach day.  We were sitting in the car looking at the water while having coffee, tea and a donut each, and then this caught my eye.  Sort of lines or stripes everywhere, and then the snow fence.  When the fence is first put up, the only choice for a background is just the sand, or if I crouch down, just the water. But today with the fresh snow on the beach and snow on some of the remaining ice, all I saw were the stripes and it seemed like an interesting photograph.  Not one of my best, but, hey, I NEED something every day!

 

After The Storm

So the good news is that the storm ended early for us - the original forecast was for it to snow most of the day on Monday.  The snow had pretty much stopped after breakfast this morning.  The other good news was that some forecasts were for from 18 to 24 inches of snow!  I think we got 14 to 16 inches, something I am also thankful for.  After breakfast I was out with the snow blower and worked for 2 hours getting all the big areas cleaned - the driveway and the sidewalk to the back steps and the sidewalk to the BBQ!  Gotta' keep that open!  While doing the BBQ walkway I spotted this!  How beautiful is this, the way the snow has affected each window differently, and then the mysterious shapes in the foreground really make this photograph.  Those shapes are two chairs and the glass topped picnic table!

We got a lot of snow just on the porch and I love the look of the different chairs and part of the couch covered in snow.  Makes things seem just a bit surreal, I think.  No sense showing you any photographs of the snow in the yard or street or driveway.  It all looks the same as last time!

 

And the Snow Begins

I took this photograph of the Japanese maple this afternoon after it had been snowing lightly for about an hour.  Love the beauty and delicacy of the lightly coated branches. It was taken at about 3:00 PM

This photograph was taken at 6:60 PM as it was getting dark.

And this beauty was taken from the front porch at 11:00 PM.  The big question of course is how much snow will we get by the end of the storm, which may not be until tomorrow night around suppertime.  The forecast is from 18 to 24 inches!  Yikes!  the snow blower is gassed up and ready to go.

 

The Big Thaw!

I hadn't been to the harbor in two days because of the rain.  Today I went on my walk, carrying my camera, of course and look what I saw!   Water!  So did I call it in yesterday's post? "I am curious as the ice melts, how the harbor waters will be uncovered.  Maybe one day, suddenly most of it will be gone?" And in one or two days, half the harbor is now water instead of ice.  I was lucky that the sun was in and out of clouds and I got this beautiful reflection from the surface of the water.

I took a lot of photographs, of course, trying to show the condition of the ice and the water.  This is further south in the harbor and you can see that half the harbor still has some thin ice covering it.  What a quick transformation!  By the way I saw this swan sailing in from the left and I kept the camera pointed for the best composition, and then clicked the shutter when it arrived at this spot!  PLEASE click on these photograph, they are beautiful seen larger and you will be surprised at all the additional detail you will see.

 

Ice, Water, and Two Ducks

In my continuing my quest to see how many different kinds of photographs I can take that involve ice, or melting ice, I present you with two Mallard ducks, some water, and some melting ice.  It has been raining for two days now so I haven't really taken a fresh look at how the ice is covering the harbor.  I am curious as the ice melts, how the harbor waters will be uncovered.  Maybe one day, suddenly most of it will be gone?  I will keep my eye out, and of course report back.

 

A Group of Trees

There is this grouping of six trees here on the point, and these are five of them..  Some of these trees are the ones you see from the side when I photograph this point from way off to the right - the classic photograph of just three trees on the end of the point.  So I like this grouping and I have photographed it a number of times, each time, just a bit differently.  If I step to the left or the right, the spacing between the trees changes, which is really fun to play with.  So the reason I photographed them this way was because of the shadows of the trees, seen against the snow.  So this photograph is so differerent from the single, truncated tgree I showed youy yesterday.  So much fun photographing trees!  One of my favorite subjects!

 

A Single Tree Trunk

At this location, which I have published photographs of before, there are several trees in addition to this one, and the groupings of two or three or more trees makes finding the best image interesting.  I think that tomorrow I will post an image with more of the trees that are in this spot.  But this is the first time that I am showing only a single truncated tree trunk.  So without all the details of the whole tree it puts the interest in the photograph, I think on to the bench and the frozen harbor.  It is just a different way of seeing this particular landscape.  Wait until tomorrow to compare them, please.

 

Someone Moved the Glove!

At our Tuesday at the beach with Dunkin' I was so surprised that someone had moved the glove!  Exactly one month ago I photographed this glove on the drift fence but about 30 feet from where it was this morning!  And the conditions are so different now than they were then.  The day of that post was January 18, if you would like to check.  This photograph is SO much better because of the surroundings - everything is all white because of the snow and ice, and the fog in the background.  I have been apologizing for only shooting snow and ice photographs, but two of my fans have suggested I continue.  My sister Betsey said this:  "You should not apologize for taking all these ice photos. They are so unique and unusual. And you’re having a good time!"  And Stan said in a conversation on the phone that he was amazed that I was finding new and unusual photographs every day, and he said I should continue with this.  He did say that if you have any complaints, to write him at <stan@complaints.theinternet.com>

 

More Ice, But Cracked This Time!

This will probably be the last ice shot, but I loved how strange this all looked, with the large cracks and the strange rocks sticking up and more darker gray ice in the background.  Took this yesterday.  I kept photographing the ice because it seems historic, and, truth be told, it is so much easier to find more interesting photographs of the ice, than when all the water comes back, so I am trying to make the most of things.

 

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!