This year, in talking with my eye doctor I learned that prolonged exposure to ultra-violet light is a factor in the formation of cataracts. Sunglasses help to prevent this. Why I am just learning this I do not know but I do know that my family has a propensity for cataracts. Both my grandmother and my father have had cataracts. I too, have the beginning stages of a cataract. Not to fear though, on a scale of 1 to 4 mine’s about a 0.5. My doctor assures me that I have many more years before I will have to deal with it head on.

Once I re-learned (dumb) the importance of sunglasses I went ahead and ordered a pair along with a new pair of regular glasses. Yesterday I picked up both pair and today I took my first walk along the river with my new Ray Ban Polarized Prescription Sunglasses. Holy shit…!! What a difference…!! Everything was clear, the water was a deep green, there was no glare, I could see to the bottom of the river, all the colors of everything were brighter and more saturated. I felt like I was walking in OZ.

Because of my love of photography I very rarely go anywhere without a camera and today was no exception. I had my Canon S95 advanced point & shoot with me. It has a large, roughly 2″×3″ display on the back and lots of menus and controls.  Typically, as I walk, if I see something interesting I’ll stop and shoot a photo or two and then move on. Today I came upon an interesting pile up of sticks along the waters edge. As I composed the shot I turned the camera from a landscape to a portrait orientation and much to my surprise, the display blanked, it went completely black! WTF over…! I turned it back to landscape and the display lit back up with the pile of sticks. I turned it back to portrait and it blanked again. Shit…..so I took the photo in landscape orientation and started walking again.

For the next 35 minutes as I walked, I reset the camera twice and went through every menu and setting at least three times trying to figure what I might have done to enable the magical “Portrait Orientation Display Blanking Mode”. I could not figure it out and I almost tripped and fell down the river steps into the water. Nice..! No matter how I held the camera, pointed up to the sky or pointed straight down to the ground as soon as I turned it to a portrait orientation the display blanked. By this time I was convinced that my camera was FUBAR.

As I approached the Market Street Bridge where the water starts to get deeper I noticed a very large catfish lying on the bottom of the river about 4 feet down. Now, so you know, it’s not unusual for me to speak out loud when I’m alone (I’m crazy) and just as I said, “I can see you Mr. Catfish”, it dawned on me what my camera problem was. It wasn’t my camera at all, it was my new Ray Ban Polarized Prescription Sunglasses. As I turned the camera the polarization blocked out the display. When I took off the glasses I confirmed that the display was there the whole time. I felt like such an idiot. I don’t know how I would have explained falling in the river losing my new Ray Ban Polarized Prescription Sunglasses and ruining my camera all in one lunchtime outing.

And when I got back I learned from Mr. Google:

Polarizing lenses work by filtering out horizontal light that causes glare. Imagine those slatted window blinds in an office, that’s kind of how polarizing lenses work. LCD displays also have a polarizing filter, but the “slats” are generally at around a 45 degree angle. this means when you tilt your glasses at the right angle, all of the light is filtered out and the screen becomes blank.

It’s good to learn something everyday.

National Nurse Anesthetists Week is a yearly celebration occurring in the last full week in January. It began in 1999 and this year, 2012, will mark its 13th year. This year’s theme is “Quality and Excellence in Anesthesia Care.”

From the AANA website, “Established by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA), National Nurse Anesthetists Week was created to encourage CRNAs [Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists] to take the opportunity to educate the public about anesthesia safety, questions to ask prior to undergoing surgery, and the benefits of receiving anesthesia care from nurse anesthetists” (AANA).

To kick off the celebration week my wife Robin, and her friend Natania, both of whom are practicing CRNA’s, planned and orchestrated a CRNA Dance-A-Thon. The 4 hour nonstop Latin dance marathon, hosted at the LA Fitness Club  in Camp Hill, PA raised over $3100.00 for the Central Pa Food Bank.

As a “CRNA Husband” I had the wonderful opportunity to photograph this charity event from start to finish. Here are some of the photos from the day.

