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:

Ring Around the Moon

"Ring Around the Moon" is the name of a Dan Fogelberg song and also the subject of some photographs I took on an October evening.



In order to show the ring, the moon ends up being very overexposed. That's why I used the trees to partially block the moon.

The ring around the Moon is caused by the refraction of moonlight through ice crystals suspended in the upper atmosphere. A moon ring or moon halo will always be roughly the same size - 22-degrees across the sky - because the crystals bend the light at a 22-degree angle from their original path.

In the photo below, the condensation trail from a jet is cutting across the halo. The contrail actually moved quickly across the sky.





Here's another photo that includes a basketball hoop. The backboard was lit from lights on a school playground.

Sunday night lights

I shot the photo below after an Orange County Youth Football League game in Otisville, N.Y., on a Sunday night.



The sky didn't look that dramatic at the field, but I stopped on my way home when I saw this view. I only got a few frames off before the lights were turned off. I was glad I had a tripod in the car. The exposure was 0.4 seconds at f2.8 at 800.



Here's what it looked like with the field lights off.

Chasing a blimp

A few weeks ago the Metlife blimp Snoopy Two flew over my neighborhood in Middletown, N.Y. I thought the blimp might have been going to Stewart Airport in Newburgh, so I started driving in that direction.

But I didn't have to go that far. The blimp was going to land at Orange County Airport in Montgomery, and I was there to take photos. The picture below was taken when I went back to the airport at night. I didn't know the blimp would be lit from the inside.



This is the only frame I got with the runway lights on. At small airports the lights are off until a pilot turns the on from the cockpit when taking off or landing.




The ground crew does a lot of work to get the blimp secured to the mooring mast and then ready to take off again. I went back the next morning to shoot the preparation and takeoff.

Here's a link to a slideshow of some of the photos:
>http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/tombushey/gallery-slideshow/G0000vI_lK4QsEvE/?start=

Even more of the pictures are available on my web site at www.tombushey.com

Run 4 Downtown in Middletown, N.Y.

I'm a runner, and I like taking photographs at races. Here are some pictures I took at the Run 4 Downtown in Middletown on Saturday morning. In this race, the women started 15 minutes before the men. Below is a shot of the women on the starting line on North Street.




I like the next photo, of the men's start, because of the man looking on from the second-story window.









The final picture shows runners looking at the results posted in a window. I'm going to put many more photos of the race on my web site www.tombushey.com soon.

Chasing rainbows

I spent some time chasing rainbows in Middletown, Montgomery and Hamptonburgh a few weeks ago. Here are some of the photographs.



The photo above was taken at my favorite rainbow and lightning spot in Middletown, N.Y. The following three pictures are from Pleasant View Farm in Montgomery, N.Y., about 25 minutes away.







The final picture was taken at Stony Ford Golf Course in Hamptonburgh, N.Y. I was hoping to find some golfers on the course, or at least a flag on the green. About 10 minutes later, as the rainbow started to fade, there was lightning in the distance. That would have made a nice picture.

Dark and stormy night

The hot and humid weather we've been having finally ended with thunderstorms. I tried to get some lightning shots but had no luck. Then I saw the fog forming and moved to a different location.



I've taken shots from this same spot looking in the other direction.

Fireworks from above

This is the second time I've shot the fireworks in Central Valley, N.Y., from the Route 6 overlook. The photograph at left was taken before the show started, but you can see a small burst of distant fireworks in the lower center above the shopping center lights.

I was hoping to get the moon with the main fireworks, but that was not possible from my location. I was also hoping to get some lightning in the distance, but the weather did not cooperate.

Wurtsboro airport

Here are two photographs I liked from the grand reopening of Wurtsboro Airport on May 8. The first shows a radio controlled airplane in the foreground and real planes in the background.






The body language of the instructor makes the second picture. The airport is located on Route 209 in Wurtsboro. To see a slideshow of more photographs of the airport, click here.

Moon and stars, and stripes

Here's a different sort of Memorial Day photograph.



