We were at Canalside in downtown Buffalo the other day for a greyhound meet-up. It was a lovely time and I took a lot of photos, but I wasn’t super happy with my output, because the light was really bright and garish and made compositions difficult, and because I screwed up and didn’t check my focus settings first. So I ended up taking every photo with the camera set for Continuous Autofocus, which is what you want to use when you’re photographing something that’s moving, not something that is either stationary or moving slowly.
So, few of my photos had the clarity that I wanted.
A learning experience, then!
The Inner Harbor, also called Canalside, in downtown Buffalo. All those people on the far walkway are there for the annual MS Walk, which we didn’t realize was happening. I didn’t do anything to adjust this photo from RAW because I’m really not terribly happy with it in the first place. Harumph!
If you were anywhere north of, say, whatever latitude it is that the Pennsylvania’s northern border sits on, you were under instructions to get outside and look at the northern sky because the sun was blasting out magnetic particles that would result in potentially spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis, or more commonly, the “Northern Lights”. The last time I saw a truly stunning display of the Aurora was back when I was in college; a bunch of us were inside doing whatever and another friend bursts in and says, “You gotta come outside and see this!” It looked like the entire sky was a blue, green, and red swirl of tie-dye. I’ve never forgotten that.
Last night’s Aurora was much more muted, at least where I live; I didn’t make any attempt to drive out into a darker spot, and while my own street is quiet and not super brightly-lit, directly north of my street is a two-mile-long stretch of car dealerships, which are brightly lit. But I went out around 9pm and looked up .The sky was clear (maybe a Karmic make-up for getting screwed on the eclipse?), but there was still some night-glow from the car dealerships to contend with, and initially I thought, “Nope, no Aurora here.” The Big Dipper was directly overhead, and the Moon was a lovely sliver as it is just starting to wax again. I thought about coming back in, but I stayed out just long enough for my eyes to adapt a little, long enough to see a few wisps of cloud directly overhead, making an interesting radial pattern. I’d never seen wisps of cloud in that pattern before, and they were actually shifting as I watched them…and that’s when I realized that I was actually looking at the Aurora Borealis.
A forever-lesson there: when going outside to look at the night sky, always wait at least five minutes. Give your eyes time to adapt!
I took a few photos with my phone, using the “Night” mode, and this one turned out best after some editing in Snapseed. I’m going to try a couple of my other shots later in Lightroom to see what I can do, but the Samsung S21 Ultra’s night mode did come through for me. I made no attempt to use my Lumix FZ1000ii for this event, as I didn’t want to break out the tripod and all of that jazz and I haven’t done any research as to what settings one needs to use to capture the Aurora. But that’s fine! Photographers like to say that “The best camera is the one you have with you,” and in this case, it was my phone.
The Big Dipper, shining through the Aurora Borealis. One of its stars isn’t bright enough to overcome the Lights.
Much of her history was erased through decades of obscurity and a total and shameful lack of a proper archive where her accomplishments get proper credit. Her son discovered a treasure trove of over 60,000 photos and negatives, and slowly but surely Miller is taking her proper place. More work needs to be done. There are biographies out now, and art books featuring her photos, and there have been a couple of very prominent exhibitions, heavily covered in the press.
Sheila outlines much of Miller’s life, and all of it is fascinating. I keep wondering: Why is this woman not a more household name? She was in Hitler’s apartment hours after his suicide. Her clothes were still spattered with mud from Dachau, and she wiped her feet on Hitler’s bath towels and took a bath in his own tub. Why had I never heard this?
Well, I’ve heard it now, and another name goes on my “Photographers to Study” list.
Last Sunday morning I ventured out to Knox Farm State Park, a favorite local place of mine, to walk and do some photography. I wasn’t all that excited at the prospect, though, because the morning was quite cold and it was the kind of overcast that makes the light just dull and uninspiring. And it was something like the eighth, ninth, or even tenth day like that in a row. I’ll spare my long-time readers my rant about how the worst season in WNY is not Winter but rather Spring, but I did post a whine on TikTok and as a YouTube short about it. Anyway, the walking was unpleasant and dismal, with a constant breeze that was just enough to keep you cold, and of course by this time of year the trees still are bare so you don’t even escape the unpleasantness by going into the woods for shelter from the storm.
