A Photographic Exercise

by Posted in Around the Neighborhood, Black & White, Landscapes, Trees, Woodland Leave a comment
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During COVID it was not possible to travel as much as I had been doing. I therefore confined myself to walks in the immediate vicinity of my house and started a series of photographs, which with my usual lack of inspiration I decided to call “Around the Neighborhood”. I defined this as meaning anywhere that I could walk back and forth to from my house.

In this case the subject is a single tree in a nearby woodland. I’d already taken a number of pictures of it but on this occasion I decided on the spur of the moment to attempt an exercise that I’d recently read about. This exercise consisted of taking thirty six photographs of a single subject all at once.

Quite easy at first, but after about twenty photographs increasingly more difficult. In fact at that point I almost gave up, but I stuck with it and in the end found it to be quite useful. I’m the kind of person who will walk up to a subject, take a few pictures and then move on. This exercise made me slow down and look more carefully. Indeed, towards the end I was noticing things, which I had already walked past a couple of times and not spotted.

In order to not bore any reader with 36 individual images, I’ve combined them into just two (see below of you’re interested).

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Taken with a Fuji X-E3 and Fuji XF 55-200mm f3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

Lions at the Gate

by Posted in Around the Neighborhood, Buildings/Structures, Statues, Things Leave a comment
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This is the main entrance to an old mansion built by Walter Law, the founder of Briarcliff Manor. It’s about a five minute walk from my house. It’s fairly easy to find information online about Law, but difficult to find anything relating to the mansion other than that the estate was probably called “The Manor”. I guess that if I want to find out more I’ll have to visit the local Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough-Historical Society.

I’ve taken pictures of the lions before, but usually either singly or in pairs. The reason for this is that somehow I never had a wide enough lens with me to get everything in at once. On this occasion I was testing my new Sony FE 24 f2.8G and was able to get all four lions and the gates – although one of the lions is not really visible as it’s hidden behind one of the gateposts (I wish I had taken more time with the framing so that all of the lions could have been seen).

Taken with a Sony A7IV and Sony FE 24mm f2.8 G.

Moonbean Café

by Posted in Around the Neighborhood, Buildings/Structures Leave a comment
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Moonbean Café, Briarcliff Manor, NY. A quaint old house with a pleasant porch and garden. It’s one of my favorite places to sit, read and watch the world go by. I’ve posted the odd picture in the past, but I’m posting some more because I’ve recently heard the it will soon be gone – at least in its present form. Apparently local laws have changed and it’s now possible for property owners to locate apartments above commercial spaces. So the present building will have to go. The owner plans to demolish the building and construct a new, taller building that will include a commercial space on the ground floor and apartments above. The new building will include space for a new Moonbeam Café, but somehow it won’t be the same.

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Taken with a Sony RX100M3.