It’s been too long since I said I’d get some autumn photos to share! The weather has been so mixed (with lots of rain) that I haven’t found an optimal time for shooting, but here’s a link to a new album anyway…
This past Sunday Matt and I enjoyed a walk from downtown up to Cornell campus and around Beebe Lake. The sky was deep blue and that day full of beautiful cloud formations - which makes for great photos. And it’s been awhile since I added a new photo album so here it is, Sunday Walk in Ithaca. An afternoon of photos featuring an array of critters, some abstracts and campus highlights. Check it out…
Our porch has been taken over by these lovely insects:
They’re wingspan is approximately 2 inches across. I had no idea what they were, so referred to the Bug Guide where they identified them as Xenox Tigrinus - a type of ‘bee fly’ that feeds on bee larvae. They “hover and dart, rather like syrphid flies. Often seen about flowers.”
It’s a wonderful thing that Ithaca has several works of art in public spaces, primarily along the Commons. My favorite piece is a 3-foot bronze man in a suit with dragonfly butterfly wings, he appears ready to take flight from the planter box he sits in near Tioga and Seneca. It’s called Businessman in touch with Nature and was dedicated by NYSEG.
He has a new buddy a few feet away from him - an enormous rusted-metal armadillo calf that I haven’t stopped to take a close look at yet, and it’s one of several new (metal) art pieces that have been planted over the past couple of weeks.
At the entrance to DeWitt Park you can’t miss this:
Forgive me (if you are the artist) for questioning how the positioning of this work has any benefit to the community or artistic merit as it stands. At first sight I think anyone would see this as an awkward installation: it’s parked smack in the middle of a high-traffic pedestrian spot, creating an obstacle preventing free movement through the area; sightlines from the adjacent park benches are disrupted; and in a college town with poor night-lighting it won’t be long before that rusty beak makes hazardous contact with an eye - its height is actually at my own eye-level and I’m nervous about passing within a few feet of it. To add insult, the context of its predatory expression tells me to run far away, as fast as I can run. Not ‘Welcome to DeWitt Park, come hang out here’. Where it stands this bird is not art, it’s a nemesis to the pedestrian.
Public art is always a topic for debate and discussion.
Also new to the Commons is a pocked, hammered-metal sculpture of a woman seated against a wall. I’ll snap a pic of that one soon, and save my comments til then…
Another (brief) thunderstorm, another show:
Last night we caught the tail-end of the parade that kicked off this weekend’s Ithaca Festival. I took a few photos but we showed up too late to jockey for a good viewing position. I actually forgot what day it was, but we heard the sound of beating drums around 7:30 and remembered ahh yes it’s Parade Day! It’s surprising we didn’t hear the crowds gathering sooner, since the parade rounds the corner just a block away.
In just an hour and a half the Commons should start rocking (at least the bellies should be, since the Mirage Belly Dance Troupe is scheduled for noon).
Just because the topic of Cornell’s Dragon Day has become so interesting, I figured I would post several more pictures from this year’s event. So here’s the new album.
Who’s the fella dressed as Elvis? He may be our link to the truth of who burns the dragon, since he placed then ignited the hay himself…
A whole lotta fun was had at Cornell today for Dragon Day. It’s an annual tradition where students in architecture build a gigantic dragon, march it through campus then burn it till crisp. It seems a fitting send-off party for spring break, but I can’t say why this was started (in 1901)in the first place.
The parade route covered enough ground to attract at least a couple of thousand people. The architecture students wore an array of bright, glittery and ridiculous costumes while chanting “BURN IT” and racing in circles around sad dragon. I saw a guy dressed as an iPod. Then there was Elvis, some Smurfy girls, fairies and a guy with a plastic rocking horse slung over his shoulders.
I had good position for photos and received enough heat from the bonfire to dry the hair (had it been wet). When only the wire-frame carcass of the dragon remained and its ashes began to settle onto the crowd, people scattered away quickly. But the memories would remain - or the campfire stench would anyway.
Before and after:
Popular and happy, naive dragon
Dead dragon.
Here’s a series of shots I did last weekend at Taughannock park. Fun with trees and roots and reflections. I shot them (with the Canon 20D digital) in colour and converted to B&W in Photoshop. The detail of these at their highest resolution is amazing! Working in the Cornell darkroom has put me in a black and white mindset and though I haven’t done any printing yet, I developed a few rolls of film on Sunday.
More than a dozen images follow…
Buttress on north wall of Fall Creek, near electric railway bridge. The erosion of the gorge wall is partly controlled by joints.
This image came from an online library of public domain images from US Geological Survey’s Digital Data Series 21. I located only two images from this area using ‘Tompkins’ as a search term. ‘Ithaca’ produced no results.
There are also plenty of Canadian images in the database.
You can download higher-res png files too, print them and furnish your home with 1886 earthquake pictures!
