Joisey Showa Fotos

Travels in Bangladesh

2013-03-09T06:55:00.000-05:00

Bangladesh is not one of the world's top tourist destinations. Yet with thousands of years of history, there's hardly a corner that isn't an education for those of us from the western world.

The Bangaldesh region has long been a part of multicultural India. It was formally separated when Pakistan and India were divided along religious by the British in 1947. East Pakistan had tense relations with the capital over a thousand miles away separated by India.   Islamabad was forcing the populace to use Urdu as the national language, for example, while the Bangla language was the voice of the people on the East side of India. A fierce war in 1971 liberated Bangladesh. The repression and the battle victory is celebrated by this museum in Dhaka.

The Bagherhat Historic District was founded in the 15th century in the delta of one of the great rivers of the world.   As rivers are likely to do, though, the channel changes rapidly, and the magnificent city of Khalifatabad was lost. It's labeled by Forbes as one of the 15 Lost cities of the world. Many of the mosques were restored by the British in the 1st part of the 20th century, including the world famous 60-Dome Mosque (which really has 60 pillars and 77 domes).

Fort Lalbagh just near Old Town Dhaka was founded along the banks of the Buriganga River in the 1600s.   Some of the defense walls remain facing towards what was once the River, which has since shifted to a channel some distance away.

Around the Waters of Boston

2013-02-24T19:34:00.000-05:00

From Plymouth Harbor to Boston Harbor, the Massachusetts coast was once the most important commercial hub in America. I'm always drawn to the waters of the city when I visit.

It was a little over 100 years after Columbus' discover of America that the Pilgrims set sail towards the new land. During stormy November weather, the Mayflower was challenged in reaching its target destination in Virginia. So it anchored near Cape Cod, and a small crew searched for a reasonable place to settle. They decided to take over a nearly-abandoned native village in what is now Plymouth. The Mayflower II, built in 1957 in England, is the showcase of the local tourism scene. Back in 1620, the harbor wasn't deep enough for the tall ship, and just the landing boats were used to bring the Pilgrims to land.

Power Point bridge marks the northern edge of Plymouth Harbor. One of the longest wooden bridges in the country, it's a narrow lane providing cars a way to get to Duxbury Beach. This photo was taken early one foggy morning looking east towards the beach.

Fort Point Channel just south of Boston was built up as a shipping channel in the early 1800's. It was named after a battery of cannons lining the water for protection. With ready access to the harbor, it was a hub of manufacturing activity. Now it's being reinvented as a major business district. These office buildings under construction now line the waterway.

Portraits are hard to do well

2013-02-06T18:26:00.001-05:00

Most photos I publish here are pictures of things. Trees. Cities. Skies. Toys. Shrek is a toy, for example.

I envy folks that are great at portraits. It's much harder to do well than it looks. I just spoke with a friend who told me that he uses TWO spotlights when he takes a portrait photo. Here are a couple that fell out of my camera through no fault of my own.

This black and white photo was taken on a really hot hot day. Soooo hot, yet here were these folks playing soldier ... camped out overnight in heavy cotton tents and marching around in the heat in wool uniforms. (This was taken in Burton, Ohio). And darned if they didn't look like they were having a good time. I find that when I do take photos of people, black and white seems to be more effective at capturing emotion.

This photo to the right is admittedly highly processed. It was dark, and I was shooting without a flash, yet photoshop allowed me to bring out the tourist enough so that you could sense the smile he had on his face. At least, to me it seems that way. That's what makes this photo interesting to me. He was just one of what seemed like a million people gathered to see the Xmas tree (lower left of the photo).

And here's another black and white photo. I worked with this one quite a bit in color before I decided to go without it. The color seemed to bring out the feel of the ballpark. But ultimately it was her earnestness that felt like the subject. I needed black and white to showcase her expression. And with that I have a bit of a storyline ... in that everyone behind her has their back turned to honor the flag, while she doesn't seem to feel that's necessary. This was taken at the Lakewood Blue Claws minor league ballpark.

Enjoying summer

2012-08-19T18:39:00.001-04:00

Here in Jersey the nights are beginning to get cool, even though the days are still hot. It's one of the signs that summer is coming to a close. I just don't want it to end. Here's a tribute to summer.

