Long Island

: Did you know that Penny Pond is a lake! I didn’t even know it existed until a friend took me to this special place near Mattituck, Long Island. He loves to look at nature and I love to photograph it. It was a cold and dismal day. The light was poor but it was an adventure…new place to explore. As we walked around the quite sizeable pond, I composed images in my viewfinder and snapped away. When I came to this clump of oak trees the light improved and I gasped with delight at what I created with a shallow depth of field.

: Foliage splendor in the Muttontown Preserve at high noon caused harshness of shadows to emphasize the staccato stippling of patterns of color upon color. It could have been a painting in the style of pointillism…but no…it was a traditionally wet-darkroom processed chrome, taken with an under exposed ISO to saturate the color. See New York Times article, Unfamiliar Perspectives on familiar Images, New York Times, April 29, 2007.

: The brightness of layers of orange against the blue could have been applied with a painting knife…but no it was created with my camera and is as fresh and vibrant as the day I took it. This is part of a body of work taken back in the days of film and traditionally wet-darkroom processed and printed by a master printer, now deceased. For years my Long Island portfolio was featured on longisland.com

: Connetquot River State Park was ablaze with golden fibers and I immediately thought of Robert Frost’s poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay….but my captured moment of Nature’s perfection endures, as does the poem: Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

: I was surrounded and dwarfed in this beech forest…Nature’s Golden Cathedral that is part of the Nature Conservancy-Long Island Chapter 250.

: The Brightwaters Lakes are around the corner from where I live and provide infinite delight in reflected imagery.

: Water has always provided me with photo opportunities. There is so much possibility with the intermingling of the celestial with the terrestrial…my eyes have always been drawn to the fluidity of colors and shapes in water.

: My eye has always been drawn to reflections…probably a vestigial reaction to my former life as a painter. Many people upon seeing it have commented that it evokes their instant visual memory of Monet’s water lily pond paintings. In homage to Claude Monet, whose beloved Giverny I continue to return to, I changed the name.

: Gardiner’s Park is minutes…no seconds from my front door so I frequently come here to photograph. The subtle tonality reflected in the pond reminded me of my time spent weaving on this enormous loom. Funny how remembrances just pop up…but I love the visual echoes made by reflections.

: Gardiner’s Park is minutes…no seconds from my front door so I frequently come here to photograph. The subtle tonality reflected in the pond reminded me of my time spent weaving on this enormous loom. Funny how remembrances just pop up…but I love the visual echoes made by reflections.

: Autumn is ominous. The last burst of color before the bleakness of winter makes me shudder and the almost life-like shadows symbolize this approach that cannot be stopped.

: After trudging around for hours in Connetquot River State Park searching for inspiration, my eye caught this little spot of orange….now I’ve mentioned that orange is my favorite color…watch for a future blog. On my belly, body intermingled with tripod and dirt, I worked this trio for and hour. An oak leaf placed behind the mushrooms unified the background…and I returned home smiling! Of course, shooting with film I had to wait for the chromes to be processed to see the results, but I knew I’d be happy.

: Enigma…alone autumnal leaf afloat on a sea of detritus…a rocket ship soaring beyond our ken to distant galaxies…either way it is a visual journey. This photograph was taken while standing on the bridge by the pond at Connetquot River State Park toward the end of daylight. Originally entitled Lone Leaf, a dear friend, Steve Fratello, whose love for nature is science-based, gave it this much more potent name.

: The confluence of perfect light and place suddenly appeared before me as I merrily crunched through crispy leaves in Connetquot River State Park one morning. No time to ponder composition and settings…The backlighting outlined this intimacy between mother and child. Fortunately, my aperture was wide open to blur the background and I captured this decisive moment.

: Following dinner on the deck of Maguire’s at Ocean Beach I watched the sky turn orange as the sun began to set…and being a magnet for the color orange, I set up my camera to capture the sunset.

: While doing the Long Island Parks Summer Series race at Robert Moses State Park last summer I saw the Bridge in full view and sacrificed my time to shoot it with my iPhone. Shooting into the light couldn’t be helped so I took several shots and figured better to have shot than not. Then I played with NIK software and came up with this image.

: While doing the Long Island Parks Summer Series race at Robert Moses State Park last summer I saw the Bridge in full view and sacrificed my time to shoot it with my iPhone. Shooting into the light couldn’t be helped so I took several shots and figured better to have shot than not. Then I played with NIK software and came up with another image….

: About 2000 people participate in the Long Island Parks Summer Series and after the races most everyone gathers to eat, drink, be merry and listen for their numbers to be called for a raffle prize. I’ve begun to take lots of pictures with my iPhone and created this image from one of the shots taken. Interestingly, since the advent of smartphone technology I think I read that more pictures have been taken with phones that have previously been taken with every photographic device put together…pretty exciting and daunting!

: After passing this well-know barn-sighting back and forth from the North Fork, I had to stop to photograph it for myself. Taken with Kodak E100VS film, it became part of my portfolio that made me a Kodak professional partner. Read more about Kodak and me here.

: I love driving our on the North and South Fork and have been doing it for decades.

: It’s the colors and the textures of the rust, red and green that caught my eye.

: My art background is always churning and my antennae are poised for symbolism…so here we are on the North Fork of Long Island. The farm machinery is stilled…abandoned. Storage tanks, like monsters’ footprints are stamping out farmland and crows are hovering…like vultures. How ominous and my mind’s eye pictured Van Gogh’s Crows Over the Wheatfield.

