2015 – The Year in Review

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We had a number of visitors this year, starting in January when two of Eirah’s friends from South Africa came with their two delightful children. Apparently the kids had never seen snow and very much wanted to. We’d had a snowfall before Christmas but it didn’t look likely during their visit. Then all of a sudden it came, snowing during their visit. They were even able to make a small snowman.

Our friends Ken and Doreen Cross moved to Thailand, but before they left they needed somewhere to stay after their house was rented. So they stayed in our house in Briarcliff Manor, while we stayed up at the lake. They also returned for a few weeks in December and stayed there again.

In May some old friends (Alison and Bob Ledbury) from university days came to stay and we did some “touristing” around the Hudson Valley visiting Storm King Art Centre, Lyndhurst, Sunnyside, Chuang Yen Monastery, New Windsor Cantonment, Bannerman’s Island etc.

In May Eirah was able to go to Europe (Switzerland, France, UK) to help out with baby sitting while our younger daughter was travelling on business.

My brother-in-law, Vic came to visit in July and we all drove down to Virginia to meet up with two other brothers and their families, one of whom later came back to stay with us at the lake.

We were also lucky to have three visits from out son-in-law Colin in NY on business and to see his father.

Our final visitor was a bit out of the ordinary: our friends George and Gloria were going on vacation and asked us to look after their King Charles Cavalier spaniel, Charlie. He had a great time with Harley.

The year started off with Ken and Doreen Cross at the Hudson Room in Peekskill and throughout the year we went to a number of concerts and other events. We saw a number of musicals: South Pacific, On the Town, Oklahoma, Show Boat, An American in Paris and the Radio City Spring Special – interesting in that it was the first time I’d been to Radio City despite living in NY for the best part of 30 years.

The old Tompkins Corners Baptist Church re-opened in June as a community cultural centre. In addition to the opening event there were also performances of the David Amran Quintet and a reading of Edgar Allen Poe poetry by our friend, Paul Savior. We also went to a couple of presentations given by the Briarclif Manor, Scarborough Historical Society: “Historic Downtown Ossining” and “Legends and Lore and Facts of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. In July we took visiting brother-in-law, Vic to a performance of the “Arabian Nights” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel, one of the most beautiful locations in the Hudson Valley.

A couple of other highlights included the New York Air Show in August and the Pope’s visit in September (Eirah managed to get two tickets to see him in Central Park where after several hours of waiting on line we did, indeed, see him for all of one minute as he drove by).

No review of 2015 would be complete without mentioning Jami’s birthday party in July. Jami is Eirah’s dance teacher and Eirah offered to host her birthday party at our house. It was quite an event: myself (and one other male friend) and fifteen women!

On a sadder note we lost our niece, Eve suddenly and unexpectedly in July. Our daughters came for the funeral and while it was great to see them again, we would have wished that the circumstances had been different. We also lost our old friend, Dandy in December.

On the photographic front it was a good year. I’m continuing to get out a lot and take pictures.

My camera collection continues to grow, but at a slower pace than before (I’m trying to focus a bit more on using the cameras). During 2015 I picked up a Kodak EK 4 Instant Film Camera; a Voigtlander Vito B; an Exakta Varex IIa with 58mm f2 Biotar and 40mm Meyer Optik Lydith; a Voigtlander Vito CLR; a Voigtlander Vitomatic II; and an Exa with Carl Zeiss 50mm Tessar. I also picked up a few vintage lenses: mostly old Minolta lenses to use with my Sony DSLR. Perhaps the most significant (to me at least) was a Tamron 18-250mm, which has finally given me a “walk around” lens for use with the DSLR.

I’ve continued to maintain this blog, which now averages around 38 posts per month. I’ve no idea if anyone reads it (I don’t check), but it serves its original purpose of making sure that I keep on taking pictures.

The first part of the year was awful: dreary, snowy and very cold. I didn’t feel like going out much and even if I had there are only so many snow pictures I can take. So instead I focussed on one of my long term projects: scanning my old negatives and managed to get a lot done including negatives of: Netherlands, Spain, Kenya, UK, Indonesia, North Wales, Florence, Venice, Rome, Geneva, Thailand, Bermuda, India.

I also managed to complete a couple of photo books. One of them involved scanning old negatives belonging to my fried Paul Savior who wanted to turn them into a photo book to give to his daughters as a Christmas present. I’m pleased to say that we managed to get it done in time. The second book consists of a number of photographs taken with an iphone (the only camera I had with me) of a house and garden we were invited to just after Christmas.

All things considered a pretty good year!