The Point Pleasant boardwalk was dis'd by the folks on the Jersey Shore TV show. They found it boring. Well, I'm not much of a fan of their kind of fun. Unlike them, for example, we wander around that boardwalk stone cold sober. And I've been there dozens of times, but I haven't been in a fight yet. I'm afraid I'd make a boring reality TV show.

We get to spend one day each summer hanging out on the roadside in the wilds of Colts Neck, NJ. Our club sponsors a bike race there, and we are marshaling - watching out for traffic. This shot was take just behind our post. It's actually just, NJ across the street from Springsteen's farm. (Yes, as in Bruce.)

NEW YORK HARBOR

2012-06-27T12:52:00.001-04:00

Sure, everyone has seen the Statue of Liberty and the NYC Skyline. But the harbor has over 430 square miles of water and varies from active shipping ports through quite natural preserves. This shows a bit of the variety you can find there.

The above garden photo was taken from the Sandy Hook Gateway national park in New Jersey at the south end of the harbor. Sandy Hook used to contain an active military fort and also was a Nike Missile site. Now it has reverted mostly back to its natural form, but still has a Coast Guard station. The bridge at the top of the photo is the Verrazzanno Narrows bridge gapping Staten Island on the left and Brooklyn/Long Island on the right.

The sunrise above shows midtown taken from the end of a decayed pier in Hoboken. I'm lucky enough not to have lived through the days when it would be dangerous to walk and breath in this spot. With manufacturing lining the shoreline, this heavy industrial river was not a haven for visitors.

The late afternoon photo above is looking across the Hudson River at New Jersey's Palisades Park, which is splashed with shadows of the skyscrapers of Manhattan. This was taken from the top of the NY Presbyterian Hospital's parking garage.

Signs of Manhattan

2012-05-02T20:04:00.000-04:00

This was taken at the south end of the Highline Park overlooking Gansevoort Street. The advertisement is all jumbled by design, and the hot dog stand just adds to the noise. It was a fun surprise to catch the cyclist to add to the cacophony.

The big bold signs showcase the Times Square excitement all the tourists come to see. Most of the area was built up long ago, however, and the bright lights can hide the real New York. I've tried many times to catch the juxtaposition of the tired/lonely against the bold/lonely.

Another shot from midtown. Pedicabs are a relatively recent addition, but cabs and trucks have been around forever. The background here is an advertisement on the side of a truck. There's probably a deep message here somewhere. But I like it just because it's fun.

Mayan Cities In the Yucatan

2012-03-12T12:47:00.001-04:00

Tulum sits on the mainland of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula just across the water from the resort island of Cozumel. It rests high on the cliffs above the water where there's a public beach for swimming. This building is The Castle ("el Castillo") that has the most prominent oceanside view of the city.

This next photo came from Lamanai, an archeological site that is much harder to get to. It's way up in Central Belize, an hour's boat ride up the New River. Lamanai is only partially excavated, and part of the fascination in traveling there is to see the once huge city almost all buried under the tropical forest. This Serpent face is embedded at the bottom of one of the larger re-constructed pyramids on the site.

Lamanai is much less traveled than other Mayan sites. The most popular sites now have justifiably restricted access to the relics which are being destroyed over time by their popularity. But Lamanai is remote and they allow tourists to clamber up the buildings at will. Here are a couple visitors (my brother and my son) climbing down one of the tallest pyramids on the site. Notice the helpful rope running down the center of the steps.

No snow winter

2012-02-03T13:35:00.000-05:00

Mother nature used up all of our snow for 2012 last winter. We had snow on the ground here at the Jersey shore for months last year. This year so far ... almost nothing. And here we are getting closer to spring. Next Friday, for example, opening day tickets go on sale for baseball. But I don't expect that to last. We're overdue for a huge snowy Noreaster.

Opening Day in Cleveland is notoriously unpredictable. Back in 2007 we were snowed out! Here's one of my favorite photos of that day. They were using leaf blowers to try to melt the snow on the field.

Here's another photo from that year. This was taken while flying back to New Jersey from Europe. I believe this is the Passer River valley of the southern Alps in Northern Italy.

So I do expect to get inundated. Below is a photo from a more typical New Jersey winter. NJ has lots of horse farms. It's one of the biggest horsie farming states in the US. And here's what those horses have to live through each winter:

Silhouettes

2012-01-09T17:46:00.000-05:00

I just noticed that there are a lot of silhouettes in my photos.

