Category Archives: Nature

Nature Morte

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Vladimir Brezina

Photos taken in 2010 at Slickrock, Glover’s Reef Atoll, Belize.

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Once More Around the Reservoir at Sunset

Posted on January 12, 2012 by | 4 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Jogging around New York City’s Central Park Reservoir at sunset on New Year’s Day 2012

Across the water, the towers of Midtown

As the sunset fades

Above, a single white cloud remains

The individual photos are here.

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Posted in Nature, New York City

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Recycled Adventures: A Winter Kayak Trip on Cape Cod, With Whale

Posted on January 6, 2012 by | 12 comments

 By Vladimir Brezina

Finally! We’ve turned the corner, and the days are getting longer. Of course, winter has really only just begun—but once the short dark days begin their retreat, winter is a great time for kayaking!

I am already thinking forward to those crisp blue days in late winter or early spring when you can see forever, and can paddle a long way before the day is done, and are alone on the water… (and you can also get seriously hypothermic).

Here is my account of one such day in 2002, written up for the March/April 2003 issue of ANorAK, the Journal of the Association of North Atlantic Kayakers. (I wrote up a series of three trips for Anorak in 2003, whereupon the journal died—hopefully not cause and effect. The others two trips are already posted here and here.)

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Waves On, Below, and Above the Water

Posted on January 3, 2012 by | 20 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

As kayakers, we are intimately familiar with waves on the surface of the water. But waves produced by the same basic physical mechanism—gravity waves—can form anywhere where a perturbation sets off oscillations in a density-stratified fluid. The surface of the water—an interface between two fluids of different densities, water and air—is just the most familiar location. But essentially similar waves, albeit now internal rather than surface waves, can form deep below in the water, and high above in the air.

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Posted in Nature, Science and Technology

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Learning to Look, And See

Posted on January 2, 2012 by | 37 comments

By Johna Till Johnson
(Addendum and photos by Vladimir Brezina)

I’ve never had much of an “eye”, in the sense of being able to relate to things visually—or even notice them in the first place.

The opposite, in fact. I’m one of those people who can walk by a large object—say, a 60-story building—every day for a month before exclaiming, “Has that always been there? I’ve never seen it before!” And I’m perfectly sincere: I really haven’t noticed it. I think in terms of narratives, not pictures—and I often fail to see what’s literally right in front of my nose.

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Posted in Life, Nature, New York City, Photography

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Winter Sunset at the Reservoir

Posted on December 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Vladimir Brezina

The Central Park Reservoir is just a couple of blocks from my door. Its 1.6-mile perimeter path offers a perfect short walk for that spare hour… I go often, rain or shine, and bring my camera.

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Last time, the brilliant yellows, oranges, and reds of Fall were everywhere. But now Winter rules. I got to the Reservoir just in time to see the short day’s setting sun light up the last few scraps of color…

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But happily the more subdued palette of Winter offers its own, subtle possibilities…

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Happy Winter!

Posted on December 22, 2011 by | 8 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This morning at 12:30 a.m. EST, as most of us on the East Coast slumbered, we passed the winter solstice. So from now on, days will be getting longer! On the other hand, winter is here. And it’s predicted to be cold and snowy.

In anticipation, here are some photos from last winter, taken on January 27, 2011, in New York City’s Central Park just after the nor’easter that dumped a record 19 inches of snow there…

More photos from that day are here.

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The 2011 Hurricane Season in 4.5 Minutes

Posted on November 30, 2011 by | 2 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Today, November 30, is the last day of this year’s hurricane season.

Hurricanes don’t know that it’s the last day of the season, of course, and in some years they’ve continued well past this date. The hurricane season of 2005, for example, lasted into January 2006; there were so many tropical cyclones that year—among them Katrina and Wilma, respectively the costliest and the most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record—that the prepared names were all used up and six Greek-letter names had to be used.

This year, we are only up to Tropical Storm Sean, so far. This time-lapse satellite-image video compresses the entire 2011 hurricane season into 4.5 minutes. Nothing really striking happens until half-way through the season when the impressive bulk of Hurricane Irene moves up the East Coast of the US… But the time-lapse format does give a powerful impression of the swirling of the weather systems and the recurved paths of the storms—the Coriolis force in action!

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Best of Fall Colors 2011

Posted on November 23, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Vladimir Brezina

Despite the hiccup of the Halloween snowstorm, Fall has had a long run this year. The colors in New York City’s Central Park have been glorious. But now, in late November, they are finally coming to an end. It’s raining, dark, gray, and the trees are rapidly losing their last leaves.

So, as farewell, here are some highlights of the Fall colors of 2011. Happy Thanksgiving!

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The individual photos, and many others, are here, here, and here.

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Around the Reservoir: A Photoessay

Posted on November 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Vladimir Brezina

Yesterday I took a walk along the jogging track that encircles Manhattan’s Central Park Reservoir (more properly, I guess, the “Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir”).
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On the reservoir side of the jogging track, beyond the black cast-iron ornamental fence, is a steep embankment leading down into the water. In this micro-enviroment, just a few feet wide but 1.6 miles long, fall is in full swing…

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