Long distance lightning and stars, oh my

Last Saturday night I shot fireworks, again. But I liked the unexpected photographs I took while driving home from the display better.
After the fireworks I stopped at a grocery store. On my short trip home, the sky above was clear, but I noticed flashes of light in the west. My destination changed to a spot in a new subdivision with a clear view of the western horizon. The frozen meals and cold beverage in my grocery bags could wait.



Lightning was illuminated clouds low on the horizon. And the best part for me was that stars were visible higher in the sky. I had never captured a scene with lightning and stars before. Here' another photo with more stars.



The lightning was appearing all across the horizon. To get better pictures, I decided to drive further west and made two stops at the Bashakill Wildlife Management Area. The first spot, at a boat launch, was so dark I had trouble focusing the camera. And I left my glasses at the fireworks.

At the second spot there were lights in the distance to help with focus, and I got some good shots.



The lightning is smaller in the frame because I used a wide angle lens. The red streak and light comes from a fisherman casting his illuminated bobber.

The lightning still seemed pretty far away, so I headed west again, this time to the overlook on Route 52 above Ellenville. Someone else was already there taking photographs when I arrived. The following picture is looking northwest over Ellenville.



The final photo is looking directly west. The storm was actually in Delaware County.



Here's a slideshow of lightning images with some fireworks shots at the end.


Lightning and fireworks - Images by Tom Bushey

My excellent fireworks adventure

My plan was to take pictures of the July 4th fireworks in Newburgh, New York, from the top of Mount Beacon. My plan didn't work.
I did hike to near the top of Mount Beacon, and I will do that hike again. But the trail was much steeper than I expected. Walking down that trail in the dark did not seem like a good idea.
Here's a picture of part of the trail and the view looking north from near the top:



The Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie is barely visible in the right photo.
After walking back down the mountain, and seeing a wonderful sunset in spots along the way, I decided to shoot the fireworks from the Beacon waterfront.
The sky and the water were beautiful even before the fireworks started. You can see the planet Venus in the clouds on the left side of the picture.


I must have bumped by tripod on the following picture, as you can see from the bright light at left, but I also captured a surprise in the frame.

Here's a slideshow of images from before, during and after the fireworks display. You can view the images larger by clicking on the icon under the bottom right corner of the photographs.



2010 Newburgh fireworks - Images by Tom Bushey

3 Days at the Fair races (running for 48 hours)

I have photographed, and run in, many road races. The 3 Days at the Fair races were different. Some runners started at 9 a.m. on Friday May 14 and finished at 9 a.m. on Sunday, May 16.



Runners competed in races of 48, 24, 12 and six hours on a course at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta, N.J. I took the photograph of 24-hour competitor David Castellani on Saturday night.

Here's another shot from Saturday night of Tatsunori Suzuki and Scott Brockmeier running. Brockmeier won the men's 48-hour race. Suzuki finished third in the men's 24-hour race.



The following photo looks to me like a view into the mind of an ultra-distance runner. It's really a long exposure with fireworks in the background and the runner lit by a flash from my camera.



Here's a gallery of more images. Next year I plan to photograph the race again. I want to get there more than twice, and be there for a sunset and a sunrise.


3 Days at the Fair races - Images by Tom Bushey

What a winter

As the Beatles song goes: "It's been a long, cold snowy winter." And we've got a lot of winter left.
I like the cold and snow, and I enjoying being outside in the winter and taking photographs, like the one above this post.

Perhaps I like the snow because I went to college in Central New York, where it seemed to snow almost every day during the long winter season. Of course back then I didn't have to drive in the snow.

I took the following photo while laying in the snow to get a low angle and shoot under the ice.



The picture was taken on a cold afternoon in a wetland area of Goose Pond Mountain State Park in Chester. The only reason I could get to this spot was that most of the wetland was frozen.

Here's a slideshow of images:


Jan. 2010 winter scenes - Images by Tom Bushey

Soccer celebration

The World Series is over, and of course the best team won. But in high school sports, the fall championship season still has a few weeks left.

Last Saturday I photographed the Section 1 Class AA boys' soccer championship game between Horace Greeley and Arlington. Both teams brought plenty of fans to the game, which was played at Arlington High School.

The game was tied until Arlington's Rob Steven's scored in the second overtime period and set off a wild celebration. Take a look at the emotion in the photos.


Arlington wins - Images by Tom Bushey

More hang gliders above Ellenville, N.Y.

I figured a good way to get back to blogging would be to start where I left off, with hang gliding photographs. Only this time the background has gone from green trees to browns and yellows.



I shot theses photos on a weekend, and there were at least 20 people watching the hang gliders and paragliders from the parking areas on Route 52 above Ellenville. I was hoping to shoot down on some of the gliders when there were landing, but most of them continued soaring high above me the entire time I was there.

Since I already had tight shots of hang gliders, I tried to get groups or hang gliders with something else in the frame, like a glider or a bird.


Here's a slideshow of some of the photos:


Hang gliders above Ellenville II - Images by Tom Bushey

Hang gliders above Ellenville, N.Y.

The Shawangunk Ridge above Ellenville is a prime spot for hang gliding. The scenic overlook off Route 52 above Ellenville is a prime spot for photographing hang gliders. You can shoot hang gliders in the sky above and then below, and in the photo below, when they get ready to land.



These photos were taken on a Saturday evening. The sky was full of hang gliders and paragliders.



Here's a closer shot of two paragliders.:



The hang gliders and paragliders land at Ellenville Flight Park. Sometimes you can also see gliders that take off from Wurtsboro Airport.

Here's a slide show of the photos. To watch the show in full-screen mode, click the second icon from the right on the bottom.


Hang gliders above Ellenville - Images by Tom Bushey

High Point monument at night

I took the following photo during a Moonrise Hike at High Point State Park in Sussex, N.J. The monument marks the highest spot in New Jersey.



I carried my tripod as we hiked along the Appalachian Trail to get to an observation post with a good view of the eastern horizon. The moon was hard to see at first because of clouds. I did get this photo, but it's hard to see much besides the moon.



The park also has its own blog: http://www.highpointpark.blogspot.com/


The monument makes a great foreground element to include in photos of the sky. I'm going to try to get back there a few times over the summer.

Eyes on the prize

Sometimes interesting photographs appear right in your (or my) own home. This kitten jumped up on a counter in the kitchen to get a good look at the fish. There's a strainer of the top of the tank to keep the cats out.



Here's another cat photo, this time from the dining room. The cat likes to hang out in this basket. I just added a white foamcore board to the background.

Evening snowstorm

Here are some photographs from a snowstorm on Dec. 19, 2008. I like winter weather and the pictures the weather produces.



These photographs were taken on Highland Avenue in Middletown, N.Y., two blocks from my house.





Here's a slideshow of more photographs from the storm:

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.