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.

I recently bought a spotlight to do some light painting. Here are two photographs from my first night out with the light. In the first, my spotlight lit the island in the middle of the lake.






In this photo I lit the soccer goal. I found out by trial and error that the effect works best if the object is lit from the side. It's kind of like getting the flash off the top of the camera. I put the camera on timer and then ran to a spot where the light hitting the goal would be from an angle. This would be a good setting to photograph a soccer all-star.

A lucky mistake

This photograph is the result of a happy accident. I set up two flashes on the ground in front of my house to take photographs of my daughters on Halloween. I was having trouble getting the flash on the left to fire. It did not fire in this frame.

Louie the kitten just happened to sit by the pumpkins for a few seconds. Too bad Louie is not a black cat.

Both flashes fired in this photograph of one of my neighbors.

A kind of success

As I mentioned in my first post, I've been trying to get a shot with a plane crossing in front of the moon for a long time. When I shot this picture, however, I was looking for a photograph of the moon and colorful fall leaves.



There's a connection between the plane and the glider (in a large image you can actually see the tow line), just as there is a connection between the earth and the moon (think tides).

This is a cropped shot of the glider passing in front of the moon.



By the way, I just noticed that I've been publishing this blog for one year. Happy blog birthday to me.

moon and clouds

I was trying to take photographs of the crescent moon with earthshine through my telescope, but the moon disappeared behind a cloud bank. I took this picture when the moon peeked out for a minute.



I like the pink clouds lit by the setting sun. My exposure was 1/320th at f6.

This second photo was taken a little while later. There is still some light in the sky, but not on the clouds. This photo was taken at 1/160th. By the way, if you ever want to find out the times of moonrise and moonset (or sunrise and sunset) for your location, check out the U.S. Naval Observatory site: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php




Right after taking the first photo, I aimed the telescope at a jet plane with its contrail lit by the setting sun.



Now if I had the moon and plane in the same frame, that would be a good picture. I'm still trying for that photograph.

Night moves

There's a lot of movement in this photograph, if you look carefully.

The picture was taken at 1:16 a.m. The exposure was 30 seconds at f5. The long exposure allowed the moonlight to illuminate the grass and clouds. The moving clouds were blurred in the long exposure, as were the leaves on the top of the tree at right.

The long exposure and the rotation of the earth also caused the stars to trail; they are elongated instead of being points. An even longer exposure would leave longer streaks or trails as the stars moved across the sky.

The constellation Orion is visible at the top of the frame. Orion is a winter constellation that can be seen late at night (or early in the morning) in the fall. The reason I was out taking pictures was that I received an email that auroras might be visible in mid- to low-latitudes. I did not see any.

Another lightning photo

I did some storm chasing last night. The clouds to the northeast were lighting up, and I could even here some thunder, so I drove in that direction. Unfortunately, after driving for 20 minutes, I did not see any lightning bolts.
Then lightning appeared to the south. I drove to a golf course on a hill and took the photograph above.

The golf course green was lit by a bright light on the clubhouse. Too bad they took the flags out of the pins.

That frame was one of three with lightning bolts. But I missed the more impressive shots with lightning over much more of the sky. I guess timing is everything.
My exposures ranged from 15 to 30 seconds. The storm never got any closer. But there are still a few weeks of summer left.

Shadow in the sky

The sky can add drama and interest to a photo. Or the sky can be the subject of the photo, as in this picture I took last month.

The contrail, or condensation trail, from a jet is casting a shadow on the clouds in the background. Here's a vertical version:



I always try to keep an eye on the sky, especially in the early morning or at twilight. I saw the contrail and shadow while on my way to a convenience store to get milk.

It's all about the lightning

I like lightning photographs. Whenever storms are approaching, I check www.weather.com to see whether they will hit Middletown, N.Y. I have a one favorite location I try to get to before the storms hit. There's a nice view of some church steeples to the west (where the storms usuually come from), and I try to get dramatic bolts of lightning in the background.

A few weeks ago I went to this spot, but before I could get any photos, heavy rain started falling. I have other spots where I get a good view of the eastern horizon. I head there to get the storms moving away from Middletown.

So I drove to a spot facing east that has power lines in the foreground. Because the rain was still falling pretty heavily, I wedged my tripod next to me in the front seat of the car. I took more than 100 long exposure photographs. The only one with lightning was blurred. I must have moved the tripod.

This is a photo without lightning that I thought was interesting anyway. I believe the lights are from a passing ambulance. Most of my pictures only had streaks from headlights and brake lights at the bottom of the frame.



A few days ago, another line of storms rolled through and I went back to the same spot. This time I set up my tripod outside the car despite the rain. I took about another 100 pictures. This was one of two with lightning.



This photograph was a 2.5-second exposure because it was still twilight. The other picture, taken at night, was a 25-second exposure.

Here is a screenshot showing some of the frames without lightning.

It's all about the light

Last week I took photographs at my daughter's elementary school chorus concert. The concert was held in an auditorium, but for some reason the children were on risers in front of the stage instead of on the stage.

That didn't affect the sound of the concert, but did affect the light falling on the singers. The children were mainly lit by two sets of lights on the sides of the stage. So the light was not as bright as normal stage lighting, and there were more harsh shadows visible from the middle of the auditorium.

In the following photograph taken from in front of the stage, you can see some of the shadows. The paper plate are causing some, but not all, of the shadows.



When I moved to a different angle, the light was much more dramatic. Some of the photos were blurred because I had to use a slow shutter speed (ranging from 1/125th. to 1/40th of a second). Some of the photos, like this one, I really liked. I think the boy looking up is checking out the circle of changing colored lights on the ceiling of the auditorium.

Road race finish line

I took pictures at a 5K road race near my home last weekend. I used my new mountain bike to get runners at the start, near the 2-mile mark and at the finish line.

One of the best pictures came near the finish line. But the photograph is about spectators, not runners.



Sometimes it pays to turn around and see what is happening behind you. Sometimes reaction photos are better than action photos.

Stars over Schunnemunk Mountain

One of my favorite spots to take photographs is in Salisbury Mills by the Moodna Viaduct, which is a tall railroad bridge over the Moodna Creek. I've photographed there at night before, but not in the winter.

My idea was to get a snowy field in the foreground, the trestle and then a starry sky in the background. But some of the snow had melted, I was having trouble focusing on the trestle and the sky in that direction was spoiled by light pollution.



That's why I took this photograph over the mountain. This was the only frame I had with a car driving by on Otterkill Road. I was using the 10-second self-timer so I would not shake the camera at the start of the 15-second exposure. For this frame I just tried to push the shutter gently and get the car in the picture.

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.