A couple of frogs

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This was taken at the pond in Law Park in Briarcliff Manor, NY. On occasion I’ve seen Great Grey Herons, Cormorants and Egrets there. More recently I got a nice set of pictures of a Green Heron fishing for tadpoles.

Since I usually take the dog for a walk in Briarcliff on Saturdays I tend to pass by the park with a camera to see if there are any interesting birds around.

Lately there haven’t been, but this time I spotted a commotion in the water on the far side of the pond. I made my way over and found these two frogs. At first I thought they were playing (do frogs play?) or fighting. I suppose that the latter is still a possibility, but I started to wonder if they weren’t up to something completely different. Anyone know how to distinguish male and female frogs?

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Taken with a Sony A500 and Minolta AF 100-200mm f4.5.

She doesn’t seem impressed.

by Posted in Black & White, Statues, Things Leave a comment
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From time to time I look back on older pictures to see if there’s anything that has potential that I might have missed when I took it. So I was browsing around in Lightroom when I came across this picture. I’d looked at it a few times before, but I guess not closely enough.

This time, however, I followed her gaze and noticed where her eyes were looking. I also looked at the expression on her face and finally the position of the hands – particularly her right hand.

Then I started to smile. She really doesn’t seem impressed.

After a bit of research I discovered that it’s a statue of Athena. The original bronze sculpture was by Myron c.460 BC when it stood close to the entrance of the Parthenon. This re-creation shows Athena having thrown down her flute (which she had invented) and the satyr Marsyas preparing to retrieve it.

Taken in 2011 at the Botanical Garden, Copenhagen, Denmark with a Panasonic Lumix ZS-3.

Military Re-Enactment Day at Boscobel – The Assembled Multitudes

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I don’t know what I was expecting when I went to the re-enactment – possibly something like the large US Civil War re-enactments I had seen pictures of and read about. These seem to be serious affairs with hundreds, even thousands of participants.

This was nothing like that. The above picture shows ALL of the uniformed re-enactors. If you add in the female re-enactors it was probably less that 40 in all. They seemed to be enjoying themselves though.

For a sense of how seriously some people take these re-enactments take a look at Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz.

Taken with a Sony A77II and Tamron A18 AF 18-250mm f3.5-6.3.