I was passing by a Central Jersey horse farm at sunset. New Jersey is one of the largest Horse Farming states with several Billion dollars in revenue. Heck, our official State Animal is the horse! These horses didn't seem to care about that.

The photo to the left was taken early one morning off of the Bangladesh coastline just by the Sundarbans national park. The Sundarbans is a mangrove coastal park that is mirrored between Bangladesh and India. They're fishing between the mainland and a newly formed Island in the Bay of Bengal. We visited the Sundarbans in the vain hope of seeing a tiger. We saw tiger footprints, but not the beast itself.

This photo to the right was taken from the bridge of the Nantahala River at the NOC outside of Byson City North. The river is fed from underneath Lake Nantahala dam, so the water runs in the 50's year round. In summer time that means it's typically shrouded in mists as the cold water hits the hot summer air. This photo, for example, was taken just before a mid July sunset.

MIAMI

2011-11-26T18:35:00.000-05:00

Here's one really stupid decision I made when I lived in Miami: I studied German at High School. Not Spanish. In Miami! If only that was the dumbest thing I did down there. Let me just say, I was a teenager. Nothing seemed dumb at the moment it was actually occurring, of course. But occasionally, shortly afterwards I realized it. And other times it took a while for the dumbness to sink in.

Nice preamble, eh? Totally unrelated to these photos, except to explain that I have family in Miami and get down there every once in a while to visit.

OK, so this isn't taken from Miami. This is a view of the city from the Gulf Stream several miles out at sea. We were on a ship we had boarded up in Fort Lauderdale and were headed down to Key West. And if you've ever been to South Florida, you know that 30 minute rain storms are pretty common visitors on Miami afternoons. I'd guess that my mom's house is somewhere under the small bit of rainshower that's to the left in this photo.

This shot was taken from Matheson Hammock Park looking north towards the city. (The word "hammock" is used in Florida for a raised bit of forested land.) This dawn photo looks across the pool that is filled naturally with tides from Biscayne Bay. My favorite part of the park, though, is just beyond those palm trees. At low tide you can walk pretty far out through the bay, observing fish and rays swimming past your toes. Careful to keep your sandals on, though.

And here's Miami Beach as seen from the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge on the way out to Key Biscayne. Cyclists know the spot where I took the photo because it's at the top of the closest thing resembling a hill for hundreds of miles around: the first rise of the Rickenbacker Causeway as it leaves the mainland.

Heaven Above and Hangzhou Below

2011-10-23T15:36:00.004-04:00

How can a city of around 8 Million people be a secret? Impossible. OK, not much of a secret, but Hangzhou is certainly not a well-known city outside of China. I expect that to change now that there is a bullet train that will zip you there from Shanghai. But until recently, it was not a western tourist destination. For example, it still took some creativity to find a travel guide in English.

But it's worth the effort as Hangzhou is a beautiful city. There's a saying: "shang you tian tang, xia you hang". I got this from a web site, so I apologize if it actually means something nasty, but I've been told that it means "up there is heaven, down here is Hangzhou".

I was fortunate to visit there on business for a few days and stayed right near West Lake which has been a travel destination for centuries. Every nook has its own scenic splendor, and its natural wonder has been engineered for even more beauty. Temples and memorials abound and the six arches along Su Causeway is a must for a stroll. Most of that English travel guide I discovered talked about the lake and its surrounds.

As is my habit, I was up early each day and had a chance to capture some of the splendor at sunrise.

Architecture Wonder in Small Details

2011-10-05T08:54:00.003-04:00

I just came back from visiting a Frank Lloyd Wright building just outside of Philadelphia. I think I just stumbled around for an hour or so just staring. There's a grand vision to come to terms with, but there are also the small details. Here is a photo from that site along with a couple others that reveal a bit of detail in the architectures.

This building in a suburb of Pennsylvania was finished in fall 1959, just a few months after Frank Lloyd Wright passed away. It's a Synagogue - Beth Shalom - that he designed incorporating many unique aspects including a sancturay that feels almost organic with what comes across as a naturally-formed bowl . The soaring roof feels a bit like a tent with outside light seeping in. Here is a detail of one of the three steel support beams rising up near the front of the sanctuary.

