Up There, Down Here...

Today we drove back from Rochester to home.  We were a bit concerned about the weather forecast upstate.  Buffalo was forecast to get a fair amount of snow, and Syracuse was as well.  So we were driving south with the possibility of snow west of us and east of us.  Binghampton was forecast for show showers.  So we left early this morning and the most snow we saw was snow showers south of Binghamton, and we were thankful for that.

Clouds continued to be overcast along our route, and fortunately the traffic was not that bad for our whole trip!  As we drove the final mile on Shore Road in Sea Cliff, this was what the sunset looked like!  So there's a treat.  I stopped the car and jumped out and shot this before it changed. Quite a difference between up there and down here!

 

Happy... Ahhhh... Uhhhh...

I have a two mile walk I do when visiting Vince and Jo Anne and it goes through a different neighborhood than theirs. As I rounded a corner I heard a whirring sound and as I wondered what it was, discovered this on the front lawn on a house!  Wow!  I took a couple of photographs, and a woman appeared from behind all of these inflatables, and I said "This is amazing!"  She said "Thank you" and I asked her how long it took to put up. She said her husband had been working on this for 5 1/2 hours.  The whirring sound was the noise that the air pumps make while pumping air into the plastic figures to keep them inflated.  I asked if each inflatable had its own air fan, and she said "yes."  Wow, that's a lot of electricity.  I guess Christmas is coming...

 

Inside the George Eastman Museum

I have shown you the outside of the George Eastman Museum for years now, and it is time to show you a couple of photographs of the inside. After opening its doors to the public in 1949, the George Eastman Museum quickly became known as one of the most important venues dedicated to the collection and care of photographs. At the time of its opening, it was one of only two American museums to establish a photography department, and this early commitment to the medium has inextricably bound the institution to the history of photography itself. This is a photograph in the exhibit "Life with Photographs: 75 Years of the Eastman Museum" which explores the many ways in which photographic objects have come to shape our everyday lives. The exhibition encompasses broad cultural histories and image-making practices, from pre- photographic experimentation to critical advances that challenge our conceptions of the medium.  This exhibit is astounding and I was introduced to so many photographers around the world that I had not heard of before.

This is the gallery for an exhibit called "Scene at Eastman."  I don't have enough time to explain what the exhibit is about, but I found that this is such an unusual gallery.  It is all white, with a white rug on the floor!  I can't imagine how they keep that rug clean!  After you walk in the door, which I am facing, when it closes and you look around, you find the door and wall at that end are mirrors!

This space is unlike any other gallery space I can think of in recent memory.  It is so interesting to be in and to experience the space.  The objects on the walls, in this part of the gallery are tiny, for the most part, which is surprising and unexpected.  Then you approach. what appears to be a window on one wall, and discover that it is a mirror and there is my image facing me!   That's a surprise!

So I photographed myself, just because.  It would take a lot more space to explain what's going on here and in addition to this white room, there is a black room as well.  Part of this exhibit is about seeing, and being seen.  So I will leave it at that, and hope you find this gallery interesting to look at. This exhibit also shows that the museum is always experimenting with what photography is about and how it can be practiced and exhibited in new ways.

 

The George Eastman Museum

I love going to the George Eastman Museum every time we are in Rochester.  I first came here in 1960 as a freshman student at RIT, where I graduated with a BFA degree in photography four years later.  I have come to realize that Eastman House is kind of a spiritual home for me.  It is such a joy to spend time here, both in the galleries with the photographic exhibits, and in the mansion, seeing where George Eastman lived.  It has become such a familiar place to me.

I have photographed the house under different weather conditions and at different times of day.  And I have photographed the three different gardens around the property, and I have photographed this loggia in the west garden, from the outside, but I have never shown you this view.  This is such a beautiful structure, both inside and out.

 

Rochester Skies

Rochester skies!  How well I remember them!  These clouds are the result of all the moisture that is picked up by the air as it comes over the warm waters of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and when it gets over the land, it is cooled, and that's how the clouds form at this time of year.  I do enjoy clouds, but when I was in school here, it became oppressive to have clouds day after day after day.  But for us, now, it is something we see for just a few days and then we will be back home, thanfully.

 

Driving Upstate

This may be my least "photographic' photograph.  The reason I give you is no excuse, I think.  We headed up to Rochester this morning and I always have my toy camera with me to do some kind of photograph along the way, like my favorite abandoned farmhouse in Ovid.  But I wanted to get to Rochester before it was too late in the day, so I did a few photographs at the start of the trip, and then stopped shooting.  This is a photograph from the Long Mountain Parkway which runs between the Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway.  Parts of this route are cut from the side of a mountain because the route goes up over the top of a ridge and down the back side.  So I wanted to show you this rock wall because it is a different kind of scenery than my usual landscape photographs, and shows the incredible amount of excavation required to make parts of this route. My landscape photographs are real photographs, and this is just a snapshot.  But the good news is, that after shooting this, I put the camera down and paid attention to my driving.  No doubt you are relieved!

 

Industrial Long Island II

I took this photograph about 100 feet from yesterday's photograph.  But about a month later. There are the same kind of metal power poles in the foreground with hight tension power lines on the top of them.  In the background are two natural gas-fired turbines that start up when it gets dark, to add more electricity to the grid when people get home from work and start cooking dinner.  It's called a "peaking plant."  I love to photograph industrial scenes for some reason.  Industrial scenes, and beautiful landscapes, go figure.  I love to photograph sites like this at dusk because they have their own external lights that come on and add a nice quality to the image and make the image more complex.