Tag: Buffalo

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The trains don’t run anymore….

Photos from a short walk at the Orchard Park Railroad Depot yesterday. The Depot, you may remember, has been lovingly restored after years of neglect after the trains stopped running, and the tracks are now a rail trail.

The glass insulators on the old railroad power line poles always fascinate me when they’re still intact up there, even after all these years. My father had a coworker years ago who loved railroads and he had a few of these insulators on the shelves in his office.
I hope this person properly penalized themselves a stroke! (The rail trail borders a golf course.)
My phone, taking a picture of me as I took a picture of it. Whoa.
I like how this turned out. I got the colors exactly the way I wanted them. This one, and the next, were edited in Snapseed; the ones above were edited in Lightroom.
I honestly think I nailed my personal appearance yesterday!

These weren’t the only photos I took! I actually took a bunch, but of those only these were the real keepers; some others were actually practice photos I really don’t intend to do much with. I was using a new ND filter that stops a ton of light, and I used it to practice a bit of shutter-speed work as well as a couple of shots of the sun, just to get used to using it before the Total Eclipse of the Heart–er, Sun happens on April 8.

Later this week, they’re saying we may get snow. I mean, fine, winter’s not technically over yet, but today, as I write this, is St. Patrick’s Day, which is generally my personal cut-off point beyond which I am pretty sick of snow. Though this year hasn’t produced nearly enough snow for me to be sick of, so…I guess we’ll see how I feel.

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About Town

Last weekend was a good time to be out and about in Buffalo. We visited the new Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which is the renamed, updated, and expanded Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The Albright-Knox was always a favorite place of ours, and the museum got some good news back in the 2010’s at some point: a wealthy benefactor named Jeffrey Gundlach gave the museum a big pile of money, which led to the museum’s expansion. A whole new building was erected, new art was collected (the museum’s primary mission is modern art), and last year the newly re-done Buffalo AKG Art Museum was finally re-opened. (The COVID pandemic had a predictable effect on the project, that is to say, delaying it a few years.)

As one of her Christmas gifts, I bought The Wife a membership (for both of us, actually), and this past weekend we finally made it to the Buffalo AKG. And yes, it is amazing. It was always a wonderful museum, but the new addition and reorganization of the galleries makes it feel like something from a different city entirely.

 

The next morning–Sunday morning–I ventured down to Canalside in Buffalo, mainly choosing that destination because the weather had been warm and rainy all weekend, so my usual hiking haunts were likely to be unpleasantly muddy.

 

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If God meant for us to shovel snow, we’d have shovels instead of hands!

If you’re at all familiar with what’s been going on in the Buffalo Niagara region lately, you probably already know why I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging this week: Lake Erie decided this was a good time to remind people in this area of its presence.

Cue…the lake-effect snowstorm.

And then…the next lake-effect snowstorm.

As storms go, this one was not as bad as some of the more famous ones we’ve suffered lately…but that’s like saying “I dropped a brick on two of my toes, which isn’t as bad as when I dropped one on my entire foot.”

Plus, for several days I was literally home completely alone, except for Carla and the two cats (Remy and Rosa). This is because The Wife and The Daughter had to take Hobbes (the greyhound) to a specialty vet in Pittsburgh. (No, I haven’t written about this yet, I don’t think. I’ll get to it. He’s OK, but it’s a process.)

So there was lots of shoveling at home, and then I’d get to work, where, as The Store’s resident facilities coordinator, I…got to shovel more. I don’t write much about my day job here, but this photo is representative of the day I had on Thursday (after missing Wednesday completely due to a driving ban and The Store being closed):

And that was just one of the many shoveling tasks I had to do. This is not a complaint: it’s the job I signed up for, and this was an unusual event, even if the rest of the world thinks that this is just what Buffalo Niagara is like every year from October 15 to June 1. For all my complaining, whining, and shouting at the clouds that I did this week, I would still take this over worrying about earthquakes and annual wildfires. I would still take this over having to plywood up my house’s doors and windows in advance of the approaching hurricane. I would still take this over enduring rolling blackouts in very cold months and in very hot ones because my state’s electrical grid is basically a bunch of extension cords patched together and nobody is fixing it because my state keeps electing governors who want to punish brown people, trans people, and women before doing anything productive like modernizing the state’s infrastructure. (Yes, I am calling out Texas.)

(By the way, I did have help in getting all of this done! This was not a case of “Wow, we got several feet of snow, off you go, dude! Let us know when you’re done!” And yes, liberal use of a snowblower was involved.)

So, things were hectic and demanding this week, and in a way that left me with very little mental energy for posting here. Or edditing. Or writing at all. Or doing photography, beyond the occasional cellphone pic of “Holy shit, look at all the snow.”

