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.

cross country meet

I started taking sports photographs in high school and never stoppped. I've shot NFL games and college games along the way, but I still like taking pictures at high school events. The access is great. Most of the time I can shoot from whereever I want.

I even like taking pictures at cross country meets, which some photographers find boring. After all, it's just runners running. But you can be very creative at the meets by using different backgrounds, different parts of the course, different lenses and different shutter speeds.

The New York state cross country championship meet was held in Warwick, which is about 30 minutes from my home in Middletown. I got to shoot 10 races, which gave me the opporunity to try things a few times until I got the photo I wanted.

I shot the start of three or four races before getting this photo.



First I tried shooting from ground level. Then I noticed a tall ladder by the finish line. I set my shutter speed to 1/40 and braced the camera on top of the ladder. I have my shot line up perfectly, and then a silver van stopped on the road behind the starter. That ruined the photo for me.

So I waited one more race and got the picture I wanted.

Another work in progress

We have lots of squirrels around our house in Middletown, N.Y. Every once in a while I see one jumping from our fence to the roof of our garage. My idea, as a photographer who loves to shoot sports, was to get a peak action shot of the animal in the air.

Unfortunately, as soon as the squirrel would see me, it would take flight before I could take the photograph. I even tried set up in the yard and then have one of my children go around the house and herd the squirrel in the right direction.

This photo is close, but not exactly what I was looking for. It's a cropped version of a horizontal photo.



The moral of this story: if you see something interesting but don't get the photo, just be patient. Wait for the moment to happen again.

Close, but no cigar

For months I've been trying to get a photograph of a jet, or any kind of plane, passing in front of the moon. I know it's been done before: check out this photo.

My best attempt so far was a near miss in August. I used a Digital Rebel and shot through my 100mm Orion refractor telescope.



I was too early and then too late. I've tried again since then, but have not seen an aircraft cross the moon. Maybe I should shoot near an airport instead of in front of my house.

Vacation photos

I've been on vacation the past week, and I've been taking lots of photos: photos at night, photos at dawn, and lots of fall folliage photos.
For months I've been wanting to get a photograph of a moonlight canal boat ride on the D&H Canal in Cuddebackville. Saturday night I did, sort of. The ride was over by the time I got there.



This picture was taken as people were leaving the boat for the night. I used a 25-second exposure with my Canon 20D. To light the boat and the trees on the left, I walked up to the boat and fired a flash: once at the boat and once at the trees.

I like the way the photo came out. But I think I dropped my compact flash card case that night in the dark. I went back early the next morning but could not find the case. I did decide to go to another location to take more photos.

I drove down Route 209 to Port Jervis and went to Point Peter, which overlooks the city. The fog from the Delaware and Neversink rivers was beautiful.



I'm going to try to get photos at another canal ride later this month. I might also try to get back to that spot above Port Jervis.

Welcome

For the past 25 years I've been a photojournalist at the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. Fairly recently I've started taking more photographs for myself. This blog will be a place to show some of those photographs and talk about how and why they were taken.

As a staff photographer, the pictures I take for the newspaper are owned by the newspaper. And designers at the newspaper decide how the photos will look in print. That's why I like taking my own photographs.