: This stretch of North Fork farmland was for sale in 2007 and I wonder what has become of it. Everything undergoes change…for better or worse. It is the nature of things.

: People invariably laugh when the see this image as they think they’ll find some macho males in swim trunks….but no….Nature is my studio and I was attracted to the tonality and texture and the little dot of orange as I was beachcombing along the north shore.

: Long Island is a barrier island and that means it is comprised of lots of sand dunes…and it’s always interesting for me to note the different colors and textures of sand.

: Quiet…free-spirited blowing in the wind…so close to urbanization yet so far away…

: Quiet…free-spirited blowing in the wind…so close to urbanization yet so far away…

: Northport is a lovely north shore village known, not only for its natural beauty but also for its architecture. Across from the marina these buildings stopped me in my tracks.

: Okay…so orange is my favorite color…no secret and Halloween is my favorite holiday…this storefront was artfully displayed and called out to me. What fun!

: There wasn’t much doing in the marina on this cold November day but I figured that I might have some post-processing fun in the digital darkroom.

: When the light is right it makes magic. For a long time I was drawn to the condemned Fairchild Aviation building on building on Conklin Street and then it the bitter cold I bundled up to go photograph these imposing remains and what I shot over a period of several days was extraordinary.

: When the light is right it makes magic. For a long time I was drawn to the condemned Fairchild Aviation building on building on Conklin Street and then it the bitter cold I bundled up to go photograph these imposing remains and what I shot over a period of several days was extraordinary.

: If it’s in front of my lens I will shoot it. I was working on an assignment for Newsday’s Natural World series searching for endangered plants and found myself at Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge in Shirley in front of a large pond. The rare plant I was searching for was under water but dragonflies were zooming and landing and so I photographed a few…just because I was there and so were they! The scientific name of the Swift Long-winged Skimmer is Pachydiplax longipennis.

: When the park manager of Orient Beach State Park took me out beyond the area where people tend to visit she pointed out this endangered plant at which time there were only three known places in New York State where this Sea Purslane has been identified…so I felt privy to something special.

: The Long Island Pine Barrens covers more than 100,000 acres and is publically protected. It is Long Island’s largest natural area and its last remaining wilderness and is integrally connected to maintaining the aquifers for our drinking water. Steve has taken me here several times and each trip Nature bestows unexpected gifts.

: Butterflies have long been a favorite subject of mine; but rarely do I have such success photographing them in their natural habitat. While it is much easier to photograph butterflies in a vivarium, Calverton Ponds Preserve can offer fabulous butterfly photography opportunities and because those little creatures enamor me, I am always prepared with my macro lens and flash setup. This Banded Hairstreak was a successful shot that day…and it is 100% natural.

: Butterflies have long been a favorite subject of mine; but rarely do I have such success photographing them in their natural habitat. While it is much easier to photograph butterflies in a vivarium, Calverton Ponds Preserve can offer fabulous butterfly photography opportunities and because those little creatures enamor me, I am always prepared with my macro lens and flash setup. This American Copper was another successful shot that day; and, although it might be the most common North American species, I think the image is pretty special and 100% natural.

: Everyone deLIGHTS in the Big Duck…especially at holiday time when it is festooned in a garland of holiday lights. Can you believe that this once was a roadside duck farm stand that dates back to 1931! Over the years it has been relocated and now sits in Flanders, Long Island. This year this image was my holiday card and inside it said, “Duck the halls with warm wishes from Holly.” Just thinking of it quacks me up and makes me smile.

: Here’s a bird of a different feather. This one is 100% natural and also a delight to people everywhere. Piping Plovers nest in the dunes of Robert Moses State Park as much of the park is still, thankfully, in its natural state. One morning a beach-loving friend called me and said, “Get down here with your camera gear!”

: What a surprise to have looked out my kitchen window to find two red fox kits cavorting in my candytuft! A den had been set up beneath my deck and I spend days photographing from inside my house. The fox became the subject of a story published by American Garden Museum and eventually this fox appeared in Newsday in the Natural World Series.

: I wrote an article entitled The Secret Place that will appear in a future blog and it is all about these pink lady’s slippers. When I was brought to this place on the north shore I couldn’t contain my ecstasy over tiptoeing amongst these audacious blooms. I was in an enchanted land just a few yards off a main road. If you know the place don’t pick these flowers and plant them in your garden for they will most assuredly die. They need the soil composition of their natural habitat to grow…please let them be.

: This landmark and historical building in Southold presented itself as a serendipitous photo opportunity and I framed the building with the anchor to add visual flavor. George Washington commissioned building the lighthouse and is a popular tourist spot…although it was new to me.

: The dunes were here at the beginning and my memories of the Fire Island Lighthouse go back as far as I can remember so I wanted to make the Lighthouse spring forth from the grasses on the dunes.

: I turned a straight T-Max photograph into a sepia-toned image to give it an old-quality patina.

: The Robert Moses Causeway Bridge is one of those Long Island icons and while it remains a challenge to present it in a different light, it always causes me to smile.

: My nature friend, Steve Fratello, took me back to Calverton Ponds and I was testing the pano feature on this new camera, a Sony RX-1. The pond was huge and we were all alone in the wilderness. Although we could hear the sounds of traffic, it was just the two of us out in Nature enjoying the solitude, the simplicity and the beauty of the morning. This is a favorite place of Steve’s and it has become a favorite of mine as well.