Twelve

This is my second post witch features a number as the subject. The first, Seven was a number found on a building on an abandoned farm. Twelve was found on a lamppost in a parking lot in Riverhead.
At first I was thinking about a Pat Metheny CD cover where the subject was a sharp vertical object that cut through a frame of telephoto f2.8 softness. The inside photo was the same way. If my memory serves me right there were a few photos all in the same style. I didn’t own this CD so I do know who the photographer was. One of the few I'm missing.
When I first saw the pole, I thought of that cover, I needed to stand on the tire of my pick-up truck to get the background right. I exposed for the brightness of the metal pole and the rest of the image went a bit underexposed.

Captain Erik Bender

I received a phone call Tuesday that I wasn’t home to answer personally. The message was from Victoria Bender, she said hoped she reached the right photographer; that it concerned some photographs I might have made some years back.
I’d only read her name once, maybe twice back in July of ’03, but I knew who she was. I had photographed her son, Erik, the captain of a lobster boat the Victoria Ann.
Erik lost his life on June 24, 2003 when he was caught in a line of lobster pots thrown off the back of the open boat. Two days later John Davi, a retired lobsterman and John Davi Jr., his son, found Erik’s body.
It was grey and rainy on July 3, the day of Erik’s wake. I’ve never been to a wake with so many people. It was very emotional for me. I’d only met Erik on two occasions, once when we went out to empty lobster pots for the day, an again when I delivered a handful of prints I’d made. He was a soft-spoken, friendly guy with an infectious smile. It was obvious that his gentleness touched many people; it had touched me.
After all these years, Mrs. Bender came across the business card I gave to Erik. She wanted to see any of the photos from that day.
The photos I made on the Victoria Ann that day are part of the Men who work the bay, a body of work that I’ve tried to get published. It’s the visual story of men who choose a very different life when they choose to work on the water. Some of the images were scanned onto CD. I haven’t found a publisher that thought it had anything more than just local interest. Not enough for them to commit to.
Today’s post comes from that day aboard the Victoria Ann; this is Captain Erik Bender.

Cold Spring Pond

I made this image Monday evening at the in-laws. This is the sand bar at Cold Spring Pond during an ebb tide. I have always been a sucker for a beautiful sunset and beautiful sunset pictures, even when the sunset is not in them.

Flag in your hat.

It was nice to have a three-day weekend. This is the first Memorial Day I had off in years. I did make some photos at the Memorial service in Southampton.
I would think some might find it disrespectful to use the flag as a hat decoration. Yet, there are always a few people dressed in American flag print clothing items. One flag tie, one flag shawl and a few flag shirts, I guess the more you see it the more it looks normal.

Memorial Day 09

It’s the official start of summer in the Hamptons, the weekend that starts the swelling of the eastern end of Long Island. This summer will be the litmus on how recession proof Long Island really is.
My flowering Chive plant is today’s photo post. I moved tow of these from the back fence to the patio. This one likes its new spot. I like the soft focus and soft light in this image. I also like the color combination.
Remember to thank a Veteran, not just today.

Riverhead

I had some time to burn Friday morning in-between getting a flat tire fixed and an assignment in Riverhead. I spent the hour looking at art at the East End Arts Council and at another small shop that was primarily a frame store with the work of local artists on display.
Riverhead’s downtown has suffered greatly over the years and the new economic down isn’t helping. Some of the buildings are being renovated as apartments. That sounds like a great idea to me. Long Island has a shortage of affordable housing and I find Riverhead attractive.
Somewhere in its past, they tried to make Riverhead an artist community. There were offers of low cost studio/apartment co-ops. There were a few art galleries that opened and closed. And one of the coolest places, the East End Coffee Shop just closed its doors this year sighting the lack of foot-traffic and the number of vacant stores as the major problems.
Today’s pictures are from my walk around this quaint but vacant village. I love the couple on the boat. There’s still a lot of to see in Riverhead, the Atlantis Aquarium, the Suffolk Community College Culinary Arts center, the above-mentioned East End Arts Council and the painted ally ways, which these images are from.

Recession Garden

I covered an interesting press conference Thursday afternoon. A young history teacher had this idea to make a recession garden. She thought now was a good time for families to save money by growing their own organic vegetables. The press conference, arranged by Suffolk County Legislator Wayne Horsley also made it clear that families that receive food stamps can purchase seeds and food bearing plants with their stamps.
The press conference went well, local radio, two television stations and Newsday, our daily newspaper were there. That’s a homerun in terms of coverage for a story.
Newsday called Legislator Horsley to let him know they decided not to run the story because his aide, Brendan and the young history teacher, Alline are dating and the editor was not made aware of this prior to assigning a reporter and photographer to the story.
Wow.
According to CNN’s web site, George Ball, CEO and Chairman or the W. Atlee Burpee & Co. says they’ve seen a 25 to 30 percent spike in vegetable seed and plants this year. John Laumer reported on the Treehugger .com site that AP reports US seed sales are up 19%.
Car manufacturers, banks, retailers and, yes media companies are all down. Newspapers are closing, car companies are filing for bankruptcy and families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Yet, a good wholesome story like a local gal growing some vegetables in her grandmothers’ yard can’t make the paper because the legislator’s aide and the gardener are dating.
Wow, maybe that’s a story.
I’ve read stories about people that fail to do what seems obvious when under duress. Someone might not think that spending money on a vegetable garden is not a good idea during hard times. Maybe they don’t know that a dollar’s worth of seed produces something like twenty-five dollars worth of produce. Well, the readership of Newsday, the voice of Long Island, NY, and America's 6th-largest regional newspaper won’t be reading about it in their paper.
In today’s day and age, who know what will last longer, Brendan and Alline or the recession.

