Drive By

When I drive south from Sea Cliff, sometimes I go through Roslyn.  When I do that, I drive on a one lane road that passes by many of the historic houses.  A couple of times driving by this garden I got flashes of something interesting going on.  I was aware of Sunflowers, and some hanging-down deep magenta stuff.  Today as I passed by it finally grabbed me, and so I stopped to photograph the garden.  Because of the addition of the magenta "stuff" it really is a striking scene.  I hope you can tell me what plant that is!

Also, Because...

The talk at our astronomy meeting was about imaging the planet Venus in Ultraviolet and Infrared wavelengths of light.  It was given by my friend Frank who is the most scientific practitioner of astronomy in the club.  He has been doing this science work for years.  When he was speaking, he made an interesting silhouette, so I started photographing him.  When the slide in the background came up saying "Also, Because..." I knew I had my shot, because of the two words. 

The End is Near. Maybe.

In 2011 the Glen Cove City Council approved the demolition of this collection of offices in the center of downtown.  I have showed you photographs of this before, and now it is even more overgrown.  The problem has been that one doctor with his office in the complex has not agreed to a buyout of his office.  There have been talks about using eminent domain to take over his property.  There are competing lawsuits, because the chosen developed has been unable to start the project, six years later!

So today I drove by the site and was surprised to see this enormous backhoe and some dumpsters parked at the site.  Guess what it is there for?  Only question is when does this begin to happen?  Oh, and want to hear an interesting coincidence?  The demolition is being done by the same company that demolished the power plant, and which I spent more than a year photographing.

This is the office of the doctor who has been refusing to sell his part of the building.  Stay tuned - I will be sure to drive by the site every day so that I can photograph the start of the demolition.

Our Magnificent Sun!

The last time I viewed the sun through my telescope, it was August 31, and there were three spots on it at the time.  I was stunned to see the sun today, and find this amazing collection of spots, both large and small, and many of them surrounded by penumbras - the gray areas surrounding the black spots.  What is particularly amazing is that we are at the end of the current sunspot cycle, which means that sunspots are few and far between.  There have been weeks in the last several months, with no spots at all.  So today was a wonderful surprise.  Please click on the image to see more detail.

A Fungus Among Us

One of the three new plants we bought to put in the garden next to the house has developed a white substance on the top of the leaves.  Uh-oh.  So we went by the nursery where we bought the plants and the "solutions" guy explained that we had "Pottery Mildew" and he suggested we buy a copper based fungicide to spray on the leaves.  Hope it works.  I went out to take this photograph late in the day, after supper, so it was taken in fading light.  I really love the mood of this photograph, and the monochromatic color scheme. Please be sure to click on the image - it is quite beautiful when you can see it in greater detail.

Desperate Measures

I didn't manage to find a photograph today, so at 11 PM, with it raining outside, I went out on the front porch with my camera on a tripod, and tried a shot.  Not good enough.  So then I grabbed an umbrella, and walked down the driveway, trying something with the Japanese maple tree leaves at night.  Didn't work.  Then I focused on the wet trees down the hill, on the other side of the street.  Got something I liked.  I did not like the garish colors from the mercury vapor streetlight, so I converted it to black and white, and I like the feeling of the photograph much better.

The Mysterious Sea

This is another of my long time-exposures long after the sun had set yesterday.  I think this was a 30 second exposure.  What the long exposure does, is allow grasses and the water to be blurred, and things like rocks remain sharp.  It is a long used technique - I remember photographing rocks and waves in Maine back when I was using a Hasselblad and shooting black and white film.  So this is new, but I wanted to experiment and see what I could do.  The coolest thing is the strange quality of the water - as the waves move through the photograph, they are blurred and the waves look kind of foggy.