These windows were from the Merry Go Round at the Asbury Park, NJ Casino. The Carousel was disassembled and sold in pieces to collectors around the world after it closed in 1988. The city is undergoing a renaissance now, with the Casino building as a centerpiece. But the horses will never ride here again.

This shot was taken from inside of the Castle Hill Tunnel in Buda looking towards Pest over the Danube River. The tunnel with its scallopped edges was finished in 1856, seven years after the Chain Bridge was finished. The bridge was the first permanent link between the two cities that merged to form Budapest, and it was only the second permanent bridge across the whole of the Danube.

And while we're on the subject of bridges, here's a close-up of the bottom of the George Washington Bridge connecting Manhattan to New Jersey. This was taken from the top of a little red lighthouse that was standing there guarding against shoals in the Hudson River well before the bridge was built in 1931.

Photos for TK

2011-09-01T00:41:00.000-04:00

It's my wife's birthday today. So, here are a few of her favorite things.

DISNEY. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. We visited Disney World in Orlando a few year ago, and she wore ears all three days. Tigger ears, Minnie Mouse ears, and then she wore a princess crown. This is a photo of the Castle fireworks taken from the top of the Contemporary Hotel.

WICKED: TK has a multi-CD changer in her car, and slot 4 is reserved for the music of the Broadway show "Wicked". Evil things happen if one dares to replace it, and once the CD starts playing, it MUST play until the end. This photo of the stage was taken during a backstage tour a couple years ago.

FLORIDA GATORS: A rabid fan. She bleeds orange and blue. This photo was taken outside of the University Auditorium where the marching band was warming up. Our daughter was a section leader that year.

BASEBALL: She loves the game. Ever since she learned how to use a scorecard, it's impossible to get her to put the pencil down during a game. This photo of the Lakewood Blueclaws reminds me of her and how much she loves the sport.

Happy Birthday, Terrie Sue.

Water Shadows & Light

2011-05-23T08:27:00.000-04:00

I feel ignorant whenever I'm talking to a group of photographers. I find their knowledge of lens choice, exposure settings, etc to be a bit intimidating.

I'm more of a 'point and shoot' kind of person. And if I happen to stumble onto something that works, I'll do it again and again. For example, my camera has a 'sunset' setting. I don't know what it does, but I know that if I use it whenever I see things in front of a body of water, there's a chance a decent photo may pop out.

For example, here's a late afternoon shot taken from the bridge in Bryson City, North Carolina right outside of the Nantahala Outdoor Center. The Nantahala river runs briskly year round fed by water flowing from beneath a reservoir, so the water temperature is always cold ... about 50 degrees F (10C). This causes a layer of mists to constantly rest above the river on warm summer days.

This next photo was taken at about the same time of day on another river using the same "sunset" camera setting. These are shrimp fishermen just south of the Bangladesh city of Mongla. We were sailing past them after our son took us to visit the Sundarbans one spring. (He was in the country for a year on a scholarship. Here's his blog: http://donnybangla.blogspot.com/)

And to prove this isn't a fluke, here's a photo from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's a ship being led into port early one morning just around sunrise. Ships gather outside of the port during the night and wait for daylight so they can be shepherded into the docks by the tugs. Same 'sunset' camera setting.

It's an easy formula that works. Just don't ask me what lens type or aperture setting I used.

Places of Worship

2011-05-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

Five hundred years ago when it was founded as a regional center, Bagherhat historic district in Bangladesh was a showcase city. The city was swallowed by the jungle, cut off by re-aligned river flows, and was lost to time. More than 50 structures from that grand period can be found in the region now, many refurbished during British Occupation in the early 1900's. Part of the fun for tourists (like us) is that there is very little there to explain or guide you. Besides the famous Shait Gumbad ("60 Dome") Mosque, many other beautiful structures are hidden across the suburbs of Bagerhat down dirt paths or resting in the middle of a farmer's field. By the way, curiously, the 60 Dome Mosque actually has 77 domes. We counted them. Anyway, women aren't permitted to enter the Mosques. This photo shows the doorway next to the waiting area where my wife's Bengali was constantly tested by women whispering a greeting (roughly "assalamu Alaikum") to see if she'd respond.

This next photo is closer to my home. It's the "Yellow Meeting House" out in Millstone, NJ on "Yellow Meeting House Road" built in 1739. The book "More Forgotten Towns of NJ" asserts that Abe Lincoln's ancestors settled here before moving on to Illinois and points to a nearby graveyard with headstones from the "Lincon" family. Not this graveyard. One several miles away tucked back in the woods.

