Girl with a phone

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My wife’s friend invited us over to their house for New Year’s Eve. They have a large house and there were a lot of people there. One of them was this lovely little girl.

At one point in the evening, in spite of the noise (and there was quite a lot of it) she curled up on the sofa under a white blanket and fell asleep. At other points she was playing with other children who were present.

I notice her keenly observing the screen of this cell phone. It looked it would make a good picture, but unfortunately I had left my lovely, brand new RX100 m3 at home and the only camera I had was on my iphone 5s. Better than nothing though…

Considering it was extremely dark it’s not such a bad picture.

2016 Favorites – Black and White

by Posted in Abstracts, Black & White, Landscapes, Still Life, Wildlife & Animals Leave a comment
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Light Patterns.

Another year has whizzed by and it’s time to post some of my favorite pictures from 2016 – black and white first. Like last year I’m presenting my ten favorites – in no particular order.

At this point last year I said:

I’ve been trying to find a focus for my photography, which at the moment is all over the place. I had thought that my primary interest was in old buildings. However, in looking at my favorites I was surprised to discover that none of them (black and white or color) contain old buildings. While I’ve taken lots of pictures of old buildings over the year it seems that I don’t consider any of them to be favorites. Just for curiosity I looked back at 2014 favorites and found that the same was true in 2014: pretty much no buildings. Go figure!

The same is pretty much true this year too: A few abstracts; a couple of wildlife pictures; a couple of ‘people’ pictures; a still life; a landscape of sorts. No sign of a focus emerging.

Maybe I’m just interested in a lot of different things rather than being passionate about a single subject.

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Bird in a Tree.

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Moth.

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Altar. In Chapel of our Lady Restoration. Restored chapel in Cold Spring, NY

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Still life with lilacs.

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Vortex.

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Topiary.

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Self portrait with trash pile

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Make America Great Again

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Abstract composition.

The Front Page

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We went into the city on Christmas Eve to see “The Front Page” at the Broadhurst Theatre on 44th Street between 7th and 8th Ave. This production starred Nathan Lane (awards too numerous to mention) and other well known actors such as John Slattery (Mad Men, Iron Man 2, Ant Man); John Goodman (Roseanne, The Big Lebowski, Argo); Robert Morse (Tony awards for How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying; Tru); and Jefferson Mayes, who we had previously seen in a “tour de force” performance playing eight different roles in “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” (based on one of my all time favorite movies, the English classic “Kind Hearts and Coronets” from 1949..

The first act was a bit slow and I was starting to get a bit worried that we wouldn’t like it. It’s was not my wife’s choice to see this and I feared the consequences if it turned out to be lousy. However, things picked up in the second act and by the third the house was “rolling in the aisles”. Nathan Lane was, as always, brilliant.

Afterwards we had an excellent dinner at Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse in Grand Central Terminal.

Skier on the ice

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Our lake is now completely frozen. However, we’ve had a few ‘warmish’ days with temperatures well above freezing. Usually people don’t go onto the lake until we’ve had several days of below freezing temperatures. So I’d be a little concerned that the ice is not all that thick at the moment.

My wife was in the living room when she noticed some movement on the lake. It turned out that it was this woman skiing on the lake. I grabbed a camera and went out to take a picture – in my haste almost falling over on the icy, still partly snow covered lawn. Apparently the woman in the picture is not concerned with the possible danger.