2022 – The Too-Hot-To-Go-Out Photography Blues……….
………………………………………..(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 1, 2022)
………….don’t exist here.
Even though this has been the hottest, most humid August I can remember, I’m fortunate to be able to see and photograph so many different things without ever leaving my A/C’d apartment…………with two exceptions:
– Driving home from food shopping, I was stopped for a train and shot a Jersey Central train engine that looked like it was about to demolish the old, pink Cranberry Junction ice cream place (near misses on a daily basis)
– One morning was nice enough to go out and shoot a huge pile of dirt by Main and Berry.
Other than that, it was solid August ICE-olation at home.
SO……….here’s what I got to shoot from home – chronologically – from August 6 to the 30th. Be sure to click on the four PANOS to enlarge them.
1. (August 6) Men of Many Shirts (apparently, if you wear a red shirt, you MUST cover your head with a dark shirt):
2. (August 12) Looking south during a great sunset. I don’t know what lit-up building that is or in what NJ town it’s in, but it’s the perfect exclamation point for this image:
3. (August 13) This is the huge pile of dirt 4 blocks away at Main and Berry as I saw it from my living room. This pic got me to go out early that morning to shoot this while the sun was still shining on that side of it:
4,5,6. (August 13) These are 3 PANO shots I took when I got there. I imagine these will look quite strange to see 20 years after whatever gets built there:
7. (August 18) Peeping Tom at the Middle School practicing for the new school year?
8. (August 18) The HFD at the Walgreens strip mall 5-6 blocks away at Anderson and Linden, as seen from my kitchen. No idea why they were there:
9. (August 18) This is the shadow of the First Presbyterian Church’s steeple on the State St side of 389 Main:
10,11. (August 19, 20) Skies at sunset on consecutive nights:
12. (August 23) The latest bug scourge around here is the spotted lanternfly, which is native to China and was first detected in Pennsylvania in September 2014. Spotted lanternfly feeds on a wide range of fruit, ornamental and woody trees, with tree-of-heaven being one of the preferred hosts. Spotted lanternflies are invasive and can be spread long distances by people who move infested material or items containing egg masses. If allowed to spread in the United States, this pest could seriously impact the country’s grape, orchard, and logging industries.
So why is the first one I’ve ever seen on the outside screen of my living room window, 7 floors up, with nary a tree in sight?
13. (August 23) Hackensack, Ridgefield, NYC. We start with a blue truck on the roof of a new parking garage. Peeling back the layers, we see a newer building being constructed behind it, the towers of the PSE&G facility by the NJ Turnpike in Ridgefield and Hudson Yards in Manhattan:
14. (August 23) This PANO looks EAST during a great sunset (which you can see reflected in the windows of the top floor of the brick building that’s left of center):
15. (August 24) This shot from my kitchen shows the back end of a large demolition project 3 blocks away on Anderson St, where the well-known Rudy’s Restaurant used to be………..as a train goes by:
16. (August 25) This shows the Central New Jersey (? – I’m in northern NJ) engine whizzing by the aforementioned Cranberry Junction ice cream place:
17,18. (August 27) From my apartment, I could see something being set up early on a Saturday morning at the Middle School. I hadn’t ever seen a DJ set up in a soccer goal net before, so this was a picture worth taking. An hour or so later, I saw a bunch of people there. I couldn’t make out what was being said from the “stage”, but later, people were dancing (not shown). I still have no idea what this was all about:
19. (August 27) Nice sunset behind a couple of hi-rises:
20. (August 30) The building being constructed had been red and green for the last month or two, but I noticed one day that it suddenly acquired a couple of other colors. From my perspective, this side of the building is lit up by the sun in the morning. Of course, the next two mornings were cloudy, but I finally got it on the 30th (and spent the 31st writing this up):
Not a bad month for a heat/humidity-hounded, home-bound hermit photographer.
“You got eyes”
So eye’m told………….thanks.
It’s Jack Kerouac’s quote about Robert Frank.
And here I thought it was Jack O’Toole’s quote about Robert Leafe.