This is what I woke up to this morning.
Sunrise Roaring Brook Lake
This is what I woke up to this morning.
This is what I woke up to this morning.
Church at the intersection of Route 9 and Route 301
This small church is at the intersection of Route 9 and Route 301 not too far from Cold Spring. It’s not easy to see from either road. I didn’t see a sign and my admittedly cursory attempts to find information on the web have failed to turn up anything. So I don’t know what church this is. Maybe it’s no longer in use? Still it’s an interesting looking church!
Windows
Facade
Interesting Crimean War Photographs
From a post: Photographic Mystery Solved by Gerald C Koch on the Analog Photographer’s User Group (APUG). Video from YouTube.
The British photographer Roger Fenton (1819 – 1869) was noted for his photographs of the Crimean War. He is the subject of a recent very interesting PBS radio special. One of his most famous photographs is titled “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.” He has been accused of faking this photograph by making changes to the scene. Susan Sonntag believed that the scene had been manipulated. Here’s where the mystery enters the debate. Another nearly identical photo exists showing no cannon balls on the road. An analysis of both photos shows that they were taken on the same day within hours of each other. Obviously the scene has been altered but which photo is the real one? Conventional analysis of shadows had failed to ascertain which one is the real one. The mystery remained unsolved for many years until recently. Under high magnification a crucial difference was noted, that is five pebbles had moved. Since pebbles do not roll uphill it became obvious which photo was taken first. The famous photograph had been faked by placing cannon balls on the road for a more dramatic effect.
The first photograph from the site: Crimean War Photographs by Roger Fenton, March-June 1855 shows the photograph in question. There are many more interesting photographs.
Carmel, NY
I provided some pictures of Carmel in an earlier post: In and around Carmel, NY. It’s such a picturesque place I took some more:
I don’t know why all of the flags are out. In preparation for July 4th? Some other event of which I’m unaware?
American Legion Post 270 with the Putnam County Office building to the left in the background.
Backlit tree on Lake Gleneida.
St.James the Apostle has, in addition to the church itself, a number of other buildings (e.g. the school). This is one of them.
Just across the causeway as I was driving home I saw this mother and son just starting to pack up after fishing on the West Branch Reservoir.
Wikipedia has this to say about the Putnam County Courthouse:
New York’s Putnam County Courthouse is located on Gleneida Avenue (NY 52) across from the eastern terminus of NY 301 in downtown Carmel, the county seat, overlooking Lake Gleneida. First built in 1814, two years after the county itself was established, it is the second-oldest county courthouse still in use in the state after Fulton County’s.
In 1847 it was renovated extensively. At that time the Classical Revival portico and columns were added. Architect James Townsend used commercially available (although inexact) copies of the Corinthian capitals from the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. For this and its historic importance in the county’s history it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976….The courthouse is a two-story, 5-by-8-bay rectangular gable-roofed frame building, with clapboard siding on the north and south sides and horizontal planks on its west (front) facade. The pedimented gable is supported by the four Corinthian columns, behind which is the main entrance, with molded classical detail. Similar ornamentation can be found on the window lintels. The two front corners have large pilasters; the original stone plinth blocks have been replaced with concrete copies and the astragals taken down to help prevent dry rot in the columns.
The stone walls of the original county jail are still visible on the south side. A two-bay east wing, added later, extends from the rear. A cupola is atop the roof.
One of he Corinthian capitals.
Is this the way photography is going. A couple from the Internet
Petapixel announces that “The Decisive Moment is Dead. Long Live the Constant Moment“. The article suggests that Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment (i.e. that there is a certain moment in time that must be captured or lost forever) made sense only in relation to the technology of the time (i.e. film cameras). With the technology we have now we can do better. “Imagine an always-recording 360 degree HD wearable networked video camera” the article states. It goes on to talk about LIDAR technology defined by Wikipedia as “…a remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light. “What if every phone in every pocket had this technology, and you could consent to have your presence “photographed” from anywhere on Earth at any time, by sharing your own connection with another artist, and vice versa?”. It’s interesting to see what the members of the Rangefinder Forum had to say about this. If this is the way things are going I’m not sure I want to be there.
And on a similar but lighter note: Area Woman Finally Uploads All 12 Million Pictures Of Her Vacation To Europe On Facebook. Although an exaggeration I can see myself in this.