To the Rockefeller State Park Preserve and back. Part 2: Along the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail

by Posted in Black & White, Buildings/Structures, Flowers, Landscapes, Nature, Trees, Woodland Leave a comment
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To the Rockefeller State Park Preserve and back. Part 2: Heading for home along the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail. For anyone who doesn’t know what the Old Croton Aqueduct is, it was built between 1837 and 1842 and was New York City’s first water supply system. It replaced the inadequate wells, springs, and ponds used until then. Drawn from the Croton River in Westchester County, the abundant clean water helped fuel a population boom and remained in service until 1958.

Although most of the 41 mile long aqueduct lies underground, some structures are still visible in the Bronx and Manhattan. This trail highlights the remains of the aqueduct and provides a sense of the complex engineering and difficult labor that was required to build it. Above: One of the 21 ventilators along the aqueduct.

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A gnarly tree.

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A closer view of the same tree

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The Archville Bridge Monument. While the bridge itself is not particularly memorable (which probably explains why I’ve never taken a picture of it despite passing over it many times) it does have a somewhat interesting history.

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Tree Stumps.

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Tree silhouette.

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Some kind of structure. I believe it’s called a woodland den. A recent article by Ellyn Kail is worth a read: The Unexpected Architectural Beauty of Woodland Dens

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Broken fence.

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A puddle

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Blossoms.

Taken with a Canon EOS 5DII and Canon EF20-105mm f3.5-4.5 II USM

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