This is also close to home. The Russians emigrated to what is now Jackson, NJ in the first half of the 20th century and established a community of thousands. This is one of the gold onion domes of Cassville's St. Mary's Russian Orthodox Church.

Cycling photos

2011-04-20T07:32:00.007-04:00

It takes a special skill for taking good sports photos. The shots need a story line, so there has to be something interesting happen. Yet the key is to get a connection with the people in the shot, so getting the subjects exactly spot on with the right focus is critical. I occasionally get a couple of good cycling photos caught in my lens, but it's more luck than skill.

Our bike club's race - the Tour of Colts Neck - gives a great chance to get some close up action shots. I'm usually managing the auto traffic at a corner while the race is going on, so the riders zip right past. I've tried hand-held shots, but it's not possible to watch traffic and the racers at the same time. So I been resorting to placing the camera in a strategic spot and launching it to take multiple shots while I watch traffic. Here the camera was on the ground. I chose a shot where the pack was in focus and the breakaway rider had a little motion blur. On retrospect, I wish that was reverse.

I used the same approach for catching the action at the Philadelphia International cycling Championship. This was shot as they riders take the last turn at the bottom of Lemon Hill before they head up the Ben Franklin Parkway. I set the focus, placed the camera on a stand just on the outside of the turn, and let it rip with an automatic series of shots. I had the luck of catching Tyler Hamilton in this photo when he was riding for Rock Racing after his return from a drug suspension.

The grand scope of the sport is more within my ability to take photos. I can put the cyclist in the scope of the scene, and scenery seems to be more my bag. Here are a couple shot of the climb to the top of Alpe Galibier, the highest climb in the Tour of France. I had a chance to climb that beast with a couple of friends from the bike club. And, yeah, that's one of my friends way out in front of me. Had a bad day. But at least I salvaged it with a couple of spectacular photos.

Philly International Cycling Championship

2011-03-30T07:45:00.001-04:00

It's going to warm up around here sooner or later. Here are a few cycling photos to motivate summer warmth to come soon.

A group of us ride across our state (New Jersey) each June to join the crowds watching Philadelphia's big bike race. The race runs down the Ben Franklin Parkway, past Rocky's Art Museum steps, and up the Schuylkill River to the hill at Manyunk ... the Wall. Then it loops back down and pops up Lemon Hill before heading back up along the parkway in front of the art museum. This is a photo of a small breakaway coming off of that last turn from Lemon Hill.

Manyunk is a party. Crowds gather there to watch the tough climb, celebrate one of the first warm days of summer, drink beer, hose down the overheated cyclists, party, and drink more beer. If you're looking for it, search on Google Maps for Levering Street and Lyceum Avenue in Manyunk. We usually arrive there after a few laps of the race, so the crowds are already wall-to-wall and rowdy. We watch from a midway spot on the wall. We get there off of Main Street by turning up Rector Street just south of the wall and following Tower Street to Lyceum. To the left is a photo from that vantagepoint.

After watching a couple laps at the Manyunk Wall party, we'll usually come down to Lemon Hill to watch a few more laps. On the left is a photo of the smaller but equally fun viewing party on Lemon Hill. This spot is just about a mile from the front steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum on the Ben Franklin Parkway. (Click here for a map showing how to get there.) After the last climb on Lemon Hill we'll scurry over to the jumbotron near the start/finish. The photo on the right is from that spot ... looking away from the Art Museum towards Logan Circle. No, I wasn't laying in the middle of the road for this photo. They narrow the roadway with barriers at this point, and I was standing behind those barricades.

Arizona

2011-02-23T07:12:00.002-05:00

The Santa Fe Railway had the Hopi House built on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1905 as a tourist destination adjacent to the luxorious El Tovar Hotel. It was architected to resemble aspects of a Hopi dwelling and originally housed Hopi artisans at work. Today it's just a shop with artwork from the area and a few souvenirs. One morning at sunrise I turned away from the canyon rim to catch sunrise shadows on these windows of that shop.

But we wanted to learn more about real Hopi life and heritage. So we stayed a couple of nights over at Second Mesa a couple hundred miles east of Grand Canyon Village. Gary Tso of the Left-handed Hunter Tour company was our guide. Photography in the villages is now prohibited, so I don't have any photos of a real Hopi house. This photo to the left was taken of an abandoned shed from outside the hotel on Second Mesa.

