Birding photo hike at Croton Point Park.

Birds seen along a walk along the Hudson River in May 2022.

Seagull finding a clam along Croton River, dropping it on pavement at Echo Boat Launch for a nice meal.

Personal running recap for the year 2020

Photo gallery of local birds so far in 2020

Personal running recap for the year 2019

Photo gallery of local birds

Photo gallery of local hawks often seen (and heard!) where I live

Photo gallery of bald eagles and various hawks seen locally over the last year

A collection of birds seen during a run on an unseasonably warm winter day.

Photo gallery of bald eagles and various hawks seen locally over the last year

Personal running recap for the year 2018

As my training is more or less over and I'm in the final run up to the big race, I wanted to post a gallery of various photos I took along the way.

Coincidentally took similar photo in same place a year apart.

I sat on the couch, feeling unwell. Apparently it's possible to drink too much. Who knew?...

A walk rediscovers a childhood connection with a small wonder in nature

A look back at some choice leaf forts built during childhood

I made the trek up to Minnewaska to get in a nice long (and hilly) run. I brought my camera along to get some scenic shots along the way.

I'm a big fan of fresh mint. Thankfully it grows like a weed at my parent's house, so it's readily accessible. I'll occasionally buy it from the local farm stand (and failing that, the local super market). I can't help but try to grow it, although apartment living is not a prime location for growing anything at scale. I'm not one to put all my eggs in one basket. When I get a new crop of mint, I take a few tried and true approaches.

After a brief thunderstorm passed this weekend, my nephew wanted to play outside. He decided his tonka truck worked equally well as a mode of transportation as it did for carting around dirt (of which the deck was sadly lacking) and eventually ran into me. Thankfully no one was injured.

Had a nice weekend with brother and nephew, starting on Saturday with a walk along Croton Landing Park. I couldn't resist the pun, I'm sorry.

The weather sprinted ahead of Spring today, but thankfully I saw the forecast and loaded up my new inexpensive 3L pitcher with copious amounts of oolong leaves for iced tea. At one point it was near full, but I didn't have the foresight to snap a quick picture. Since tomorrow will be another relatively hot one, I'm planning on changing up the recipe later today once the pitcher's contents are tapped out.

Today had perfect Spring weather; low 70s with a pleasant downriver breeze. It was too hard to resist, so I went for a walk along Croton Landing park overlooking Haverstraw Bay (aka widest part of the Hudson River). Unfortunately I only had my phone on me. Its camera is less forgiving than my normal point-and-shoot, so this is the only one that came out well.

Here's another old photo I took in my younger days. It's taken in the Spring outside the sliding door to my old house growing up. I think it has a nice composition/juxtaposition of outside and inside life in early Spring. And you have to love the old school walkman headphones. Just some minor contrast tweaking for it in post.

In honor of real Spring weather today, I decided to scan in one of my favorite photos from back in the day (smudged processing timestamp, but early 90s is a safe guess). It was taken by the side of my house growing up with a simple point-and-shoot camera. I've just done some minor contrast and color correction in post-processing.

I've been going through stacks of old photos. This is a small field near where I grew up. Of course, now it's mostly covered in houses. It was originally taken in 1994 with a simple point-and-shoot. I've adjusted the color, contrast, etc. with Photoshop and then applied a watercolor effect.

I went for a run this afternoon and hit some light rain. On one downhill stretch I happened to look up and saw this, so I paused my running app and took a shot of the offending clouds.

I discovered my inexpensive little handheld camera actually has a night mode a few months ago. I've since tried a couple of shots, but quickly realized I needed it hooked up to a tripod if I wanted something other than abstract art. While this isn't perfectly stable, it's the best of about 10 attempts this evening. It's a 4 second exposure and zoomed in to around 24x optical.

I finally got a chance to do some quality snowshoeing earlier this week at Teatown, covering the Hidden Valley and Overlook trails for a solid two hour trek.

A little while ago I spotted a mantis in my kitchen window. He was more or less doing mantissy type things, namely, not moving. I came back later and he had snagged a moth. I wanted to tell him thanks, but he kind of creeped me out by staring me down while munching away on the moth. I could only think he was trying to send a message. “You're next…”

Nice little holiday recently, which is generally more of interest with little ones since they are still excited by the entire concept of cake and gift giving. The expectations are palpable, not the least reason because they constantly ask if they can do x (where x is eating cake, opening presents, or playing with said presents). Normally I get discouraged when my camera gets a blurred shot, but it really sums up the situation.

Some toddler relations of mine recently met each other for the first time. I tried taking a number of images, but my phone's camera is somewhat lacking. So while I like the moments caught here, I just wish I was using a better camera.

I bought a new point-and-shoot camera last Black Friday. It's a nice little camera. My old one was occasionally not working and the new one has 3x the MP and a slightly better optical zoom, among pretty much all other features. Overall, I like it. However, sometimes, just because something is new doesn't mean that it works perfectly or is… how you say… intuitive.

Last summer during a heat wave I dropped a snow photo, so I suppose in yet-another arctic wave it's time for me to throw on a beach image. Shot from the beach with a storm about to roll in:

We've had two snow storms almost back to back (and cold weather in between), but the weather is supposed to warm up again later this week. As such, I wanted to get out to a local park to do some snowshoeing… especially after the horrible lack of snow we had last year (when it rained whenever we did get any). Panoramic shot during my snowshoe hike through Teatown Lake Reservation:

I'm overdue for a visit back to one of my favorite stomping grounds (quite literally; it has a lot of nice walking trails): Lake Minnewaska. I was going over some old photos and came across this one from a hike I took with my sister almost a decade ago.

Given that we're now in the thick of summer around here, I thought it'd be a fun time to revisit a shot I took a number of winters ago. I switched it to black and white and adjusted the brightness/contrast. Taken at a small local park on the Hudson River. <img src=”/img/2013/P1000104bw-e1372721169936.jpg”” class="img-fluid” title="Winter river snow shadows (2008), black and white. © 2013 Peter Wetzel.“>

I decided to have a little fun with my image editor and toyed with a macro shot I took of a rose at my parent's house. The effects include, but are not limited to: surface blur, brightness, saturation, and oil painting.

Nice day for a run/hike through a local preserve, although I'm not sure my allergies were the biggest fan of my decision.

While it's not technically spring yet, we did have our first nice day of the year the other day (sunny and high 60s? woot!). While the temperature fell back to normal over the weekend, at least it's been sunny. About six years ago one of my neighbors gave me one of her potted plants. Supposedly it flowered, but she had yet to see it and had given up hope that it ever would.

Today was a nice (if cool and windy) fall day, so I took a stroll along the river and snapped a few photos. There were a number of windsurfers and kite surfers; I think they actually outnumbered people walking in the park along the shore :) First up is one with no zoom and lots of glare! Next is a full zoom (10x optical) on some of the windsurfers in the middle of the river; it's really wide there, as it's actually part of a bay within the river.

There is a pair of red-tailed hawks that frequent the air space (and occasionally high tree branches) outside of my window at work. This is not about them; I just mention them because they are really fucking cool. The first time I saw one of them he was on a light pole in our parking lot. He was shredding a squirrel while people walked to their cars below him. That was actually kind of gross.

So, I'm thinking… being taxed is a good thing. It means I made enough money that someone wants to take it from me to put through the wood chipper. Well, maybe I shouldn't go for Fargo imagery. The point is, if I didn't have a job I'd have no cash. So, while it'd be nice not to pay taxes at all, I think I'll take the whole self-sufficient angle instead.

Sunset picture I took on December 14, 2008.