Versatile Blogger Award, Take Two

Posted on March 21, 2012 by | 18 comments

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!

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Happy Spring!

Posted on March 20, 2012 by | 7 comments

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.

7 Comments

Posted in Nature, New York City

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unusual

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | 31 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Unusual.

Even for jaded New Yorkers, this picnic in the park was perhaps just a bit unusual…

(Click on the photo to enlarge)

Update March 18, 2012:

OK, I confess. This wasn’t quite an ordinary picnic in the park, even a New York City park…

It was a performance piece called Imaginary Picnic by the Push Pops that we saw at last year’s Figment NYC, a two-day art festival held in June on Governors Island in New York Harbor. We wrote about our visit here, and more photos—some of them likewise a bit unusual!—are here.

Unfortunately, it rained pretty steadily the whole day of our visit. Consequently the Imaginary Picnic was a bit wilted. But its full glory can be seen here:

To see, and photograph, more unusual scenes, visit this year’s Figment! Figment NYC 2012 will be held, again on Governors Island, on June 9-10. We’ll see you there!

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

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Posted in Photography

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Edging Into Artistry: Sweetwater Kayak Symposium 2012, Part One

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | 14 comments

By Johna Till Johnson

Note: What follows gets a bit “kayak geeky”. I’ve tried to keep things straightforward and ensure the story appeals to non-paddlers as well. But just in case I didn’t entirely succeed, consider yourselves warned!

Sometimes it’s best not to know what you’re getting yourself into.

If I’d truly understood the nature of kayaking in the beginning, I doubt I’d ever have taken up the sport.

When I first started paddling, I assumed, like most people do, that the primary requirement was upper-body strength.  And like most people, I was afraid of falling in. Not of actually being in the water (I’m a strong swimmer), but the falling-in part. Or more accurately, the loss of control and panic that hits when your boat tips over and begins to dump you into the drink.

So I figured the two main reasons for taking kayak lessons would be to build up my upper-body strength, and to learn how to keep the boat from ever tipping over.

Anyone who’s paddled for a while is already chuckling, because I couldn’t have been more wrong on those two points.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Kayaking

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Spring Has Sprung, Seemingly

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 17 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Contrary to the Groundhog’s prediction (he is right only 39% of the time, after all), the season seem to be well advanced into Spring.

In New York City, temperatures are reaching into the 60s or even 70s each day. Crocuses and daffodils are out, two or three weeks earlier than usual. Even some fruit trees are beginning to flower in Central Park. Nobody expects Winter to come back any more.

Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Nature, New York City

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast

Posted on March 9, 2012 by | 45 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Contrast.

And New York City is a city of contrasts, photographically and otherwise:

A couple of these photos are already elsewhere on this blog, but I do like them and they seem to fit well this week’s theme…

More New York Cityscapes are here.

Some other nice interpretations I’ve seen:

45 Comments

Posted in New York City, Photography

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Sea Kayaker’s Deep Trouble

Posted on March 8, 2012 by | 16 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Sea Kayaker’s Deep Trouble:
True Stories and Their Lessons from Sea Kayaker Magazine
Matt Broze and George Gronseth
Edited by Christopher Cunningham
Ragged Mountain Press
Camden, Maine, 1997

When I first started kayaking, in those spare moments when I wasn’t actually on the water I eagerly read every kayaking book I could lay my hands on. And this book was one that all experienced paddlers recommended. Possibly they were tired of explaining afresh to each clueless newbie all the things that could go wrong. This book does that job soberingly well.

Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews, Kayaking, New York City

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Finials: A Photoessay

Posted on March 4, 2012 by | 14 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Fierce eagles on top of poles are a grand imperial convention

but in Florida every pole has on it a bird

that is not an eagle, but (usually) a pelican.

They perform, preen

or just sleep.

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Posted in Nature

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Distorted

Posted on March 2, 2012 by | 42 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Distorted.

Sometimes it’s the smoothest mirror that gives the most distorted picture…

Other nice interpretations that I’ve seen:

42 Comments

Posted in Kayaking, Photography

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Pas de Deux

Posted on February 29, 2012 by | 37 comments

By Vladimir Brezina

Performers: Two Brown Pelicans, Pelecanus occidentalis

(It’s nice to think that they were a male and a female. But it’s very hard to tell male and female pelicans apart by external appearance alone.)

Venue: A piling just off John’s Pass Boardwalk, Madeira Beach, Florida (near St. Petersburg, on the Gulf coast)

Date: February 23, 2012, as the sun set…

Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Nature

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