Author Archives: Vladimir Brezina

Weekly Photo Challenge: Together

Posted on April 27, 2012 | 77 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Together.

And even though I’ve posted them already, not too long ago, I just have to use these—

The full series of photos is here.

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Other nice “Together” interpretations:

77 Comments

Posted in Nature, Photography

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Get Ready for Blackburn Challenge 2012!

Posted on April 27, 2012 | 13 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

The other day I looked at the calendar and suddenly realized that there are barely three months left: it’s high time to get into shape, and get the kayaks shipshape, for this year’s Blackburn Challenge!

The Blackburn Challenge, organized by the Cape Ann Rowing Club, is a ~20-mile open water race around Cape Ann, the rocky cape that projects into the Atlantic Ocean north of Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a well known and well established event—last year was the 25th running of the race (and there was one participant who had been in all 25 of them!). The fun part is that the race is open to “all seaworthy oar or paddle powered craft. Classes include men’s and women’s Banks dories, fixed seat singles, doubles, multi-oars with cox, multi-oars without cox, sliding seat singles & doubles, single & double touring kayaks, single & double racing kayaks, surf skis, and outrigger canoes.” Even, in the last couple of years, paddleboards! So it’s quite a colorful flotilla out there on the ocean during the race!

Johna and I have raced in the Blackburn Challenge in 2010 and 2011, and we will be going again this year. The 2012 Challenge is on Saturday, July 14th. If that sort of thing appeals to you, you should certainly think about going too!

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13 Comments

Posted in Kayaking

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At the Bottom of the Food Chain

Posted on April 24, 2012 | 32 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

In the harbor ecosystem, kayaks are definitely at the bottom of the food chain.

Still, sometimes they remind me of those frisky little mammals scampering under the feet of the great lumbering dinosaurs…

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32 Comments

Posted in Kayaking, New York City

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Sun, Take Two

Posted on April 21, 2012 | 29 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Sun. I’ve already posted one response, but here’s another one.

Here comes the Sun!

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes

But you never see the same sun twice…

Two successive sunrises at Amelia Island, Florida. More photos are here.

29 Comments

Posted in Nature, Photography

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Sun

Posted on April 20, 2012 | 34 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Sun.

Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

Philip Larkin, Solar

(Cape Cod Bay, July 2011; more photos are here)

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My second interpretation of “Sun” is here.

Other nice “Sun” posts:

34 Comments

Posted in Literature, Nature, Photography

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Coast Guard ♥ Birds

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 21 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

It’s heartwarming to see how much the Coast Guard loves and cherishes its birds! It spares no effort to erect, along every waterway, ingenious structures calculated to be ideal for gulls, cormorants, even ospreys to rest on and, now that it’s spring, to build their nests and raise their young, safe from predators and from human intrusion… well, except for some kayakers ;-)

21 Comments

Posted in Nature

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Two Subjects, Take Two

Posted on April 14, 2012 | 16 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Two Subjects. I’ve already posted one response to this challenge, but I can’t resist having another go.

A few days ago we had occasion to take the Circle Line boat ride around Manhattan. The boat was packed. I came ready with my camera. But I couldn’t decide whether to focus (figuratively as well as literally) on the magnificent sights of the city coming into view one after another, or on the activities of other passengers. They, too, were snapping photos of the sights but even more of each other…

You just know what is to the left of the frame in the next photo, don’t you?

That’s right—the money shot!

16 Comments

Posted in New York City, Photography

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Paddling Out to Block Island

Posted on April 13, 2012 | 35 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Block Island lies in the middle of Block Island Sound, about ten miles south of the main Rhode Island coast. It’s a fairly large island, beautiful in the coastal New England manner, with long sandy beaches, grassy dunes and bluffs, beach roses and beach peas, warm turquoise waters. (This is in the summer, of course… although in winter, when the tourists and the summer residents leave, the windswept, largely treeless island no doubt has its own bleak beauty too.) There are some paddling possibilities on the island itself.

But, to my mind, the main point of Block Island is to paddle out to it and back again.

A distinct step up from the open-water paddles across New York Harbor’s Lower Bay or across Long Island Sound, which are still fairly sheltered, the Block Island paddle offers true open-ocean experience. The open water of Block Island Sound is exposed from all directions, but particularly from the south—any conditions out on the open Atlantic will be felt, with little attenuation, in the Sound. There is nowhere to hide from them. On the other hand, the paddle is not so long, and many days in the summer are predictably benign. So this paddle will test mainly your navigational skills and your critical judgement about weather and tidal currents—but, if that judgement should fail, also your rough-water paddling skills…

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35 Comments

Posted in Kayaking

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Two Subjects

Posted on April 13, 2012 | 39 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Two Subjects.

Irresistible force meets immovable object!

Two of my favorite subjects, the ocean and the city, come head to head: huge storm surf batters San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March 2008.

More photos as here.

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My second interpretation of “Two Subjects” is here.

Other nice “Two Subjects” posts:

39 Comments

Posted in Photography, Travel

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Beastly (and Avian) New Yorkers

Posted on April 11, 2012 | 12 comments

By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson

After more than 15  (Johna) and 20 (Vlad) years living in New York City (in Vlad’s case, just one block away from Central Park), we finally managed to visit the Central Park Zoo.

The Central Park Zoo was New York City’s first zoo, starting in 1859 as a menagerie of exotic animals given to the Park. (Nowadays, owners of exotic animals that have grown uncomfortably large for small New York City apartments are too impatient for donation: they simply dump the animals in the Park—that’s how we get alligators in the sewers…) The zoo is small (6.5 acres) but manages to house a surprisingly large number of animals—we didn’t get to see even half of them—in “natural” enclosures, some of them walk-through, that do not feel at all cramped.

As it turns out, the Zoo’s inhabitants are some of the most quintessential New Yorkers: The birds and beasts embody all the characteristic New York attitudes, from vanity to boredom to slit-eyed suspicion.

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12 Comments

Posted in Nature, New York City

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