We also stayed a night at the Moenkopi lodg. It's a modern hotel that just opened on the Hopi land at the corner of the busy intersection of Hwys 264 & 160. The below photo was taken at sunrise behind the hotel just as Hwy 264 makes its last climb out of the valley housing the Hopi town of Moenkopi - with the fields at the north end of the town just barely showing up in this shot.

Below are the windows of the Hopi arts center on Second Mesa, just outside of the Hopi Cultural Center. To be clear, the Cultural Center hotel is not within one of the Hopi Towns, so it was ok for me to take photos.

Photography is not normally permitted in Hopi villages. But here's one book where the author was invited in to document their life and culture: Hopi, by Jack Page. It's a rare glimpse into the Hopi world.

Bridge Perspectives

2010-11-17T21:43:00.002-05:00

While these bridges are some of the most heavily traveled in the world, these photos offer some less typical vantagepoints. These may not be the best photos in the world, but they were fun to take.

The Ben Franklin Bridge spans the Delaware River between beautiful Camden, New Jersey and Philadelphia. Built in 1926, the bridge now carries about 100,000 vehicles and 40,000 rail commuters each day. The Camden Riversharks baseball stadium rests in the shadow of the bridge. It's a fun ballpark with a kids' area that includes this merry-go-round.

An average of 190,000 vehicles per day cross this bridge across the New York Harbor. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn was built in1964. You get a peek of it at the top of this fall photo taken from the tip of the Gateway National Recreation area in Sandy Hook, NJ.

To the right is a more traditional photo. It's taken from the bike path along San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Completed in 1937, it carries up to 160,000 vehicles a day.

Here's a bit of pseudo-math to give a perspective on how much traffic these bridges together carry - at around 450,000 vehicles per day. At an average of 2 people per vehicle (not an unreasonable assumption), and adding in rail commuters who cross the Ben Franklin bridge, all together these carry something like 1 Million people per day or about 40,000 per hour if traffic were constantly running 24 hours each day. To give a feeling for what this means, consider my local town, Freehold, which has a population of somewhere around 10,000. So 40,000/hour means that every man-woman-and-child in Freehold would cross 4 times an hour, 24 hours a day. I don't know why I felt compelled to estimate this, but there it is.....

Country Road - Fall Colors again

2010-10-30T06:13:00.004-04:00

It hit 70 degrees on Wednesday. According to the National Weather Service, the next time we'll see that will be in May. Yeah, May 2011. That's 6 months away.

For the longest time I was lucky to be able to commute to work by bike quite a bit, and it gave me a chance to 'see small'. To see the little things that might look good inside of a camera.

I had a flat tire one morning on Dutch Lane in Colts Neck. I remember fixing it and then seeing the above scene across the road. I figured it was fate to have the flat, because I wouldn't normally have given this driveway a second look.

A bit more abstract, but this was the road on a dark morning just after it had rained. The white stripes are reflections of a light carried by the streaming water.

I was just about at the door one morning when I noticed the reflection from a puddle in the parking lot behind the building where I work.

Fog always has a way of making photos turn out well. Just point and shoot, and just about every frame looks great. Rumor has it that this is Springsteen's driveway. Yeah, that Springsteen. Here's an article I wrote about stalkng Bruce here at the Jersey Shore.

DANUBE CONFLUENCE

2010-10-18T08:31:00.001-04:00

I suppose I had heard that the Danube wasn't blue, but it wasn't until I was there that I really understood the difference. Not to argue about the color, but it comes out clearly in this photo of the Danube at its confluence with the Ilz and the Inn, where the Ilz runs crystal blue.

Strauss wrote the song - The Blue Danube - shortly after an Austrian battle defeat. I've read that using Blue in the title was either supposed to be an inspirational romantic vision or a slightly sarcastic barb. I couldn't tell which was more true. (Admittedly, I only did a quick internet search.) Written with lyrics for a Vienna choral group, the song didn't catch on until it was performed outside of Austria without the lyrics.

Anyway, the title was drawn from a poem about a town in Hungary (Baja, Hungary -'the capital of fish soup' - is about 100 miles downstream from Budapest). And given the red sludge that recently made its way into the Danube in Hungary, it felt fitting to show what the Danube looks like 300km (about 180 miles) upstream from Vienna.

