I went on my second tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard a week ago this past Sunday and Green-Wood Cemetery yesterday. Both yards are steeped in history and were outstanding tours. Now I have even more pix in my Flickr uploading backlog. 

It puzzles me that I was born about 1 1/2 miles away in Sunset Park and don’t think I’ve ever been in Green-Wood Cemetery before. There is an incredible collection of very old trees in the cemetery and it was a beautiful melange of fall foliage to photograph. It is a world class botanical garden in its own right. Living in Brooklyn, who needs to drive to see fall foliage? 

It is only recently that the Navy Yard has been open for public tours. There is no doubt that I will be on another tour in the near future. It’s great that they have instituted an outreach program to the community. It is a most interesting place to be with a camera. There are photo ops everywhere, as there are at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Nest Sunday I will go on a walking tour of the Sunset Park Neighborhood where I was born. Now that should be most interesting. The tour guide grew up there in the ’40s and ’50s.

At the suggestion of dear daughter Karen, I subwayed over to Rockefeller Center skating rink to shoot some pix of the electoral college map. I’ve got lots of photos of the rink and the map to upload to Flickr but this is my favorite. Have a look at the Flickr photo set here. I’m still working on it. 

This guy just walked into this photo. There’s nothing posed here. It’s serendipity that he’s alone. Trust me, there were lots of people constantly walking by.

He’s wearing a Top of the Rock Observation Deck coat and I assume he works there. As you can see he’s pondering the map. 

What color do you think his skin is?

I’m not gonna tell ya!

I just read that the NY Times sold all their paper edition copies and printed a second run. No problem here. I shot this on my screen earlier today.

I can’t remember the last time being in one of these iron maiden voting machines. Living in Southern California for so long, I thought Shoup machines were long gone. Yet another trip down memory lane. 

This felt like it was the most momentous voting experience of my lifetime. I’m grateful to be alive and to have participated. It is truly a new day in our country’s history. Bravo!

The Queens pix are finally uploaded to Flickr. See them in a set here or click on the photo. This photo was taken with my camera by Myles Devin of Elgin, Moray Scotland who was about to sail on the QE2. Lucky him! 

Myles and friends post to a forum at CruiseCritic.com.  This is a site search of his posts as screen name CunardQueen. There’s some interesting information from people who cruise the Queens.

What a day! This is a NY Times photo and you can read the article here. 

No, it wasn’t “at dawn Thursday”, it was about 5 a.m. and I was there on the 80th street overpass of the shore promenade in Bay Ridge with my camera at the ready. What a sight to see the QE2 and then the QM2 coming under the bridge in the dark. I was the only camera nut in sight.  

Then in the early afternoon it was on to the R-D-E trains to Pier 90 in Manhattan. After that on to the E train again down to the WTC stop and over to the river to shoot even more pix of the two ships as they rendezvoused near the Statue of Liberty before departing under the V-Bridge. 

I just got in and it was a day of adventure, that’s for sure. How many pix do I have? Let’s just say a “lot” for the time being.  Now it’s time to upload them onto my computer and then to Flickr. Yeah, I know…don’t hold your breath. I could spend a week editing and uploading pix to Flickr. They’ll get there sooner or later. Stay tuned.

There aren’t many obits that bring tears to my eyes. This one did. He spanned my life since the ’50s with professionalism and dignity. A cool and classy human he was.

Count ‘em, 18 registers and there will most likely be a line at all of them. This ain’t no strip mall store. It used to be a bank. It still is.

This is my new toy. It’s an Olympus SP570 Ultra Zoom with a 35 mm lens equivalency of 26-520mm. It’s the best camera I’ve ever owned for street photography.

My last camera with a long range lens is a Nikon N-70 film camera with a 300mm telephoto. It is a truck compared to this one. All my photography for the past several years has been with a Canon PowerShot point and shoot with limited range. 

What a trip this camera is. I carry it everywhere using the wrist strap from my Canon instead of the more typical neck strap that came with the camera. It is very unobtrusive compared to a DSLR with telephoto zoom. It’s doubtful that I’ll ever go back to an SLR. 

I’ve got a ton of pix to upload to Flickr. What a time consuming job that is. Check out this set of 3 pix of the Queen Mary 2 leaving the harbor. They were shot in the early evening at long range through the haze.

Lots more to come! 

See if you can keep up with this guy. Good luck!