The Roundhouse at Beacon Falls

December 9, 2013 by Howard Dale Posted in iphone 5s, Places Tagged gallery Leave a comment

View across Fishkill Creek to SWIFT, the restaurant at the Roundhouse. The two large windows are at the restaurant.

My wife is back from her European (Switzerland and the United Kingdom) excursion. We went for lunch at SWiFT in the Roundhouse at Beacon Falls. It’s a very nice location and the food was good. The bar also looked like it would be a nice place to go for a drink. In Summer there’s an outside seating area with great views of the Falls. Beacon looks interesting. I’ll have to come back and take a walk around. Unfortunately I forgot to take a camera so these were taken with my wife’s iPhone 5s

The view from our table.

Eirah enjoys her spicy pear collins.

One of the other buildings in the area

Originality is dead: or is it? – Ming Thein | Photographer

December 6, 2013 by Howard Dale Posted in Thoughts Leave a comment

I enjoyed this post from Ming Thein – particularly the last paragraph:

The most fundamental counterargument is that uniqueness doesn’t automatically imply instant recognizability: two things can be subtly different, but unless you’re looking for it, they will probably appear the same. And most people are bombarded with such a visual overload that they’re almost certainly not looking for those differences. We therefore have to work harder to create that difference; but not so hard that nobody understands what they’re looking at. There has to be just enough of a trace of recognition for a photograph to be successful as a new idea: draw on the collective cultural consciousness and back catalog of influences. In effect: evolution is still the way to go. But I firmly believe that the direction and pace of change are within the control of the photographer: I keep saying this, but if I showed you my first work and my current work, you wouldn’t recognize it as being from the same person. Even now, when I insert an older image into a post to illustrate a point, most of my regular readers can tell something is off. As an artist, I want to be different, and recognized for that difference. But I’m also fully aware that I’ll have to lead a little to get there.

This is something I grapple with a lot. With all of the photographs now available on the internet is it still possible to create something truly original or has everything already been done? Ming Thein’s post maintains that it is, but that we need to work harder to do so. Maybe the truly creative have ways of looking and seeing that allow them to take something that you’ve seen thousands of times and make it appear new. I don’t have that kind of creativity, but I continue to hope that if I keep plugging away I’ll be able to improve.

via Originality is dead: or is it? – Ming Thein | Photographer.

Roy

December 4, 2013 by Howard Dale Posted in People Tagged gallery Leave a comment

This is my brother-in-law, Roy. He’s the one who sells the jewelry I talked about in an earlier post. I love this picture. It was taken sometime in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I don’t recall what camera I used, but it was probably either a Canon AE-1 or a Minolta Hi-Matic 7sII.

Mount Beacon

December 4, 2013 by Howard Dale Posted in Places Tagged gallery Leave a comment

Another long walk – this time again off 9d in Beacon. Went with the dog up to the top of Mount Beacon, of which Wikipedia says:

…the highest peak of the Hudson Highlands, located behind the City of Beacon, New York, in the Town of Fishkill. Its two summits rise above the Hudson River behind the city and can easily be seen from Newburgh across the river and many other places in the region. The more accessible northern peak, at 1,531 feet (467 m) above sea level, has a complex of radio antennas on its summit; the 1,610-foot (491 m) southern summit has a fire lookout tower…In the past, North Beacon was home to Dutchess ski area, and the remains of three ski trails can still be seen from the north. Additionally there was once the Mount Beacon Incline Railway (for more information see here), which stopped running in 1978 but has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Its track can still be seen going up the mountain and can be used to climb it, albeit steeply. At various other times in the past this summit housed a restaurant, a casino and a hotel. The mountains provided a key vantage point over West Point and Hudson River, lending it historic roles in the American Revolution. Signal fires on the mountain gave both it and the nearby city their name. In 1901 the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument at the site of the original signal fire near the summit of North Beacon.

It’s not an easy walk – or at least it wasn’t for me. It’s all uphill and took me about an hour to get to the top. I almost gave up when I’d walked for almost an hour with no end in sight. Then I noticed that the trees were thinning out and guessed that the top must be near. It was. A few minutes later we got there. I was breathless and Jackson was not even panting. In fact as we were going up he kept running ahead. The slope was often very rocky and he jumped around like a little mountain goat. From time to time he would stop and look back at me with a pitying expression as if to say: is that the best that you can do? The view from the top was well worth the climb though.

This is the view from the beginning of the trail on route 9d. We’re going up to the top

A little farther on you come to these stairs. There are about 150 of them. After you’ve gone up there’s still about an hour of uphill walking.

View of the Hudson River from the top

View of Beacon and the Beacon/Newburgh bridge.

Old powerhouse machinery at the top of the incline railway

More rusting machinery

View south towards Cold Spring

This is how the peak used to look with its hotel and casino. Pity it’s no longer like that. It would be nice to go to a restaurant with such a spectacular view.

Former Stern/Cornish Mansion: Northgate

December 2, 2013 by Howard Dale Posted in Places, Ruins Tagged gallery Leave a comment

My wife is away in Europe visiting kids and grandkids. So I’ve been going for longer walks (around two hours rather than the usual one hour) and venturing farther afield. This time (the dog, Jackson and myself) went for a walk in the woods just off route 9d north of Cold Spring. This is what we came across. I discovered from my research that this is the old Stern/Cornish Mansion: Northgate, arguably the most extensive set of ruins in the Hudson Valley.

You can see the patio/terrace in the second picture. The view must have been amazing – out across the Hudson to Storm King mountain on the other side. You get some sense of it in the third picture. This was actually taken lower down because the view from the patio was almost completely blocked by trees, which I’m sure wouldn’t have been there at the time the mansion was occupied. They would have grown since.

Very interesting walk. The Hudson Valley Ruins site has more info on these ruins here. There are also some photos of how the mansion looked in it’s heyday.