It was a cold and windy twilight. But I still wanted to get a photograph of the crescent moon and Venus in the western sky. I knew the pair would be close together because I got an email alert from Spaceweather.com.
I went out just after sunset but had trouble finding the moon. As it got darker, the moon and Venus were easy to see. Then I just had to find something interesting to put in the foreground of my photograph. I tried a church steeple before finding a view of Maple Hill Elementary School.

Then I took some closeup photographs with a telephoto lens. Some were blurred because of the gusts of wind. The exposure was 1.3 seconds at f/4 with a 300mm lens.

Venus is at the lower right, the star Deneb Algedi is at the upper left, and Nashira is between the Moon and Venus.

Christmas kitty

I was taking pictures of my children opening presents on Christmas morning when I heard a noise behind me. It was not Santa scurrying up the chimney but Louie sneaking up the bannister to play with the decorations. I used a slow shutter speed and a Vivitar 285 flash on my Canon 20D. Then I went back to taking more photos of my children.