Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
Along with the giant Santa skeleton, this was one of the first things of interest that I spotted. Although I can’t be absolutely sure, it certainly looks like a long-abandoned pool. I love old, abandoned structures, the more ruined the better, so I was very pleased to come across this one. See here for some more pictures of ruins. The curved branch growing across the pumpkin gives it a somewhat fearsome appearance. I wonder if that was deliberate.
Taken with a Sony RX10 IV
In an earlier post (See: Skeleton Santa) I showed a large skeleton dressed as Santa and two smaller skeletons. In looking back through my pictures, I see that I didn’t do the family justice. There are actually five smaller skeletons, not two. So for the sake of completeness, I’ve included the entire family in this picture.
Taken with a Sony RX10 IV
According to InOssining.com
Ossining’s Crawbuckie Park / Nature Preserve is a woodland riverfront park and preserve accessible by car via Beach Rd. Parking is available at the entrance to the park’s trails, at the end of Beach Rd. The preserve is on the edge of Brayton Park, part of the North Village neighborhood.
Take a walk through the Edward M. Wheeler Crawbuckie Nature Preserve! For some beautiful early-morning light, start as much before 9:00 AM as you can muster the troops. Check out some pictures below.
There are 20+ acres of natural Hudson River Valley rain forest (it seriously looks like a rain forest in places) in this preserve. There are lovely trails that wind through the forest, where you will often see the river glimmering at you through the trees, and in some spots a more open Hudson River view. There are trees like cathedrals that are 3 and 4 feet in diameter. Some of these trees date back to when the area was home to Dr. Benjamin Brandreth’s 35-room mansion Glyndon.
A real highlight is the symphony of bird songs. Against the quiet of the woods their calls seem to be played through a loudspeaker. The preserve is populated by numerous bird species due to its huge diversity of trees. Ossining resident Robert Havell Jr. was the engraver for John J Audubon’s seminal work Birds of America (the “world’s most expensive book “). Audobon collected and studied in the Crawbuckie area.
But even though the purpose of my walk was to go to Crawbuckie I would pass much more along the way there and back: abandoned structures, strange festive decorations, an old home once owned by a very famous author. I would stop at a nearby diner for brunch and then continue along an historical trail into town. There I would take a short diversion to one of Ossining’s most famous monuments. By then I was tired and my feet hurt so another stop was in order, this time in a wonderful bookstore where I could sit an rest for a while. From there it was a relatively short, but unfortunately almost all uphill walk home.
Taken with a Sony RX10 IV
A while back I went for a walk over the Walkway over the Hudson. It’s a steel bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, New York, on the east bank and Highland, New York, on the west bank. Built as a double track railroad bridge, it was completed on January 1, 1889. A fire caused it to be taken out of service in 1974. It was reopened on October 3, 2009, as a pedestrian walkway, part of the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park. It claims to the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge.
Even though it opened it 2009, this was my first visit. I was impressed by the stunning views.
Sojourner Truth Statue
Taken with a Sony RX10 IV
As I was leaving the Historical Society the other day I noticed some lovely light on the clouds. Reminded me a little of Alfred Stieglitz’s series, “Equivalents”.
Equivalents was a series of photographs of clouds taken by Alfred Stieglitz from 1925 to 1934. They are generally recognized as the first photographs intended to free the subject matter from literal interpretation, and, as such, are some of the first completely abstract photographic works of art. Stieglitz called these photographs Equivalents and argued that visual art could assume the same nonrepresentational, emotionally evocative qualities as music. The images experiment with camera and darkroom techniques to create abstract fields of light and dark, and became one of the 20th century’s most vital visual traditions.
Taken with a Sony RX10 IV