Because seriously…Holy shit, look at all the snow!

Taken this morning as we were driving about doing errands.

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Thoughts as I watch the snow pile up

As I write this, we are nearing the second 24 hours of this winter’s first big lake-effect snow event. (Or we might be actually into the second 24 hours, as I’m not entirely sure when the snow began falling yesterday.) We got a bit of a break overnight when the snow band moved north, but this morning it moved right back south again and despite assurances from the Local Weather Folk that the snow bands would be “oscillating” a lot (this apparently being their new Word of the Day), from where I sit right now, I’m not seeing a whole damn lot of “oscillating”. I see a whole damn lot of the band sitting stationary right where it is.

It’s weird how the Local Weather Folk (some of whom get kinda pissy if you try asking them for specifics) never seem to get their models wrong in a way that does not translate to the Buffalo Southtowns getting the shit kicked out of them.

But anyway, that’s just the way it is. The snow is supposed to shift north tonight and then again to us tomorrow, but it will weaken as it does. Unfortunately this snow event is not going to be followed by a nice warm-up that will melt some of it off; instead we’re going into a deep-freeze for a few days, so much of this is going to stay right where it is.

Meanwhile, there was supposed to be an NFL playoff game in town today as the Bills are hosting the Steelers. After much hemming and hawing, the game was postponed to tomorrow afternoon around 4pm (right during my after-work commute, so, yay!), which is clearly the right call as the last thing we need right now is thousands of Bills fans clogging the snow-choked roadways, especially with last winter’s disastrous Christmas blizzard still in the memory banks. Nobody wants a repeat of finding dead people still in their cars, so the County Executive, after consultation with locals and with the governor, announced a full county-wide driving ban until further notice.

The effect, judging by reactions on social media, seems to me yet another data point in how car-centric a society we’ve become, because since the driving ban was announced, every post of the County Executives has been followed by comments by the dozen, all with the exact same whine:

“But when can we DRIIIIIIIVE???”

Seriously, the degree to which people in this society simply can’t fathom not getting in their cars and driving someplace is reaching absurd levels. Sure, maybe some of these people have jobs to get to, but many workplaces closed as this storm approached, and most retail locations have shut down as well, so the question naturally arises, “Just where do all you think you just have to drive today?” I posed a variation on that question and some guy huffed at me along the lines of “Some of us want to get out and be productive.” Doing what? Unless you’re operating a plow, the likelihood is that you’re just going to be getting in the way of people who are productive. I’d bet real cash money that “being productive” for this guy meant just…drivin’ around, doin’ errands, pickin’ shit up. I’d bet real cash money that not one “productive” thing he wanted to do couldn’t, you know, wait a freaking day.

“When can we DRIIIIIIIIVE???”

The question seems related to a similar one that arises any time a new construction project is announced pretty much anywhere, but especially in downtown Buffalo: “Where will we PARRRRRRRK???” Because the automobile is the most important thing in society, and any curtailing of our use of our precious automobiles is one of the most grievous affronts upon our sacred freedoms that exists. So now we live in a time when the very idea of “Hey, weather’s bad and the roads are treacherous, maybe just stay home for a day or two” is turned into a cause against which we must take up arms and mount the barricades.

In fact, “When can we DRIIIIIIIIIVE???” isn’t just about car culture, is it? It’s also about the very idea of belonging to a civilization where individual desires aren’t the only thing that matters. In a way it goes back to the meme that’s been circulating for several years now, particular since COVID and masking: “I really don’t know how to make you care about other people.”

We sure have come a long way from the old Buffalo Mayor Jimmy Griffin who famously told citizens during a blizzard to just grab a six-pack and wait it out at home.

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Misty morning at Knox Farm

December has not been a good month for photography. The weather has been incredibly reliable this month: on any day when I have time to get outside someplace and walk about and take photos, the weather has been absolute garbage. And unfortunately, as much as I love my Lumix FZ1000ii, my biggest knock on it is that it has no weather-sealing.

But on Christmas Eve I did finally get out to Knox Farm even though it was misty and damp. Here are a few results:

 

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Scene from Knox Farm, 11-16-23

I was at Knox Farm State Park the other day, and a theme that emerged in that day’s photography was “Fallen Giants”. I took a lot of photos of fallen trees and decaying stumps. I’m of the view that trees don’t stop being beautiful for not being in the ground anymore. The beauty of the woods lingers.

Shots:

 

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To the eternal flame

Erie County’s Chestnut Ridge park is one of my favorite places and has been for years. This park, larger than New York City’s Central Park, is set on the side of one of the higher hills to the south of Buffalo, and it is dominated by streams and gorges and beautiful meadows and one large hill that’s the regions preeminent spot for sledding when there’s snow…and there are even a few waterfalls.

