By Vladimir Brezina
On Saturday, the air temperature was predicted to be in the 30s, then falling rapidly after dark. The water temperature was in the 40s. With a cold front coming over in the afternoon, winds were predicted at 15-20 knots, with gusts up to 30 knots. There was a small craft advisory.
A perfect day for a nice paddle around Manhattan!
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, Manhattan, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, Sunset, Winter
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.
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Central Park, Central Park Reservoir, Manhattan, New York City, Photography, Sunset
By Vladimir Brezina
Johna and I try to go out for a longish paddle every weekend. We don’t always succeed, but we succeed often enough that a backlog of trips that we have yet to post is accumulating.
Here’s one from early November. It’s strange now, in January, to see ourselves in these photos paddling without drysuits, and with leaves still on the trees…
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, Sandy Hook
By Vladimir Brezina
I always promise myself that I will go out especially to take photos of New York City’s spectacular architecture. And I will… some day!
In the meantime, though, incidental photo-ops offer themselves… I posted some of the results a while ago in Beauty and the Beast. Here are a few more.
More photos are here.
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.)
Tagged Cape Cod, Elizabeth Islands, Kayaking, Martha's Vineyard, Whale, Winter, Woods Hole
By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson
We’ve received a Versatile Blogger Award! This award, which is passed on from blogger to blogger, honors “the quality of the writing, the uniqueness of the subjects covered, the level of love displayed in the words on the virtual page…(and) the quality of the photographs and the level of love displayed in the taking of them.”
Composer in the Garden has passed the award to us, and we’re thrilled and honored by this recognition by a fellow blogger, particularly one whose own blog we follow and admire. And now we need to pass the award on in our turn…
Posted in Awards, Life, The Virtual World
Tagged Award, Blogging, Versatile Blogger Award
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.
Posted in Nature, Science and Technology
Tagged Clouds, Dead-Water Effect, Gravity Wave, Internal Wave, Meteorology, Ocean Wave, Oceanography, Wave, Wave Cloud
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.
Posted in Life, Nature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Central Park, New York City, Photography, Seeing, Visual Sense
By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson
Posted in New York City
Tagged Central Park, Flowers, New Year, New York City, Photography
By Vladimir Brezina
Looking back over our kayaking adventures of 2011, here’s a calendar of photos from the most memorable trips of each month…
…
.
Posted in Kayaking, New York City
Tagged Kayaking, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography
... 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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