Saturday night flights

Warmer weather brought me to Randall Airport recently. While raking leftover leaves in front of my house, I could see planes towing gliders into the sky and decided to make the short drive to the airport.

I did not have to wait long to get pictures of  a plane and glider taking off.

 

This pilot flew low over the airport before coming in for a landing.

I saw this ultralight flying from by house. But when I got to the airport the pilot was finished flying and just lifted a few feet off the runway once or twice.

A hot air balloon crew had started to set up on the side of the airport. But they waited a while, I think for the winds to die down, before inflating the balloon.

The photograph I really wanted to get was the balloon and the moon, which was in the eastern sky.

The problem was that I was so close to the balloon that I had to use a wide angle lens. A telephoto lens would have made the moon larger in the frame.The first photo below is with a wide angle. The second and third photos are with a longer zoom lens.

Here's a slideshow of more photos from the airport that evening:

Saturday night flights - Images by Tom Bushey

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:

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.

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.