Street Art

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Street Art – one of a number of panels along a wall in Poughkeepsie, NY. It’s obviously a peace dove and after a little research I believe the Nèstor who created it is Nèstor Madalengoitia. According to his website:

Born in 1959 in Lima Peru, Nestor is a portrait and mural artist. He was educated at the Catholic University of Lima-Peru, and SUNY New Paltz NY. He currently lives and works in Poughkeesie NY.

Nestor’s work is inspired by the work of the pre-Columbian Peruvian Paracas tapestry with a modern understanding which define his own visual and conceptual vocabulary that emerged through his focus on the point on intersection between visual effect and the meaning of the subject. Nestor’s paintings have been seen in numerous exhibitions and collections in New York City, the Hudson Valley and Lima Peru. 

Nestor is now working in a body of work about portraits of citizens of Poughkeepsie NY . His murals can be appreciated in public spaces in Poughkeepsie and other localities such as Washington DC, Sussex Canada, the Florida Keys, Lima Peru and Cajabamba Peru.

His Peace Dove appears to be part of an Exhibit of Work by Latino-American Artists.

LensTagger Lightroom plugin

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I’m fond of film photography. I also like to use legacy lenses. One of the main reasons I bought my Nex 5n was that it could, with appropriate adapters, use a wide variety of older, often less expensive, legacy lenses. Of course when negatives are scanned they don’t come with metadata telling you about the lens used, the film used etc. Legacy lenses used on digital cameras provide quite a bit of metadata, but nothing on the lens used. Of course you can always add this information as a tag, or a keyword, or in a description, but this has always seemed to me to be less than optimal. So I was pleased to come across LensTagger. It operates as a Lightroom plugin. Select an image (or images), invoke the plugin and (after prompting you to save the existing metadata to a file) up pops the screen above inviting you to add information about the lens used. Click the second tab and you get the screen below prompting you to provide details of the camera and film used. Press ‘Update Command’ and after it completes close the window. While the files are still selected choose ‘Load Metadata from file’ and you’re done. A little bit clunky, but not too bad. You can now select the legacy lens from the ‘Metadata’ section of the ‘Library Filter’ in Lightroom. NOTE: ExifTool by Phil Harvey must be installed for the plugin to work.

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LensTagger is a Lightroom plugin that adds EXIF data to photos directly out of Lightroom. Wether you are shooting with legacy Lenses on Micro Four Thirds, or want to properly tag your pictures shot with an analog Camera,

via LensTagger Lightroom plugin.

2014 Favorites – Color

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The previous post highlighted my favorite black and white pictures from 2014. This one deals with my favorite color pictures (again in no particular order). I’ve often said that I don’t naturally relate to color photography and this is still true. However, I looked back over my favorite color pictures from 2013 and I feel that this year’s batch is much better. Maybe I’m improving.

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We are members of our local garden club and my wife had volunteered to help plant some flowers at the park near the entrance to the lake. A small group of garden club members were ably assisted by a number of girl guides. Here they are seen working as a reflection in a stream running out of the lake. I liked the impressionistic look.

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Peekskill Sunset. I was coming home from a trip down to New York City and my train was pulling into Peekskill Station. The sun was going down and this magnificent sunset was starting to appear. I took this picture from the train, which luckily stayed long enough in the station.

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The red dress. While exploring an old abandoned pumping station near to Pocantico Lake I came across this red dress hanging on a line. It seemed so out of place next to the rusting machinery and crumbling masonry and the bright red stood out against the dull colors of the remainder of the building. The thought that someone might actually be living in this building makes me feel sad too.

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Red Shed. The shed is in our garden and one day I was walking by and I noticed the dark shadow cast by the light clothes pins. The contrast of the (almost) white and the (almost) black against the bright red appealed to me.

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Taken at Motorcyclepedia in New Windsor NY. I liked small splashes of bright color set against the shiny, but almost monochromatic metal.

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Agatha – a visiting friend. I just liked this picture with its subdued colors and her animated expression and movements. This might have worked in black and white too, but I didn’t have any ‘people’ pictures in color so here it is.

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Jordan Pond in Fahnestock State Park in Putnam County, NY. Something ‘painterly’ about this picture that I liked.

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Candles at Chuang Yen Monastery. Just loved the colors.

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View from the Cliffs at Little Stony Point. Rocks, gnarly tree and the magnificent Hudson River in the background.

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Flowers in a restaurant window. This is a very simple picture, but I really like it. We were eating in our local Japanese restaurant. They’d just renovated and I noticed that they had painted their window with colorful flowers. So I took a picture, and I really like it.