I would like to personally thank everyone who contributed a donation to the food bank. Your generosity helped to make this a very successful event! A very special thanks goes out to Robin and Natania,  Sara Myers, from the Central PA Food Bank, LA Fitness and their instructors Alexis, Kelly and Flo. They were awesome and kept everyone movin and groovin the entire 4 hours. In addition, thanks to all the York College of Pennsylvania/Wellspan Health Nurse Anesthetist Program students and graduate CRNA’s for helping man the registration-education table and participating in the marathon. The YCP/Wellspan program is a top notch, class act and their students reflect it…!

All comments are welcome.

Our weekend adventure began Friday afternoon with the drive out to the great city of Pittsburgh. Robrandi, Jess, Phil and myself all rode together. Meg and Troy drove separately and met up with us later in the evening at the hotel. Along the way we stopped in Monroeville and had dinner at the El Campesino Restaurante Mexicano. Even though this is a family oriented Mexican style restaurant the food was good, the wait staff was prompt and courteous, the drinks were cold and the chips were pointy.

Leaving the restaurant, we drove through the city, across the Fort Pit Bridge and up the hill to Green Tree and the Doubletree Hotel. This hotel was previously a Marriott and then a Radisson and was just recently purchased by Hilton and turned into to a Doubletree Hotel. The hotel is just 3 miles outside the city of Pittsburgh and conveniently, they offered round-trip shuttle service to and from the Gateway Clipper Fleet at Station Square on New Years Eve. Because our celebration plans included a 3 hour cruise on the three rivers aboard the Fleet’s flagship, The Majestic, this was a perfect location for us to stay.

After checking in and depositing our luggage in our rooms we ventured downstairs to the Rivers Lounge to await the arrival of Megan and Troy. Our bartender, Mike,  was very nice and he kept us entertained with stories of his travels to Disney World, his triple bypass surgery, and how, “back in the day, this hotel was the place to be seen in Pittsburgh”. According to Mike, all the visiting professional sports teams used to stay at the hotel and it was also a common hang out for some of the Steelers. Not so much today though.

When Megan and Troy arrived we had a few more drinks, some late night munchies and then we retired for the evening. Saturday’s itinerary included a a late morning visit to my parents house in Green Tree and then back to the hotel to get ready and depart for the New Years Eve dance cruise. No one wanted to be tired for the big cruise.

Late Saturday morning we left the hotel, grabbed some Starbucks coffee and some Einstein Bros bagels up on Green Tree Road and headed to my parents house for a short visit. The visit was nice. Along with my parents, we got to see two of my brothers, three of the nieces/nephews and Elwood, the dog who never blinks. Elwood loves Jessie and stared at her the entire time. After saying our goodbyes we returned to the hotel to begin getting ready for the evening dance cruise.

Back at the hotel, as everyone got ready I made a food run up to Vincent’s of Green Tree. Vincent’s is a small restaurant on Mansfield Avenue offering Italian cuisine and pizza. It’s actually pretty good. The cruise offered snacks but not dinner so we did Vincent’s. Close to 7:00PM we all met in the hotel lobby to board the shuttle for the trip to Station Square and the boat dock. The shuttle, it turns out was a Charter School Bus. The trip to Station Square was only 15 minutes but our bus driver drove like a crazy man and when we arrived, we were all feeling a bit queasy. Robrandi remarked that after drinking all night the return trip was going to be interesting if we had the same crazy driver.

Our boarding time for the cruise was 8:30PM so having arrived a 7:15PM we had some time to kill. Right up the street from the Gateway Clipper Fleet dock are like 3 or 4 bars including Pittsburgh’s Hard Rock Cafe, Buckhead Saloon and Bar Louie. We decided to stop at Bar Louie for some “Pre-Cruise” cocktails. Bar Louie is a serious drinking establishment. It has one of the biggest bars that I have seen in a long time. We found a nice table near the bar and had a few rounds. At 8:30PM we left and made our way over tho the Gateway Clipper Fleet dock.

When we arrived at the dock to board the cruise ship we learned that we would be sailing on the Gateway Empress and not The Majestic. The First Mate informed us that originally The Majestic, the larger of the two ships, had a band and the Gateway Empress had a DJ. Because they booked slightly over 500 people for the DJ and only 240 people for the band they had to switch the ships. We sailed on the Gateway Empress with 240 people and the band called Twice As Nice. The Majestic left the dock with 500 people and a DJ.

Once we had the correct ship, boarding was easy. You had to be 21 to board the cruise but I don’t think anyone’s id was checked. On the gangway we stopped and had our picture taken by Sharpshooter Lab. They came around later in the cruise and sold the photos that they took at boarding time. There was an 8×10, a 5×7 and 2 wallets. I think the whole package was $25.00. Upon boarding we were given our table assignment, table 208 on the second floor. When we arrived at our table our waitress for the evening greeted us and took our drink orders. There were several snack tables set up with crackers, cheeses, fruits, chips and pretzels. We dug right in. The ship was all decked out in balloons, streamers, mirror ball and full New Years Eve regalia. It was awesome…!!

At 9:30PM the gangway swung free and we set sail up the Monongahela River.

The cruise lasted 3 hours from 9:30PM until 12:30PM. During this time we sailed up the Monongahela, back down around the point and up the Allegheny River. The timing was such that we sailed up the Allegheny and came back down entering the Ohio River and facing the city just prior to the New Year. The captain’s timing was impeccable. The band, Twice As Nice played the entire time and they were very good. They played a bunch of oldies with lots of slow songs mixed in. There was dancing, drinking, singing, drinking and picture taking aplenty.

With the New Year appropriately rang in and the ship docked, someone got the bright idea to gather up as many of the remaining helium filled balloons as possible and take them out and about the town. The crew were delighted because every balloon that we took meant one less for them to clean up. After posing on the dock for the requisite New Years Cruise Balloon Photos it was back down the street to Bar Louie to show off our plundered booty (hey that rhymes).

No one thought for a second before entering the bar with with over 6 dozen balloons in tow…Hell No…we just barged right in. It was great. We rushed right up to the same table we had at the beginning of the night and set up shop. Somehow our table number, 208, magically appeared, and all sorts of bar patrons came up to have their pictures taken in front of our Balloon Spectacle. I’m not sure if we were the hit of the bar or not, but it was hilarious.

One hour and several more cocktails later we had to leave Bar Balloonie (used to be Louie) to catch the final shuttle back to our hotel. As quickly as we rushed in, we rushed back out onto the street, balloons in tow and headed for the bus. As much as we thought about entering the bar with the balloons, we thought even less about entering the bus with the them. So…onto the bus, with the same crazy driver, and back to the back seats we went. The bus driver didn’t say anything about our Balloon Horde and I’m glad he had side mirrors to see out of because you couldn’t see jack out of the back windows. After we boarded the bus two couples got on behind us and sat down a few seats in front of us and then we were off on the return trip.

Shortly after leaving the parking lot it became apparent that at least one, if not more of the riders were going to become ill. I am not sure if this was due to excessive drinking, excessive bus swaying by the crazy bus driver or a combination of both. I guess it really didn’t matter which, and I’m sure that is why our Chartered School Bus came complete with a Body Fluid Cleanup Kit.  Next one of the girls from the two couples that sat in front of us stood up, put down the window at her seat and began to hurl out into the night. Me being the avid photographer that I am, could not let a photo opportunity like this go by so I snapped  a few pictures of this girl with her head out the window and I believe that someone said, “if she is going to be sick then I’m going to be sick as well”….and then all hell broke loose…!! The two guys in their group jumped up and charged to the back of the bus with one of the guys yelling at us to stop insulting his wife. Whoa dude….. no one insulted your wife, and we all simultaneously yelled at these two, to grow up, sit down and stop acting like jackasses. It was New Years for crying out loud. Well…that didn’t work, the guys advanced forward and a minor scuffle immediately ensued. Fortunately for everyone the scuffle did not last very long, in fact after one of the guys wound up on the bus floor and at the first sight of the blood on the other guys face, it pretty much resolved itself. Meanwhile, Mr. Crazy Bus Driver had his pedal to the medal and he never stopped the bus the entire time. We arrived back at the hotel in about 13 minutes from the time we got on. Once back at the hotel we all got off the bus and pretty much went on our way. Yes, in case you were wondering, no balloons were broken and they all made it off the bus into one of our hotel rooms…!

Once we made it back to our rooms we chilled out for awhile, changed into more comfortable clothes and all decided to make a trip to the Rivers Lounge for one last cocktail. Standing in the hallway we realized that it was 3:00AM and that the bar was closed. Everyone chuckled and this was the official end to our 2012 New Year Celebration.

Despite having grown up, spending my first 20 years or so in Pittsburgh, I could not remember the street at the top of Mt Washington. It’s Grandview Avenue. All I could remember was Carson Street, which as it turns out, is the street at the bottom of Mt. Washington. Not knowing for sure, we wound up setting the GPS for the address of the Duquesne Incline and hoped for the best. After an uneventful drive we arrived at the Duquesne Incline Lower Station at about 4:35 PM. The sun light on the buildings was awesome but we were at the bottom of the mountain. We parked in the Station Square parking lot along the Monongahela River and attempted to catch a incline ride to the top before the sun went completely down. The line for the incline was out the station door across the elevated bridge over Carson Street and almost down into the Station Square Parking lot…!! It took us another hour and eight minutes to get to the top of Mt. Washington, a trip that normally takes about 5 minutes. Needless to say we missed the sun light.

Once at the observation platform, at the upper station, we photographed the Pittsburgh skyline, in the dark for about 45 minutes. We both got some great photos of the city, all lit up, including Heinz Field, The Science Center, Fort Pitt, Point State Park and a beautiful lighted Christmas Tree near the point fountain. Last evening I presented this photo at the Harrisburg Camera Club’s print critique and received a good review and many complements. In fact, today I received an inquiry for the purchase of a matted copy. Yeah…!!! I hope everyone enjoys it.

Finding the bridge was easy enough, in fact there are two big bridges crossing the Ohio River that you can’t miss when you come into town. There is the railroad bridge with two, connecting approaches. An elevated, great stone arch viaduct connects to the railroad bridge from the south and a set of elevated steel tracks connects to the railroad bridge from the north. The second bridge is the Bellaire Toll Bridge or Interstate Bridge as it is sometimes called. The Bellaire Toll Bridge was/is a riveted metal cantilever-truss style bridge that connected Benwood, West Virginia to Bellaire, Ohio. It was closed to traffic in 1991 and is currently scheduled for demolition.

What we didn’t have before we got there was any information on the Bellaire Toll Bridge and as a result I have no photographs of this bridge (yet). As it turns out this bridge was also in a movie. Special Agent Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) is shown crossing this bridge in an aerial shot toward the end of The Silence of the Lambs, on her way to investigate a lead in the fictitious town of Belvedere, Ohio.

I’m not sure if we were to hungry from our shoot at Mount Wood or we just couldn’t “see” any images at the railroad bridge but we didn’t stay very long in Bellaire. I only have a few photos of the north and south approaches to the railroad bridge that I can share.

Next week I have plans to go back to Ohio to get some photos of the Bellaire Toll Bridge before it gets demolished and some additional photos of the Bellaire Railroad Bridge from a better vantage point. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. I will update my galleries after the trip. As always, your comments are welcome.

Additional Information: The Great Stone Viaduct, Adding Tracks To The North, Bellaire Toll Bridge.

Here are a few of my photographs from the Mount Wood Overlook.

Unlike my first trip to the cemetery, thankfully, we were not accosted by any of the toothless locals posing as cemetery caretakers. While at the overlook however, a little 87 year old man walked up from behind and surprised us. Tom asked him if he had a gun. The old guy said no but he had some pepper spray. We just let him through..!

As I blogged before, the Mount Wood Cemetery is a very old, very neglected and very vandalised cemetery. It is truly in a sad state. Here are some of my photos from the cemetery. You can see some of the tumbled headstones and destruction of the mausoleums.

There also appears to have been a fire in the cemetery at some point. There are remains of several trees that have their tops burned off and more than one of the mausoleums looked like the roofs were burned.

Scattered throughout the cemetery are the graves of some civil war veterans. A prominent one that we came across was the grave of Sergent George P. Wilson, a member of the Shriver Grays Company “G” 27 th Virginia Infantry C.S.A. He was killed in Manassas in 1861. A very interesting article on the Shriver Grays by Paul Burig can be found here: http://www.lindapages.com/wags-ohio/shriver.htm .

Tom and I photographed in the cemetery for almost three hours. We made it to the top of the hill and down around part of the backside. There were many more tumbled down, broken gravestones and several more neglected mausoleums. At about 2:00PM we had decided that we had seen enough of the cemetery and we decided to head off to Bellaire, Ohio, just across the Ohio River and about 5 miles south.

Leaving the cemetery we descended the hill on a walkway near the front of the property. When we got down near the front gate we came across  a mausoleum  dated 1889 with  a large split in the gable roof and a gaping hole in the end where several of the wall stones had been removed. We both had witnessed the dilapidated state of this cemetery but I don’t think that either of us was prepared for this.

The image below is the inside of the 1889 mausoleum, photographed from the large hole in the side. I was able to shoot a hand-held HDR sequence but this image is from a single photograph. Right or wrong I felt it too compelling to pass up. It appears that at one time there were four caskets in this mausoleum and that the two top boxes have been pried open and there contents laid bare. Contained in the debris are several cans, including a Budweiser can and a Sprite can, a Styrofoam cup and some plastic food containers. There appears to be a bone laying on the casket on the right hand side. Considering the date of the mausoleum, I don’t think that it is from one of the original inhabitants but I don’t know for sure.

Recently I took part in a digital image competition where the judge, critiquing one of the images of a captive animal, put forth the notion that the image bordered on exploitation. I don’t know if this is exploiting the dead or not but I know for sure that the conditions that I have photographed here are deplorable. How do we get to the point where we are peering into a 122 year old tomb complete with shattered caskets, bones and Budweiser cans..?

I wonder what you think of this image..? All comments are welcome. How I got the photograph.

Coming soon, the rest of the trip, bridges in Bellaire, Ohio and the Pittsburgh skyline.

Getting into Wheeling was simple enough. It was the first exit, 1A,  after crossing the Ohio River on the Fort Henry Bridge. After the exit it was two left hand turns onto Market Street, one mile and then a left onto Mt. Wood Road. Somehow I managed to miss  the ”y” in Market Street and I found myself headed the wrong way onto an exit ramp for Rt 70 west. Luckily there was a road crew painting some new lines and they stopped me before I got into a collision. I had to back up rather then just pull a u-turn because the road crew didn’t want me screwing up their fresh paint job. Okay….whatever…!

After re-circling the block I made it onto Market Street and then Mt. Wood Road and I arrived at the Mount Wood Overlook. To my surprise there was an old cemetery named, Mount Wood Cemetery, of course, located directly across the street. Great I thought… I’ll shoot at the overlook and then head into the cemetery. The view actually looked better from the top of the cemetery.

At first glance, from the bottom of the parking lot, the overlook appears to be just a series of concrete slabs with short walls set in the top of the hill. After you approach it though you realize that it looks like the beginning of some sort of castle construction or military fortification that was never completed. It has several flights of stairs, including a curved stair down through one of two bastions located at the southern end. The structure is covered with graffiti of all shapes, sizes and colors. It was a very interesting place to photograph.

After spending an hour at the overlook I decided to venture across the street into the Mount Wood Cemetery. The cemetery gate was open and it did not appear that anyone was inside.

The Mount Wood Cemetery  is a very old cemetery located on the side of the mountain above Wheeling. With out a doubt, it has suffered much neglect and vandalism through the ages. Many of the grave stones have been toppled over or are leaning very precariously. None of the mausoleums that I saw had any of their original doors or windows. They were all blocked up solid with bricks and mortar. One of the mausoleums even appeared to have an sizable hole in it’s roof. Aside from the grass being mowed it did not appear that there was any sort of maintenance being performed at all.

Unfortunately, I did not get to spend very much time photographing in the cemetery. While I was setting my tri-pod up for my next shot, a toothless man and his hairy legged girlfriend/wife approached me from behind. The guy launched off into a curse word laced tirade about how I wasn’t supposed to be in there knocking over gravestones and vandalizing the property and such. Really….??? I was standing there behind my tripod and camera. Was the guy blind as well as stupid..? This tirade went on for about 5 minutes. At some point the guy indicated that he was the “Caretaker” and that he was throwing me out. At this point the hairy legged girlfriend/wife in a dirty lime green and pink dress pulls out her cell phone and proceeds to announce that she is calling the police. Well…that’s all folks…!! There was no way I was sticking around to meet the Wheeling, West Virginia Police in the Mount Wood Cemetery. I grabbed up my camera and high-tailed it back to my car. Thankfully I made it out of Wheeling without seeing any police or hearing any sirens.

My overlook photos can be viewed here: Mount Wood Overlook Photos and my cemetery photos here: Mount Wood Cemetery Photos.

I did not manage to get any photos of the “Caretaker” and his escort. I was in too big a hurry to get out before the police arrived. As a final note to this blog, I was just contacted by my camera club friend, Tom and we have scheduled a return to Mount Wood trip for the day after Thanksgiving. This time I will have reinforcements. Stay tuned….

As always, your comments are welcomed.

From the http://dillsburgfarmersfair.org website:

“In 1915 a group of prominent business leaders decided to establish an annual event that would draw farmers to town and promote goodwill between the farmers and local business establishments and provide the community with a homecoming and harvest celebration.”

The fair has lots of events including a Farmers Fair Queen contest, a cross-cut saw competition,  a cattle display, a hand-turned ice cream contest, an antique car show, a street rod and custom car show and an antique tractor show. There are several parades, numerous street vendors and all kinds of food vendors. In the Community Hall there are displays of items submitted by members of the community.

From the http://www.dillsburgfarmersfair.org/communityhall.php page:

“The Community Building will display what you and your neighbors have been growing, canning, designing, sewing, baking, drawing, painting and taking pictures of during the past year.”

This year I entered the Farmers Fair photography contest and submitted 6 photographs, including 3 color and 3 black and white images. The color photos were 16 × 20 framed, ready to hang and the black and white photos were 16 × 20 matted only. Despite some difficulty understanding the entry regulations and the hanging method I eventually had all six photographs delivered by the Wednesday deadline. All the photograph entries were hung and then judged. When Robrandi and I walked through the Community Hall on Saturday I was very surprised to find that I won 2 first place ribbons, 2 second place ribbons and 1 fourth place ribbon along with prize money totally $55.00. Now ain’t that something…! I didn’t even have to bring my tractor or my cows to town.

I don’t know who did the judging but if you are out there, thank you very much, I am flattered. Below are all of my entries.

Friday sometime before we got to the cottage the telephone service went down and today the electricity went out in the snowstorm. I called on my cell phone to report the electric outage but I had to use the telephone number of where the outage was so that they could contact us back for the repair appointment. That’s the phone line that went down….uggg..!! I could not get a service representative on the line to save my life. Meanwhile, Fanny kept saying, “just tell them there’s an elderly person in the house and there’s no heat that’s what I always do”. I’m talking to an automated system with one word answers and Fanny can’t understand it’s not a real person on the other end of the phone. Crazy time I tell you…!!

Thankfully the power came back on around 7:00PM. When you are out in the middle of the woods you never know weather a squirrel got into a transformer or a tree fell and took down an overhead line. Who knows when the phone will be fixed. The appointment is for sometime between Tuesday of next week and the third Friday of October in 2015. The operator assures me that no one needs to be at the cottage to have it fixed. Okay… I tell her that there are two locked gates between the road and the cottage so just tell the service repair person to make sure they drive their flying trucks when they decide to get here. No one listens anymore..!!

Anyway, here are some images I made of the October Snow.