One such waterfall is particularly beloved, not just because it’s beautiful in itself, but because there’s a hollow spot worn into the shale bed over which it drops, and from this hollow spot leaks a small flow of natural gas. This gas burns with beautiful golden light that prances and dances behind the flow of the water. (Sometimes it goes out, but it easily re-lit.)

The approach to the Eternal Flame Falls is not super-easy, but it’s not super-difficult either–and it’s better now that the deep descent into the gorge has been tempered by the addition of stairs. It used to be that you had to descend sharply down the wall of the gorge (I’m not sure of the height of the descent, but I think it’s at least a hundred feet at that point) by a root-covered trail, but now you descend the stairs. The walk along the gorge floor is still occasionally tricky, at times even requiring one to step in the stream (albeit in a spot where the depth is very manageable), but it’s absolutely worth it as one finally comes around the last bend and stands before the waterfall.

Along the way there is another waterfall in the side of the gorge, but this isn’t the one we’re here to see:

But finally, there it is:

As luck had it, when I arrived at the Eternal Flame Falls, I was alone there. For a full ten minutes, maybe fifteen, I was entirely alone: just me and the sound of the water tumbling down that shale wall, with the golden light magically flickering there. I don’t know if that’s because the weather was cold, or if it’s deep enough into fall that such outings aren’t as popular as in summer, or…well, who knows. I was alone.

The one other time I’ve gone to the Flame, I had Cane with me, and it was a warm summer day, so there were lots of people there. In fact, Cane and I arrived just as guy was proposing to his girlfriend. (She said yes.) There was a feeling that day of “Get up there and take your picture of the Flame because it’s someone else’s turn in a minute” that I managed to completely avoid yesterday. In fact, no one else came until I was already making my exit. I took my time with my camera, composing my shots and deciding what angles to take. I got some closeups of the grotto with the Flame in it, and I took some wider shots of the entire cataract, also using shutter-priority to get the soft-flow look that is so popular with water photography.

On my way out.

Full Flickr album here.

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When the Light is Low….

One area of photography I need to work on–well, I need to work on all of them, but especially this one–is low-light photography. I’ve done some experimenting here and there, and my results haven’t been super-encouraging yet, at least, not until the other night, when I got several shots that were workable. Not really good, but workable. We went to dinner at Lago 210, a restaurant that is right on the Lake Erie shore in Hamburg. The views there are pretty special, but when we got there it was after 7pm, and this time of year that’s well after sunset. Visibility was surprisingly clear, given how crappy the weather lately has been around here, and I could see clearly all the way to the city of Buffalo and I could even make out the lights of the Peace Bridge crossing the water. There were blinking lights of beacons out beyond the water, either on land in Canada or perhaps on buoys out there…I’m not really sure.

One of my main problems with low-light photography will be suppressing my point-and-shoot, get-it-quick instinct. This is something I’m working on anyway, the fact that I need to stop for a moment and compose my shots, but low-light makes it even harder because then I also need to adjust settings and study what I’m doing, and this is all while I’m still…well, I’m still not quite sure how the settings work and how to set up the Exposure Triangle to get a good night-time low-light shot. Also, I need to get more accustomed to using a tripod when doing low-light work, because the long shutter speeds make stability essential.

These first two are looking north-east toward Buffalo, which from Lago 210 is about 9 miles, give or take. Both of these I took right around the same time, so obviously my settings were very different!

Larger versions here and here.

I’m not in love with either of these, but I’ll figure it out. Another factor is my zoom lens, which is harder to manage in terms of settings during zooms. This may be a limitation of my particular camera, being a fixed-lens bridge camera, albeit a very good one. We’ll see, as I move forward. I’m determined, y’all!

Then there was this, which was the first photo I took when we got there, looking out into Lake Erie toward Cleveland, about 180 miles thataway. I’m quite happy with how this turned out, even if there’s still more noise than I would like.

Larger version here.

 

 

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Impressions of Buffalo

From a walk I took last week, going from Buffalo’s Old First Ward to downtown and back. My original plan was to accompany The Wife into downtown for one of her days working at the office; I was going to spend the entire day walking Buffalo, taking photos–doing street photography, basically–and then going to the Central Branch of the Erie County Public Library for an afternoon of reading and writing. Alas, Hobbes’s leg injury put that plan on ice for that day, but I still got downtown for half the day the next day. The day was hot and very bright–not the best lighting conditions, really–but I got some photos that I like a great deal. Buffalo is a fascinating place.

Streetscapes: Downtown Buffalo, NY

Streetscapes: Downtown Buffalo, NY

More from that photo-walk here.

 

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