Let’s see – the photo and video sorting is all done (no small task, this,) tomorrow’s Profiles post is written created typed spawned… let’s have a handful of the remaining photos from the second New York trip. I didn’t do a lot of scenics this time around, partially because the weather wasn’t as cooperative, but I still snagged a few.
I don’t think I set my alarm to get up for sunrise even once on this trip, and most times I sleep well past it because I’m up into the wee hours of the morning on what I still consider the previous day. But having busy days, no internet access, and sleeping with the windows open meant I was up at sunrise every day, I believe, even when it was raining. The birds just outside the window, getting noisy at first light, probably helped more than a little. This is, of course, Cayuga Lake, one of the Finger Lakes, though you’re only seeing across the cove here.
How about if we face almost entirely in the opposite direction, the following day?
This is the same sunset as the teaser photo here, and gives a little better impression of the lake, though the short focal length makes things look farther away than reality, while that other photo makes them look much closer – 18mm for this one, 85mm for the linked page. For the record, the lake is less than 2 km wide here.
We made it into Seneca Falls twice while there; this particular time while we were waiting for something to open. The weather couldn’t decide if it wanted to keep raining or clear up, and it actually started raining again while we were here, chasing us back to the car. This is the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, a branch of the Erie Canal system, and that bridge in the distance served as Frank Capra’s inspiration for the bridge scene in the schmaltzy It’s A Wonderful Life – possibly, anyway. I’d always heard it was the shooting location, which I found out recently is wrong, and now it appears that Seneca Falls being the inspiration for the fictional Bedford Falls in the film is all inference anyway, since Capra never said as much – he just spent time in Seneca Falls. Never mind that the women’s rights movement got its main impetus there, or any of the other history therein – it’s notable because of the movie. [Heavy sigh]
There are a lot of older and historic buildings in Seneca Falls, many more than most of the surrounding towns and cities, but we weren’t really on a sightseeing tour, so I have only this. The Girlfriend and I did discuss what it would be like living in one, with the older structures and plumbing and the town breathing down your neck regarding their standards for historic buildings. It was bad enough living in an older house when I was growing up, with countless heating and insulation problems, frequent failures of the well pump, and so on. Thanks, give me a modern house anytime.
[Well, if you’re giving me a house, I’ll take whatever you got, but an older one would probably be sold off as soon as your back was turned, historic or not.]
Despite being out there ready, none of the sunrises really bowled me over this time around, even though on average they were performing better than here in NC around Walkabout Estates. Waiting for some good colors or sunbeams or anything, all I could work with on this morning was the golden light catching a band of lower clouds – even the birds avoided passing in a picturesque way.
One for curiosity’s sake.
During the somewhat frustrating electrical storm, one of the smaller bolts seen through the window of the Gatsby mansion displayed a curious trait. It looks like the camera moved during exposure, though you can see everything else is clear and sharp; it was actually the lightning (or perhaps more accurately, the air mass that it was in) that moved. This was after the fierce wind had rolled in, so it’s possible the charged air really did shift that much between the millisecond flashes of the bolt. The camera was on a tripod and I was even triggering with a remote release, so don’t go blaming me.
And one last one, on the lake again.
This is the same evening as the red sun shot above, but after getting the photos of the buck in the developing fog – I can’t knock these colors, as simple as it is. Somewhere within this view is where the major lightning strike occurred (not the one seen above, which is further off, but the one not exactly seen here,) though we weren’t on this dock then. Which is good – a huge bolt striking that point, or even closer on the water itself, is not how storms should be witnessed.