Hang gliders above Ellenville, N.Y.

The Shawangunk Ridge above Ellenville is a prime spot for hang gliding. The scenic overlook off Route 52 above Ellenville is a prime spot for photographing hang gliders. You can shoot hang gliders in the sky above and then below, and in the photo below, when they get ready to land.



These photos were taken on a Saturday evening. The sky was full of hang gliders and paragliders.



Here's a closer shot of two paragliders.:



The hang gliders and paragliders land at Ellenville Flight Park. Sometimes you can also see gliders that take off from Wurtsboro Airport.

Here's a slide show of the photos. To watch the show in full-screen mode, click the second icon from the right on the bottom.


Hang gliders above Ellenville - Images by Tom Bushey

High Point monument at night

I took the following photo during a Moonrise Hike at High Point State Park in Sussex, N.J. The monument marks the highest spot in New Jersey.



I carried my tripod as we hiked along the Appalachian Trail to get to an observation post with a good view of the eastern horizon. The moon was hard to see at first because of clouds. I did get this photo, but it's hard to see much besides the moon.



The park also has its own blog: http://www.highpointpark.blogspot.com/


The monument makes a great foreground element to include in photos of the sky. I'm going to try to get back there a few times over the summer.

Eyes on the prize

Sometimes interesting photographs appear right in your (or my) own home. This kitten jumped up on a counter in the kitchen to get a good look at the fish. There's a strainer of the top of the tank to keep the cats out.



Here's another cat photo, this time from the dining room. The cat likes to hang out in this basket. I just added a white foamcore board to the background.

Evening snowstorm

Here are some photographs from a snowstorm on Dec. 19, 2008. I like winter weather and the pictures the weather produces.



These photographs were taken on Highland Avenue in Middletown, N.Y., two blocks from my house.





Here's a slideshow of more photographs from the storm:

December ice storm

Winter has not officially started yet, but we've already had some interesting weather in the Hudson Valley. The higher elevations of Orange County, N.Y., were coated in ice from a storm last week. Here's a slideshow of some photographs I took on Saturday.



We had more ice this morning. Schools were cancelled. And significant snow is forecast for Friday. I can't wait.

Putting the elements together

I've been trying to get a photograph of the moon over the Middletown skyline for years. December's full moon was the largest and brightest of 2008, because the moon was at its closest to the earth. The moonrise at about 4:30 p.m. was hidden by clouds (and I was out of Middletown on an assignment), so I shot the moon setting.

The idea is to shoot the moon when it's near the horizon, and to have something interesting on the horizon. This location in Middletown has interesting church steeples.




My problem was that from my prime location, the moon was too far to the left of the steeples. To get the shot above, I walked around and ended up shooting between two buildings. The moon would have looked larger closer to the horizon, but the lower the moon got the brighter the sky got, which make the moon harder to see.

This is where I wanted to shoot from:

Moon, Jupiter and Venus

I struggled with clouds and logistics while taking some pictures of the crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus. This first photo show the three objects (Venus is at center) and some clouds, which were a problem early in the evening.



That photo could have been taken anywhere, so what I like to do is include some element in the foreground that adds to the photo. Tonight I was hoping to find a house on a hill decorated with Christmas lights. That never happened. But I did find a stretch of road that led to the conjunction.



The exposure of the first photo was 1/30 at f4.0 at ISO 800. The shutter speed for the second photo was 2 seconds (at the same aperature and ISO), so the foreground would not be black. That's why you can see the "dark" side of the moon lit by earthshine.

After more driving around, often with a car right behind me, I found a perfect location. The only problem was that Venus had just slipped below the horizon. But I'm going to try this spot again. The monument is at High Point, N.J., which is actually the highest point (1,803 feet) in the Garden State.



Here's a photo of a similar grouping from 2005:



And here's another from 2004, when the grouping was more spread out: