Local Sights

Many of you will have seen these photos before. After three decades of (mostly) taking snapshots of my kids growing up and then of the grandtwins, I felt inspired by photos many of my friends were posting online. The urge to grab my camera struck me. The only camera I had at that time was a Kodak Z1012 IS point & shoot. However, I had long said that even with a cheap disposable camera you can take some awesome pictures if you know what you are doing and understand the camera’s abilities – what it can and what it can’t do.

So with that in mind, I headed out into my neighborhood to see what I could find.

I started off in the area immediately around my house.

From there I walked just a few blocks, where, unknown to even most who live here, is a forgotten cemetery from the 18th and 19th centurys. The names on many of these tombstones can be found around the neighborhood as street names. These are some of the earliest (European) settlers on the island.

Right behind the cemetery sits another kind of burial ground. At one time this was a working shipyard where many of the local working ships (including the Staten Island Ferry) were serviced and repaired. Today, the only reminder of its existence are a few rotting hulks.

And then my last stop was at the most southern point on Staten Island, New York City and New York State. Here is the Conference House where Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Edward Rutledge met with Lord Howe to try (unsuccessfully) to prevent the American Revolution.

And just in case you want to see more of this shoot: