Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
Or are they sheds? I’ll call them barns because ‘Three Red Barns’ sounds so much better than ‘Three Red Sheds’. These are on Archer Road in Mahopac just past the intersection with Route 6n.
I’ve often seen this house on Route 6n right next to one of my favorite restaurants: ‘Holy Smoke‘ (one of the best BBQ places around here it also has a fine selection of craft beers). Yesterday I decided to stop by and take a closer look. At first glace I thought it was just a bit dilapidated, but when I got a bit closer I could see that a number of the windows were broken, vines were growing all over it and, a door to the basement was wide open. It was clearly abandoned. A sign outside said the the property was subject to a planning application (whatever that means). While it’s not the most spectacular of houses it would be a shame to see it gradually fall apart over time.
Trying out an ultra wide angle lens I’ve had for a while but haven’t used much. It’s a Sony SEL16F28 16mm f/2.8 Wide-Angle Lens with the Sony VCLECU1 High Definition Wide Angle Conversion Lens, which makes it about 12mm. Taking into account the crop factor this becomes the 35mm equivalent of 18mm – still pretty wide. A couple of problems to overcome: how to get the foreground and the background tolerably in focus; how to deal with the dark interior and the bright outdoors. I’m not sure that I really overcame the first. The background is still rather fuzzy, but at least it’s not totally blurred. The contrast problem was addressed by using HDR and then further processing to make it so that it didn’t look too much like HDR. All in all I’m pleased with the result.
The Poinsettia is a usually thought of as a Christmas flower, so I’m amazed that it’s still blooming in June!
Yet another in the flower series. This time a Chicago Peace Rose in our garden.
Top of one of the arch/gateways.
We went with some friends to an antique show held on the grounds of the Lasdon Park and Arboretum. While the ladies when around the antiques show I went for a walk with my friend Ken. I’d heard that there was a Chinese Garden somewhere and I hoped to find it. The Lasdon Park website describes the Chinese Garden as follows:
In 1997 the County became a sister city with Jinzhou in China. A Chinese delegation came to the park and lived here that summer to construct an ornate pavilion and along with the help of the Parks Department, developed a garden surrounding the pond near the western end of the park. While the pavilion is quite aesthetic it is challenged by climate. Every 5 years or so we must restore much of the paint and wood work at the pavilion.
In an earlier post I mentioned that some other friends had given me some old cameras. I had one of them with me: A Canon Eos Elan IIe with 28-80mm Zoom Lens and I was keen to try it. I had a slight problem, but I’ll talk about that in a post on the camera itself. Here are some pictures. Since I didn’t know how well the camera was working I only had low resolution scans done.
Bamboo.
Another arch/gateway.
Distant Pavilion.
Closer view of the Pavilion.
Closeup of the Pavilion.