I haven’t been posting much over the past week or so. This was because of Hurricane Sandy. I couldn’t get out for a while. Two trees fell down very near to our driveway and took out the power cables. They also blocked the road on the right side of the driveway. Farther away, but on the other side of the driveway, some lines were down (I didn’t know if they were active, or if they were even power lines but I didn’t want to take the chance). These effectively blocked the way out on the other side. Neither of the houses had power for about six days. The power in the lake house came back last Saturday evening and I believe the power in Briarcliff came back Sunday evening (going back today to check).

These pictures came from the “The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze” at Van Cordlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson. It’s an annual event featuring over 5,000 pumpkins arranged in all kinds of complex shapes. Knowing that there would be little light I had taken along a monopod. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me bring it in. So these were hand held with predictable results: muddy, blurred, camera shake, noise. Still I like them as a record of an interesting night out with our friends June and Diane.

This was the calm before the storm. Taken on the evening of 25 October – four days before Hurricane Sandy came through.

Before we went I thought that it would all be like this i.e. over 5,000 single pumpkins lying around. I thought it would be pretty boring. I was wrong. The pumpkins are arranged into shapes: people; animals; ghosts etc. It’s quite amazing how they manage to do this. It was really quite interesting.

Two pumpkins lying on the ground. I liked the contrast between the ‘smiling’ pumpkin in front and the “angry” pumpkin in the rear.


Flying bat pumpkins. I was impressed with the way they stand out against the sky. I didn’t expect the sky to come out so bright. It was quite dark at the time


Pumpkin graveyard with skeleton and “blaze” visitors in the background. Nice colours including the light blue light on the mansion in the background.


Pumpkin Spider


Pumpkin Dinosaur, one of an entire herd.


Another pumpkin lying on the ground. Here I liked the way the light from the pumpkin spilled over onto the nearby leaves. Also the way the light fades into the dark background.


Pumpkin men, again a whole ‘tribe’ of these. I took a number of pictures of this group and chose this one because of the way the central figure is flanked by the two other figures in the background.

For more pictures see below (click on an image to see a larger version)