This is a photo high above the river from a tower in the city museum of Passau, Germany. Here the Danube merges with the Ilz and the Inn rivers. On the bottom is the refreshing blue Ilz - a relatively small mountain stream. On the top is the Inn - a fairly large river flowing in from Salzburg, Austria. And the Danube flows between the two. The Inn River has more water flow than the Danube, yet the three combined rivers are together named Danube. The rationale according to wikipedia is that the Danube flows straight and continues on its path while the Inn curves in to meld with the main flow.

Fall began last week

2010-09-30T15:50:00.001-04:00

Fall started at about 1pm on September 22. So, here are a few photos to celebrate that.

If you're not from Joisey, you may not know that a great deal - almost 20% - of the land in the New Jersey is farmland. New Jersey ranks 2nd in the nation for blueberry production, 3rd for cranberries, 4th for peaches, 8th for sweet corn, and 9th for tomatoes. And, by some measures, it's only second to Kentucky for horse farms. This farm is in Millstone Township in central New Jersey.

Wistful for Summer

2010-09-11T05:01:00.001-04:00

It's that time again. The sun is waking up later in the morning. Ma Nature is testing out her cold breeze machine. A few earlybird trees have begun showing off their new rainbow coats. (sigh). Where did the time go?

Somewhere in the Caribbean.

My Tree on Longbridge Road in Holmdel, NJ


Colt's Neck, NJ. Early one Summer Day.

Philadelphia - a city just across the river from Joisey

2010-08-12T10:21:00.002-04:00

I just finished the "Gran Fondo" of Philadelphia. It's a supported ride that's supposed to be a bit more than a casual ride but a bit less than a race. I don't think I've ever seen as many 10-15% hills in a single ride. Anyway, it prompted me to post a few Philly fotos.

This first shot is the Ben Franklin Bridge. I think this foto appears elsewhere in this blog, but it's my iconic Philly shot, so it's got to be repeated. Admittedly, it's not 100% a Philadelphia photo since it was actually taken in New Jersey. I was on the pedestrian path at the bridge's first big tower in Camden.

Here's the "Lindenwold Local" train crossing the same bridge. Alright, so this isn't a 100% Philadelphia photo either since Lindenwold is actually 20 miles across the river in Jersey. But the train is fresh from Philly, and the photo was taken from the Pennsylvania side of the bridge. So, it deserves to be posted here.

There's no controversy here, this is definitively a Philadelphia photo. The USA cycling professional championships were held in Philly each year. While the title is now given from another race, the June race on the streets of the city remains an international classic. The ride along the Ben Franklin Parkway with a view of City Hall on one end (in this photo) and Rocky's staircase at the other end is world renown in cycling in part because it's one of the rare races where the peleton sees its tail end as it wraps around a traffic circle and comes up the other way.

TRAINS

2010-07-29T21:10:00.002-04:00

Julian Wearne from the Land Down Under linked his blog to my recent photo of New York's #7 Subway line and commented on a couple of other transportation photos I had in flickr. That gave me the idea for this posting ... reviewing a couple of those shots here. Thx, JW.

The Hudson River rail line heads along the river on the West Side of Manhattan, but it's usually hidden beneath Riverside Park and/or the Hudson River Parkway. I'm a tourist, not a native. So I had no idea it was there until we were walking from the 79th Street Boat Basin one day and saw the tracks through what looked to me to be prison bars. The prison bars and blotchy light just stuck with me. This photo is nobody's favorite but mine. Just reminds me of the gritty feeling of being there.

I was not a fan the parking garage at Newark Airport. Sure, it's convenient, but the raw girders in the architecture struck me as low budget government work until I saw a photo in Bob Jagendorf's photo stream. His iconic shot of the the top of the elevator shaft made me see the contrast between the glass and steel in a new light and was the rationale for this photo I took one evening. This is the the elevator tower and the adjacent monorail line that runs over to the airline terminals.

We recently took the subway over to Shea Stadium in New York. Actually, we were going to visit the new skateboarding park in Flushing Meadows by the old World's Fair globe. There was a professional competition there, and we thought that was pretty fascinating ... that there was enough money in skateboarding to make it a profession. Anyway, on the way there we found the rail yard for the #7 line just outside of the subway station.