Two shots of the weather that rolled through earlier today.  I shot 4 gigs of photos trying to get the elusive shot of a lightning strike.  One of my life’s goals.  No such luck today, but I did catch these funky boiling clouds.

This past week I returned to Gettysburg and spent four days there and at Antietam taking tours, talking to historians, guides and rangers, and doing general research.  I stayed at my usual hotel on the site of General Lee’s headquarters during the battle.  Its proximity to the first day’s field on the west of town is very convenient since that’s the focus of my research.  To be within walking distance on a battlefield that is approximately 25 square miles is a huge bonus. This was my first real summer visit to the area, and I highly recommend it even though it was hot and humid.  The various summer programs going on throughout Gettysburg will keep anyone busy.  I was there four days and there were at least another four days worth of activities I wish I could have stayed around for. The tour guides and rangers were of great help while I was there, especially Joanne Lewis, who came in on her day off to give me a tour of the Gettysburg Day 1 field, Gerry Eak, who gave me a great tour of the town of Gettysburg itself, and Mannie Gentile, who gives a wonderful no-nonsense tour of the Antietam field.

I’ve posted some photos here.  Yeah, more sunset photos.  No matter where I go in the world it seems my camera ends up focusing on sunsets and clouds.

Kristen and I took our first walk across the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday.  You get a whole new appreciation for the structure walking it, much more so than seeing it from the shore or even driving over it.

The New York City Waterfalls exhibit is currently running. The most striking aspect of it, to me, is how insignificant the falls look in their setting.  I do not mean that in a bad way, they are quite impressive, and when you stand on the eastern side of the Brooklyn Bridge over the falls you get a real sense of their scale.  But what really struck me is that you have these four man-made, 90-100 foot tall structures cycling over 2 million gallons of East River water every hour, and still the structures are dwarfed by their surroundings.

I read that the artist wanted the exhibit to be as much about the negative space as the structures themselves, and on that he truly succeeded.  The Brooklyn Bridge fall is impressive, but completely dwarfed by the Brooklyn Bridge column that it sits adjacent to.  It’s very fitting that a massive exhibit built by man to mimic nature is lost among a massive city built by man.

Yet again we’ve gone from cold rainy weather to hot and sunny in no time at all. Spring seems to be something that now only exists for the pharmaceuticals to push allergy medication. But hey, it’s warm and sunny, so I don’t care.

After a long night drinking in Hoboken to celebrate Matt’s exodus to Brooklyn, Kristen and I walked over to Jersey City today and I snapped the above photo of a railroad overpass. As-is the photo was too sharp on the borders, so I plugged it onto a border filter and then tweaked it out a little more on my own. Shot with my Canon SD700is. I was too hung over to be dragging around the big Rebel today.

…someone emailed me yesterday and gave me grief about not posting photos recently.

Kristen and I visited Gettysburg in early October. I’ve been putting off posting these photos since then, trying to think of something intelligent to write about that place.

The truth is I can’t. I don’t understand how the men there stood in lines and exchanged gunfire with no cover, can’t understand how others charged fortified positions, can’t understand what made them do it. Has the selfless part of me that believed in higher causes dulled in the past decade or so – it must have been there at one point, otherwise why would I have volunteered for the Navy? And whether that is truly the cause or not, how could I correlate my life with the lives of those men of a different age and understand them?

Maybe that’s what draws me to that place. To history. I’m trying to understand that which I can not, hoping to find something in that dirt and in the intervening century-and-a-half to help me understand. And that is really all I have to say on the subject. For now. I just wanted an excuse to post a few of these photos.

I admit I take too damn many sunset photos. The sky was particularly spectacular last night, though, so here’s yet another one.

Anyone who knows anything about me should get the reference in the post title, so no bonus points for guessing correctly.

While on a recent consulting gig I was working horrendous hours, leaving little time to do much but take photos very early or very late in the day. I also didn’t leave home much except to commute. Add those two factors in with purchasing my first digital SLR camera and you get a lot of sunrise and sunset shots from our roof deck. All photos are naturally lowered in resolution and quality for web posting.

Last weekend I spent a few days visiting Kristen at the Dai Bosatsu Zendo, (she spends a month up there every summer getting all Zen’d up). A beautiful and relaxing place. I had my small Canon SD700is camera with me and took some shots as we walked the grounds and monastery.

I have recently upgraded to Photoshop CS3 and am still learning the new “features”. I think I might have compressed these photos too much and lost some detail, but you can get the general idea.

I’ve kept a low profile this weekend. I grabbed lunch early yesterday at my favorite Cuban place in Hoboken and then hit the local Barnes and Noble to pick up Harry Potter 7. Yes, I’m one of those people. And to avoid having some dolt spoil it for me, since then I’ve been holed up in the condo or up on the deck, reading, and avoiding the internet and television. Yesterday evening about dusk I I heard from a party going on a few houses away “Did you hear about the new Harry Potter…?” I promptly ran inside and plugged my ears. Then this morning, while watching the news for a few moments, I slammed off the TV’s power when what was probably a piece on Harry Reid started, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I’m a little more than half-finished.

In other news, I finally caved and bought my graduation gift to myself last week: a Canon Rebel XTI (aka the 400D) DSLR camera. It’s my first SLR, and there’s a serious learning curve. With the help of some lenses that a friend lent me (thanks, Alex!) I’ve been puttering around a bit, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I have the above required shot of the skyline from our deck above. Also, a most unusual shot of a Boeing B-17* that flew over yesterday morning. No idea where she was from or what she was doing over Manhattan, but she was a very cool sight and the sound of those four radial engines reminded me how I need to get to an air show sometime in the next year or two. I was able to shoot the photo at max zoom and crop down what you see. Not very clear, but clearer than I could have got with my other cameras, and proof that I wasn’t imagining things.

That’s all I have. My seclusion continues. Good thing I don’t currently have a job to drag me out tomorrow!

(*for those who do not know, the B-17 Flying Fortress is a WWII U.S. bomber, and therefore quite rare. I’ve seen this one in the airspace around Manhattan a few times before, so she must be based out of Long Island or Connecticut)