Scattered Thoughts . . .

T his past weekend, we headed down to Long Island with Lukey and Kenzie in tow to visit some of my family.  It is always a lot of fun or perhaps just "more amusing" traveling with Lukey and Kenzie but the drive down to Long Island was brutal and far too long this time!  We arrived completely spent, exhausted, and hungry. What should have taken less than six hours of drive time, ended up taking us over ten hours.  We had detours due to washed out roads and bridges, we had construction traffic, but mostly, we had significant problems with traffic volume.  The traffic volume problems started the moment we entered Connecticut and we crawled all the way through Connecticut and onto Long Island.  There are simply far too many cars on the road today.  Clearly, the cost of gas is far, far too low.   We eventually got into town just in time to get some pizza before all the restaurants closed.  We actually drove straight to a local pizzeria before chec...

For many years, Sheila and I have been talking about and dreaming about one day taking a journey across the country by rail. It has always been one of those things we've wanted to do someday when the opportunity presented itself. There is something about train travel... it has a romantic air about it... it is classic... it is relaxed by comparison to other modes of transportation... and it provides spectacular vistas as we wind our way across the country. This was one of those trips that we always figured would have to wait until after Sheila retires since we knew it would be a time consuming trip but Adam recently moved to California so that has prompted us to take a closer look at transportation options. One way or another, we were headed to California to visit Adam. We figured why not do it in style and the way we want? Originally, whenever we talked about a cross country rail journey, we talked about stopping at various cities along the way. We'd spend a night or two ...

Assuming my health cooperates, we will be visiting family in New York soon.  As always, I plan to shoot a few photos while we are out and about in New York City and on Long Island.   Whenever I am thinking about a photo shoot, even if it is simply sightseeing, I like to review photos I have previously shot as well as photos others have shot.  Basically, I like to research. I like to prepare. I like to figure out the best time to photograph a particular sight...  finding the best light, best shadows, a new interesting angle... Truth be told, I research before doing anything including photography. So, while I am up and awake in the middle of the night tonight, let me share some of my old photos I have shot while in New York on previous trips.... This first shot is from the Museum of Natural History...  elephants stampeding through the Africa Hall...  This is a very dark hall which makes it difficult to focus without getting motion blurring.  ...