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DSC_4553 Great white on a spring afternoon at the lake
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DSC_4553 Great white on a spring afternoon at the lake

white egretbirdsspringStaten IslandClove Lakesnature

  • DSC_4402 Great white on a spring afternoon at the lake
  • For a nocturnal animal its' rather interesting to me how often I run into this fellow here at Clove Lake during the day
  • Trying to take shots like this with my 55-200mm nikkor was just brutal. Which led me to buying their 70-300mm instead. Yes the extra 100mm on the back end made all the shots I've taken with it possible. But honestly I love this lens for discreet candid street photography, which is the kind of subjects it's resolving power was meant to capture. It was never meant to be used to take nature shots like these, but you work with what you've got. I can't wait for the day when I can afford to purchase a real super performing super telephoto zoom. Wow what a difference that will make. Till then I'll continue to pick my spots.
  • DSC_4509 Great white on a spring afternoon at the lake
  • DSC_4521 light on your feet
  • For a brief time mom, who had slowly been getting weaker as the days past, was alert again and a little talkative. One of the few things she asked me for earlier, was for me to bring her more of my pictures. So after taking care of all her needs for the moment I had the first half of today free before spending the rest of the day with her, to get some new shots. So I came here to Clove Lake as it's an easy 15 minute bus ride from my house and mom's nursing home, making it and ideal spot to trek out to for a few hours to capture those shots she was asking for. This egret, a regular visitor here to the lake, cooperated as my subject today.
  • DSC_4553 Great white on a spring afternoon at the lake
  • dsc_4536 white egret
  • DSC_4563 Great white on a spring afternoon at the lake
  • When I woke up this morning the first thoughts filling my head were of what my plans for mom would be. But instead of planning where in the city I was going to buy something new for mom to help her eat or read or or talk on the phone, as her body grew weaker and weaker, I was trying to remember the address of a natural healer that a good friend of mom's implored me to contact, who could help heal mom with her spreading tumors. I still believed mom, who would come in and out of lucidity, would just want my brother and I to let her pass in peace, just as the medical staff at her nursing home was telling me to do, but it's hard to stay by your mothers side every night and watch her slowly slip away. <br /> <br /> With my brother living in California and mom's brother living in Michigan, mom's medical and physical needs have always been left to me and I was struggling almost non stop trying to decide with letting her slip away peacefully or fight to cure her with what would surely be a controversy filled process, that she probably would have told me not to try at this point, if she was strong enough to understand and verbalize her wishes to me. <br /> <br /> Since the address of this disciple of Gary Null was on the upper east side I decided after visiting her and listing to what she had to say, I would walk over to the Conservatory Gardens not far away in Central Park, and walk amongst the spring floral gardens and decide what my best course of action would be. Slipping my camera and a few macro lenses into my bag, I knew photographing some of the flowers there would be a good way to help me relax think in peace of what my best course of action should be. <br /> <br /> I was right enjoying the sights of this famous garden really did help to quite my mind and help me think.
  • Something I could never do with this lens 20 years ago - hand hold it and still get a reasonably sharp picture. With no tripod with me today, as I walked through the popular Conservatory Gardens in Central Park for a few hours, hoping the beautiful spring colors on display would help relax my mind and help me decide whether to turn mom over to hospice service or turn to a natural healer as my brother and some of mom's church friends were imploring me to do. Trying to choose between what I thought mom would want and what we wanted, and what the nursing home felt comfortable with was weighing heavily on me for some time and I really needed a little quiet time to think. And for a few moments here my decision solving skills could be put to use on a simpler problem. How to pull in a flower far out of reach with no tripod on a cloudy day? Simple, take out my old 200mm manual focusing micro lens and pump up the ISO setting.
  • dsc_4691 spring flowers at Conservatory Gardens
  • Almost every day for the last 2 weeks I've been trekking out all over Manhattan purchasing something new for mom to make her last days more comfortable. Today I went to J&R's and brought her a portable radio and a pair of headphones. The strength in her "good" arm was so weak now from the MS and blood thinner that she didn't have the strength to reach and turn on or off anything even if I put it in her bed. Figuring if I could find her a small radio /CD player that wouldn't take up much space in her bed and attached a small pair of headphones and sat them on her pillow (in her condition she would have found headphones on her head uncomfortable), then she could listen to family bible radio, a station she always loved listening to over the years, without disturbing her roommate. Ten days before I brought her roommate Judy her own set of headphones small and comfortable with a long cord so she could listen to her television whenever she wanted without disturbing mom, which made both of them very happy. Judy was hard of hearing and the volume she had to have the set on to to hear it, was too much for mom these days as mom needed plenty of rest and it was causing friction between them, some thing that rarely happened before. Now with those two particular purchases secured, peace and contentment could be restored, and I was happy. <br /> <br /> On the way to J&R I decided to walk through Battery Park City which is not far from J&R's to enjoy the spring flowers as it is one of the most beautifully landscaped spots in the city. As I walked down a curving path I spotted a large group of snowflake flowers growing through the wrought iron fence there. Draped with raindrops from the latest spring shower I found one grouping that I could reach with my all purpose zoom lens if I contorted my body and slipped behind the park bench next to it. After admiring the image in my camera screen I slipped my camera back down into my backpack and then continued on my journey to J&R to buy mom her latest new items.
  • DSC_5409 robin
  • DSC_5428 Robin wading
  • dsc_5445 natures bird bath
  • I decided that the best way to display this particular image would be to make it look like a painting. HDR was born to do that.
  • While catching shots of birds bathing by the mini waterfall at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens I noticed this large faux bee fly back and forth behind me. This fly was really big, and with lots of down time between birds showing up I had plenty of opportunities to see if I could capture a good clear shot of him. Eventually I did.
  • "By a waterfall I'm calling yooou ooh ooh ooooh...."
  • DSC_5625 robin
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