By Vladimir Brezina
Here’s another response to Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week, Couples. (The first response was here.)
This was just one moment in a long, elaborate dance that this pelican couple performed for the camera…
You can just hear what these couples are saying to each other, can’t you?
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Animals, Birds, Couples, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
The Daily Post’s Photo Challenge this week is Silhouette. And Ailsa’s Travel-Themed Photo Challenge is Couples. Here’s a photo that combines both themes…
Additional interpretations of “Silhouette” are here and here. And of “Couples”, here and here.
Posted in Photography
Tagged Couples, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Puerto Rico, Silhouette, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Silhouette.
Wait, didn’t we already do that theme just a little while ago? Yes, back in August. But that was not the Daily Post’s challenge—it was Ailsa’s challenge on Where’s my backpack?, ahead of the game as usual… (Ailsa herself posted some fantastic silhouettes that you should definitely check out!)
In any case, here are some more silhouettes, or near-silhouettes. A hard-edged one in the late-afternoon sun…
and others softened as the sunlight filters through early-morning fog…
More photos from that trip are here. A second interpretation of “Silhouette” is here.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City, Photography
Tagged Kayaking, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Silhouette, Weekly Photo Challenge
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Central Park, Evening, Manhattan, New York City, Photography
By Vladimir Brezina
This week, Ailsa’s Travel-Themed Photo Challenge is On Display.
And it’s that time of year again…
This was the display last year (more photos are here). This year’s display is already starting to go up. Watch this space in a couple of weeks!
Posted in New York City, Photography
Tagged Halloween, New York City, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Street Decorations, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Big.
It’s big…
… but it always amazes me how tiny it appears when we turn the corner and see it across the harbor, against the immensity of the sea and sky. There it is, just to the left of the sunlit section of the city ahead…
It’s a matter of perspective.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City, Photography
Tagged Big, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Statue of Liberty, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
I had hoped to post this last spring, in time for the 2012 camping season. But it’s not too late! The fall, with its spectacular foliage colors, is here—to my mind, the best time of the year to go camping at this spot… and in fact, Johna and I have plans to head up there for a couple of days soon to see the show!
The length of the Hudson River between Albany and New York City offers a number of kayak camping spots. But none is so attractive as the Hudson River Islands State Park, about 20 miles south of Albany and several miles north of the town of Hudson.
I’ve paddled and camped there many times in every season over the past decade, and I never fail to stop there on through trips down the river. In this complex of islands, back bays, and creeks, rich in plant and animal life, there is always something new to see. And most of the year, except during the peak season in the summer, chances are that you’ll have it all to yourself. Although it’s quite accessible, it feels secluded, remote, almost wild…
By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson
“You are not seeing me…”
“Harrumph.”
“I wonder…”
“What do we have here?!”
“Surely you can’t be serious.”
“Now what?”
“What are YOU looking at?!?”
Pretty in pink.
“Peekaboo!”
The elegant hunter.
“Look at me! Aren’t I pretty?”
“Honk.”
“What’s up with that?”
“I’m getting too old for this…”
“Whadda you want, wise guy?”
“Go away.”
“I wonder what those kids taste like.”
Sniff!
Scaredy rabbit.
“I want to be your friend!”
“Arrrogh!”
This is our second post in response to Ailsa’s Travel-Themed Photo Challenge, Animals. Our first post was here.
By Vladimir Brezina
The Daily Post’s Photo Challenge this week is Happy. And Ailsa’s Travel-Themed Photo Challenge is Animals. So…
Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings wherever they take them. Such is the happiness of fish.”
Huizi said, “You are not a fish, so whence do you know the happiness of fish?”
Zhuangzi said, “You are not I, so whence do you know I don’t know the happiness of fish?”
Huizi said, “I am not you, to be sure, so I don’t know what it is to be you. But by the same token, since you are certainly not a fish, my point about your inability to know the happiness of fish stands intact.”
Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to the starting point. You said, ‘Whence do you know the happiness of fish?’ Since your question was premised on your knowing that I know it, I must have known it from here, up above the Hao River.”
I don’t know about fish, but these squirrels sure look happy to me…
A second interpretation of “Animals” is here.
Posted in Nature, Philosophy, Photography
Tagged Animals, Happy, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Squirrels, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
Jakesprinter’s Sunday Post theme for this week, Favorite Spot, and the Weekly Photo Challenge theme, Mine, come together in this post…
On Sunday, Johna and I visited one of our favorite spots, New York City’s Central Park.
The trees are still mostly green, and late flowers are in bloom. But subtle signs of fall are everywhere.
We saw a late monarch butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.
Wandering through the park, we made our way, as we usually do, to our really special spot—the plot of ground that some time ago we picked out as the place where we could learn to observe and to see. And indeed, we saw there…
… a belated dandelion
.
.
.
.
.
… somebody’s eggs
.
.
.
.
… a strawberry?!
.
It sure looked like a strawberry—a last lone strawberry at the cusp of fall.
We thought of how sweet ripe wild strawberries can be… And so, despite some contraindications —the strawberry plants bore, here and there, yellow, rather than white, flowers—Johna ate the strawberry.
It had very little taste. It wasn’t a true strawberry, but (as we determined afterward) a mock strawberry.
Still, it was a lovely early fall day at our special spot in the park…
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Butterflies, Central Park, Fall, Favorite Spot, Flowers, Manhattan, Mine, New York City, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Sunday Post, Weekly Photo Challenge
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.
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Wind Against Current 