2022 – Spirit-Lifting Shoot
……………………………………….(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on February 10, 2022)
Thankfully, no important music figure has died in over a week, so I needed to get happy again by shooting interesting things that come my way. This past weekend’s Top 25 shots did the trick.
SATURDAY
Four months ago, two metallic “Welcome” balloons got caught on a transformer just outside my LR window (left pic). Would there be outages? Explosions?
Last Saturday morning, I happened to notice them by my window, looking not so dangerous (or welcoming):
In the afternoon, the decades-ago father-son career battle manifestation continued: “No offense, Dad, but I still don’t want to work with you in your Chevy dealership’s accounting department”:
Meanwhile, weirdness existed outside:
(How does that woman see?)
The sun sets on Hudson Yards in Manhattan:
SUNDAY (a great shooting day!)
NOTE: the first 3 images are panoramic shots – click to enlarge)
How’s this for an interesting sky view from my LR?
(You can see the Manhattan skyline on the horizon in the right third of the image)
That was the limit of my east-facing view. I wanted to see how far it continued on the right side, so I went to my south-facing window in another room and got this PANO shot:
Any meteorologists out there who know what conditions create a cloud like that? Here’s something else: notice what’s in the upper left of this shot (a tiny bit of it’s also in the upper right of the previous shot). It looks like a hair brush…………..how did THAT form?
OMG! The sun is burning up the hair brush!
I have NEVER seen anything like these 3 shots from my apartment before.
Later that morning, smoke/steam from heated buildings caught my eye as this bi-state image shows. The World Trade Center on the left (and 12-15 miles away) contrasts with the heated Hackensack building on the right:
The empty (it’s a Sunday) Hackensack Middle School stays warm while two distant installations on the left do the same:
Though this may appear to be two photos, it’s one and it’s a closeup of what might be part of that long cloud still passing through:
Geese follow the leader:
Time to go out and hit the Hackensack River Walkway.
Any idea what these are?
This PANO shot – taken at the northern section of the Walkway – might provide a clue (click to enlarge):
This is the Fairleigh Dickinson University baseball field, so I’m guessing the previous photo shows a bullpen?
Lots of geese shots to be had by the river:
Maybe these 7 are still following that airplane?
This is certainly the day for unusual clouds:
At the northern end of the walkway, I saw bits of color in the wooded area by the river:
I don’t know what they signify.
I’ve shot this before. This particular angle appears to show the rear end of an articulated, yellow mega-python that’s sunning itself on top of a fence:
(and if you believe that………………..)
The goose armada heads north up the river toward Route 4:
(click to enlarge)
The day’s weird clouds appear to have entrapped a plane and a comet (it’s not a comet):
About a half-mile to the south, I noticed a mega-gaggle of geese:
(“Mega” must be the word of the day…………..oh well, it sure beats “meta”)
Heading back south, I encountered this mallard, who appears unsure if I’m a threat or not:
It was with a duckling and as I was starting to frame a shot of the two of them, the mallard suddenly took off in a burst of water that I’m guessing was the immediate result of a combination of flapping wings and paddling feet:
I’m surprised I captured the water in the air, but not any part of the mallard.
So far, it’s been a pretty entertaining day for photos…………….but the best was yet to come.
The Hackensack River along this stretch separates the Hackensack and Teaneck campuses of Fairleigh Dickinson University, as you can see in this shot:
Just as I reached this point, I saw some slight motion that may have been a bird landing on a tree branch in Teaneck. A slight flash of white got my attention from that far away (it’s circled in red in the above shot).
Yep! Ol’ Eagle Eye gets lucky again! Look what I got from across a wide river with my little Canon pocket camera:
Getting a decent shot of a bald eagle from that distance will raise any photographer’s spirit.
Mission accomplished.
Wow, pretty impressive shot of the eagle!