Watchful eyes.

As a continuing education instructor for various photography classes, I sometimes found myself having to comment on images that just bore the hell out of me. Waterfowl images have always been one such subject. So an explanation is in order for today’s photo.
I made this photo yesterday on my way from the parking lot into a town office building, a town for which I do work. The supervisor of this town has gone to great lengths to rid the park of geese. It seems as though this mother goose still feels this park is a great place for her to bring her young. She was still there when I left later in the afternoon.
Today, the whole family is swimming around the pond.
Geese are very defiant.

Earlier years

Today’s picture was made many years ago. It was an attempt at creating art. The original was made on Kodachrome 25, one of my favorite slide films of years past. This version is off a Kodak CD.

Moo to you too!

We pulled off the main road yesterday to look at the map and to get our bearings before go too far from where we wanted to be. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
There were cows just over the hill. So I walked up to make a photo or two. I don’t think they appreciated me being there with my camera. Maybe they don’t see photographers too often.

Home for the summer.

Well, we’re home. This wasn’t the most pleasant trip we’ve ever made to Potsdam. We left latter in the day because I had the Suffolk County Police Memorial event to cover. This, and having to drop off a job in Hauppauge put us on the road at 1:00pm. We hit traffic on almost every road we were on. So today’s post is an image through the filthy windshield of the van of taillights and the road map.
Coming back today, we let Brian drive the first leg of the trip. I sat in the back and read dome of my book, Cel and Brian walked about things. Brian and his friends take a short cup that saves about an hour off the nine-hour trip. So he was showing us that route. Unfortunately, we made a wrong turn and wound up going south, a good thing, but south in a westerly direction, a bad thing.
Today’s trip was a half hour longer than our worst time. Oh Well.

Rank & File

Today’s post is from one of the three assignments I covered yesterday. Our local police department honoring their comrades that have past away throughout the year. This is police week in the United States, many police offices go to Washington DC to make the public aware of the dangers of their job.
Today we leave to pick up Brian in Potsdam. I have to cover the Suffolk County Police Memorial service first.

A sea of Red White and Blue

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been so busy working and getting the yard ready for our spring graduations that I haven’t had time to make any images for myself or for my blog.
Even today’s post is from a job.
They call this the Field of Honor. There’s a flag for every community member that is overseas fighting. Unfortunately, you can’t tell how may flags were flying because of how I composed the photo. I just wanted to see a sea of red white and blue.

Happy Mother's Day

What a beautiful day. I had to wait around for the new washer and dryer to be delivered. So I got a lot of yard work done today with minimal interruption.
Today’s photo I made while cleaning up the flowerbeds. We have some ferns under the deck that spread into the driveway. This one was moved from the driveway to a shady spot. I love the way they look in early spring.

Quiet rain

It’s quiet this morning except for the rain and the one crack of thunder that rattled the kitchen window. The boys and I have the house to ourselves this weekend. My wife went to visit her niece in North Carolina, she left yesterday morning and will be back tomorrow night.
We saw the sun yesterday. It was my big chance to finish cutting the lawn, transplant a few things around the yard and feed some of the bushes. I still have a few bushes to move, but everything I set out to do yesterday, is done.
I covered a press conference at Stony Brook Hospital yesterday morning for a surgical robot, the Sensei Robotic Catheter System made by Hansen Medical. It was the first medical robot I’ve even seen. The doctor sits in front of video monitors with a joystick and controls a robotic arm through the heart to perform a catheterization. So cool. I’m sure it will open the video game market to a whole new avenue of video games and conversely, open up a career path to those that find themselves addicted to video games.
Today’s photo was made Thursday.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

A set of French doors inside a posh golf club on the north shore. I was there earlier tonight for a Breast Cancer awards banquet. As usual I needed to wait around for the elected to show-up.
The original is in color,which I did not like.
So I made it gray scale and added contrast. I set the iso to 3200 you can see the noise.

Boy, I miss those days.

Brian

Evan

Adam

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been going through a box of Kodak Photo CD’s. These are images scanned to CD’s from film and at the time there were high quality. Today, many cameras including point-and –shoot digital models make better files. I thought it would be fun to post one of each of my three sons (sounds like a TV show).

The sepia image is Adam. The scan is from a black and white negative film.

That’s Brian at the lawn sprinkler, he’s just finishing his second year of college. Evan is the one with the Maple seed stuck to his nose. This was made about eleven years ago; he’s about two in this image. Boy, I miss those days.

Bleeding Hearts

Another rainy, cold day, I’d bet the temperature and weather are right for the season. It’s just that this winter was so cold that I can't wait for the warmer weather. While cleaning all the water in the basement, I came across a box of old Photo CD’s. It will be fun to look through them.
Every year I photograph one of my Bleeding Heart plants. This is a straight photograph with a slight adjustment for exposure.

May Showers

Well I’ve missed a few days since my last post. Lousy weather, loads of work and a flooded basement from a malfunctioning cloths washer has kept me very busy. I need a day to go walk along the beach or through the woods or walk in the city just to look for things that interest me.
Today’s photo I made this morning outside our side door. We have this gap between the house and the walk and up till last year nothing really grew in there. This clover plant was at the garden center and was marketed as plant you could walk on. It spread nice and we love the color.
There is post-production with ARC and Photoshop to add contrast and bring out the colors.