Author Archives: Vladimir Brezina

Spring Blossoms Catch the Evening Light

By Vladimir Brezina

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
……………………………….A.E. Housman, from A Shropshire Lad
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OK, the cherry blossoms are already mostly over at Easter in this remarkably early Spring. But there were still plenty of trees in bloom, or with the first tender green leaves just appearing, as I walked out with my camera a few days ago at sunset …
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New York City’s Central Park, April 5, 2012
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Journey

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Journey.

At dawn, some leave on their journey…

… just as others arrive from theirs

More photos from that day are here.

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Other nice Journeys:

Full Moon Rising over Hell Gate

By Vladimir Brezina

Last night, as a lavender dusk settled over Hell Gate

a pale shell of the full moon rose up among the high buildings

then shone white in the deepening blue sky

as the bright lights of the Second Avenue construction came on

The Puddle

By Vladimir Brezina

In New York City’s Central Park last Saturday. A cold, gray spring day. The cherry tree blossoms are already falling…

Seals and Swells on Sunday

By Vladimir Brezina

On Sunday, Johna and I paddled once more to Swinburne Island to see seals.

Swinburne Island, a small island in New York Harbor just south of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, hosts a healthy population of seals every winter. We’ve already visited them once this winter. But now in April, especially with spring arriving so early this year, we were wondering if the seals would still be there.

We were not disappointed!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Arranged

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Arranged: “… find something in your environment which was arranged by a human hand …”

Hmmm…. how about a human hand arranged?

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A Quiet Springtime Manhattan Circumnavigation

By Vladimir Brezina

Sunday, March 25, 2012

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Through

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Through.

Crowds of photographers gather as the magic moment draws near. What are they waiting for?

It’s Manhattanhenge! On two days in the year, for a brief moment before it sinks below the horizon, the setting sun is perfectly aligned with the cross-streets of Manhattan’s rectangular street grid and sends its last golden rays straight through its canyons…

These photos are from the first occurrence of Manhattanhenge last year, on May 30, 2011. More photos are here and here.

This year’s magic days will be May 29 and July 12!

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Some other nice interpretations of “Through” I’ve seen:

Versatile Blogger Award, Take Two

By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson

We are greatly honored to receive the Versatile Blogger Award again, this time from two fellow bloggers, Rola Yousef of A Thing of Beauty and Marge Springett of MJ Springett, Nature Photographer. Thank you both so much!

Amusingly enough, before Marge Springett nominated us, we were going to nominate her. But she got her blow in first…

The first time we received the Versatile Blogger Award, back in January, we wrote quite an elaborate post satisfying the various requirements of the award. So here we’ll go straight on to what we take to be the main purpose of the award: to draw the attention of a wider audience to those blogs that have drawn our attention. We pass the Versatile Blogger Award on to this fresh crop of blogs that we’ve come to admire and look forward to reading recently:

Most of these are photography blogs, delivering beautiful and creative photos to us each and every day!

The last two blogs are from Johna’s list of “health and fitness” blogs that she follows on a semi-regular basis.

Peter Attia is an MD and serious geek who has carefully documented his physiological and performance changes (he’s a distance swimmer) on a low-carb diet. (Check out the story of how he used calculus to compute the percentage of body-fat he’d have to decrease to in order to shrink his waist by a couple of inches… you can see the appeal!)

Skwigg is a cheerful, intrepid omnivore who chronicles her experiences with various fitness regimes, and isn’t above showing workout photos of herself with her cat. (Note: Skwigg actually does get some sponsorship for her site, so she’s a semi-pro blogger. But still quite versatile!)

Please let us know if you’d like to see more on health-and-fitness topics: we’re happy to oblige.

Enjoy the links, and Happy Spring!

Happy Spring!

By Vladimir Brezina

The Spring Equinox occurred early this morning. We are now officially—although it’s felt like it already for weeks—into Spring!

Here’s a preview of coming attractions. These photos were taken in New York’s Central Park in 2007… in late April. This year we’ll probably see these fruit trees bloom in a week or two—almost a month earlier!


More photos from Spring 2007 are here.