The large flag was hanging from the ladders of two fire trucks on Highland Avenue in Middletown. The Memorial Day parade was to pass underneath the flag. Because of the wind, the flag was rarely hanging straight down. That made for interesting photographs.

Luckily I noticed the moon in the morning sky. Then I took pictures as the wind moved the flag into different positions in my frame.

Here's a shot of the flag with the ladders:

Birds of a feather

Last week I shot photographs of similar birds perched on different objects. I believe both birds are sparrows.

Both pictures were taken early in the morning. The forsythia is on the side of my house. The fence is right down the street.

There's also an iron fence on the block. I've seen birds perched there too, so I'm going to try to add that picture next.

Good start to spring

When the first thunderstorms of the spring came on April 1, I was ready. I found a good location, facing west with something interesting in the foreground, and waited. But I struck out; no lightning in my frames and then the rains came.

So then I moved to my second location, where I should have gone from the start. The spot faces east and has shelter from the rain. That's where I got this shot.




I have an idea for another location, with water to reflect the lightning, that I want to try later in the spring.

Fish in a barrel

After I saw a photograph from the final day of skiing at Mount Peter in Warwick a few years ago, I just had to go to their Spring Rally. Last year I came late and missed the main event. Not this year.



Snowboarders and skiers, including some like the one above in costumes, built up speed coming down the hill and then crossed the water. Most actually made it all the way across.





The two fellows above did not make it across the water. But they did not get hurt either. The event was perfect for photos: the same action in the same spot over and over. That's why it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Here's a slide show of all the photographs:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Being prepared

I took pictures at three Winter Series races in January and February. This photo was taken at the third race. I was searching for a good background to shoot the start when a young runner warming up ran past me. Luckily I was ready with my wide angle lens on the camera.

Lunar Eclipse

The clouds cleared just in time for me to photograph the total lunar eclipse on Feb. 20, 2008. Here is a photograph of the full moon still behind some clouds.

I would have liked to include something in the foreground to show where the photograph was taken, but the moon was too high in the sky for that during the eclipse. My location was at my home in Middletown, N.Y.
Here is a shot of the moon during totality.

I took this photograph through my telescope at prime focus (the camera was connected directly to the telescope - no camera lens was used).
I also took some shots using a wide angle zoom lens and telephoto zoom lens to show the stars that appeared during the eclipse.

This photo clearly shows Regulus above the moon and Saturn at the lower left of the frame.

Big Dipper over the Bashakill

The Big Dipper constellation is visible on the left side of the photograph, with the last star in the handle shining through the trees. I took the picture on Haven Road, which cuts across the Bashakill. Headlights from cars on Route 17 are reflected in the ice.

The lights from an airplane made the line low in the sky during the 15-second exposure.

Click on the photograph to see larger version.

Being there

I drove about an hour to Livingston Manor on Sunday for their ice festival. I knew there would be figure skaters and races. I didn't know there would be a young boy wearing an Army uniform skating with an American flag in a tribute to his father, a major stationed in Iraq.



Sometimes the photograph just happens right in front of you.

Time machine

Although we're six days into 2008, I still have a backlog of 2007 photographs to post. Here they are. You can click on the photos to see a larger version.



Be prepared. I always try to keep my camera with me in the car. On this cloudy November late afternoon I was not expecting to take photographs. But as I was driving, I noticed a thin band of clear sky on the Western horizon. By the time I got near my destination, the rainbow was in the sky.
I would have liked a more picturesque location, but I was still happy to get a rainbow photograph in November. And the sun came out so close to sunset that I didn't have time to drive anywhere else.


This photograph above is of the same shopping mall; this time I took the picture from across a highway after the sun had set. The streaks are car lights from the highway during the long exposure.

The following photograph was taken at Randall Airport in Middletown, N.Y. I have never seen all the landing lights on before or since. Too bad I wasn't there a bit earlier to get the rising moon lower in the frame. The moon also would not have been so bright. I could not get detail in the moon without severely underexposing the rest of the photo.