Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
Browsing through my pictures I noticed that I have quite a few of our local churches. So here are some of them:
St. Philip’s Church in the Highlands, Garrison, New York
Presbyterian Church, Patterson, NY.
Former Tompkins Corners United Methodist Church – presently vacant and for sale.
Reconstructed Red Mills Baptist Church, Carmel, NY
Christ Episcopal Church, Patterson, NY.
Bannerman’s castle – now in ruins – on Pollepel Island in the middle of the Hudson River, just north of Cold Spring. Looks impressive, but was never more than a very fancy military surplus warehouse (although a smaller structure was used as a residence).
It’s quite hard to get close enough to take a picture. The metro north train lines get in the way. The last picture was taken from a metro north train on a separate occasion. There is an overlook, but it’s quite hard to find and even when you do (as I did) the views are not particularly good. I imagine that the you would get the best pictures from a boat, which unfortunately I don’t possess. There are tours to the island, but they finish at the end of October so I don’t see me going this year.
Reaching Lady Statue.
I’ve been to Croton Landing many times. I’ve even taken some pictures of the 9/11 memorial. However, this was some time ago. Since the last time I was there a new item has been added to the memorial: a statue. Apparently it’s called “Reaching Lady” and it was created by Lauren Davis – A Resident of Croton on Hudson.
I found the pre-statue version to be quite powerful: a twisted girder with bit of concrete attached to it. To me it said everything that needed to be said.
I’m not sure that the statue adds much. In fact to me it takes away from the original memorial, diluting it a little. I don’t dislike the statue. It’s just that I think the twisted girder worked fine by itself. It doesn’t need the statue to make its point.
Maybe it’s just me though.
Closeup of Statue.
American flag.
Detail of girder.
Bush with berries
I recently acquired two Konica hexanon lenses (a 28mm f3.5 and a 135mm f3.2) complete with nice lens cases and a useful wide angle metal lens hood. I wanted the lenses and the Konica Autoreflex TC that came with them was a plus. The whole lot cost less than $50. I haven’t yet tried the 28mm, but these pictures are from the 135mm on my Sony Nex 5N.
I must say that I really like this lens. I don’t usually use this focal length but I quite liked it. It’s a fairly large (particularly with the adapter) and heavy lens, which feels well built. I really liked to colors and the out of focus areas (bokeh) are impressive. It’s also extremely sharp.
I can see myself using this focal length more.
Hudson View with Tree.
More Berries
Eirah and Jackson.
Flower.
I came across these two young women taking pictures the other day. It wasn’t really the best time of day to be taking pictures – but then I too was taking pictures at that time. Sometimes it’s the only time you have available. Judging by the shadows the sun was directly over the photographers shoulder and straight into the face of the subject. It was quite bright at that time so I imagine the subject was squinting rather badly. Since the light was directly on the subject I doubt there was much modeling. There was lots of nice open shade around, which would have been nice for portraits. As I know all too well, however, when you’re caught up in the process of picture taking you tend not to think of these things. They always occur to me afterwards: I should have done this; I should have done that etc. Sometimes I learn and do better the next time. More often than none I repeat the same old mistakes. I have to learn more patience and to think a little more before I start taking pictures.