In short, I wound up staying at the park less than an hour, and I only took a dozen or two photos, most of which I didn’t even bother editing in Lightroom.
But…
…there was this bird.
Is this the best wildlife photo ever? Of course not. It’s not terribly sharp, and one photographer I follow on YouTube sometimes jokes about the ubiquity of what he calls “BOAS photos”: Bird on a stick.
This little bird (no, I’ve no idea what kind of bird that is, feel free to let me know!) sat in the tree above me long enough for me to get two photos, and then he flitted across the path to a birdhouse on a pole. I watched him there and I was happy to have snapped its photo twice, but then I realized that there was another bird inside the birdhouse, sticking its head out.
It’s nice to step back and look at my progress in photography and notice that I’m reaching a point where even when I’m not really feeling it and am in fact going to pull the plug and go home early, I still stand a good chance of getting something good!
Last week my Brother-in-Law visited us, and one of the things we did was go to the Botanical Gardens, which is always a terrific time, as well as a great place to practice photography! I organized my edited shots from that day into this Flickr album, but here are my favorites from that day:
From the front steps of the Gardens, you can see the looming edifice of Our Lady of Victory Basilica.
A mobile of Japanese umbrellas in the main rotunda. This took a bit of editing, but I like how it came out!
In the time we’ve been going to the Gardens, I’ve probably taken at least two dozen attempted mirror selfies in this wonderfully ornate mirror. Somehow they usually don’t turn out, mainly because I always try to do these quickly before someone comes along. This time I said the hell with it. I’ve really developed something of an ability to say “I have this camera and I’m getting my shot!” of late….
This Buddha statue, in the wonderful Tropical Plants room, is not only my favorite subject at the Gardens, but it’s one of my favorite photographic subjects anywhere in the area. I always take multiple shots of this statue when we’re there. This one turned out pretty well! The key here was the leaf in the foreground, partially shrouding the Buddha and giving the photo some depth. The fact that I’m getting shots like this is a sign, I hope, that I’m leveling up as a photographer!
I have a lot more photos from last weekend that I haven’t even edited yet! If you’re looking for a hobby that will eat some time, photography’s the one, folks.
The answer: “This type of widescreen photograph can be created in Lightroom by stitching together multiple photographs from a single vantage point.”
“What is a panorama?”
Last Sunday I was at Chestnut Ridge park on a wonderfully clear day, and thus I was able to take a series of shots of the entire Buffalo-Niagara region, with visibility all the way to Niagara Falls, ON and beyond, and I was further able to experiment with creating a panorama in Lightroom. And here it is:
I know, that’s…tiny, as presented here. For the full-size enlargeable version, go here. I’m very happy with how this turned out! For one thing, I never realized that the OLV Basilica in Lackawanna can be seen clearly from up there.
Via Leanne Boulton, one of my favorite photographers working today. Boulton resides in Scotland and primarily produces street photography, which is one of my favorite genres. And as great good luck would have it, this photo appears on a day when it’s actually sunny and warm in Buffalo! Since we just had five inches of snow the other morning, I’ll take it.
(I am long on record as loving winter and snow, but my personal cutoff for when I get annoyed by it is St. Patrick’s Day. Once the Irish folk have calmed back down, I’m done with snow. In an act of climatic disobedience, I refused to shovel any of this most recent snow. Screw that, says I! My car can easily drive through it, and as I write this, my driveway is every bit as clear as the people who insisted on shoveling this weekend.)
Last week I was blessed with (a) a clear night, and (b) very little moonlight. This led to a brief astrophotography session outside, where I set up my tripod right in my driveway, set my camera’s focus for “infinity”, bumped up the ISO a bit, set the shutter for various lengths, and took photos.
This resulted in a lot of clunker photos, but…not all! One thing I’m quickly learning is that the formula “take a bunch of photos during a session and maybe you’ll have a few keepers” is quite normal, even for really good photographers. I was happier with my star photos than with my moon photos; clearly I have work to do in that particular department. I still have quite a bit to learn, but for now, these are much better than my first efforts at astrophotography with this camera, last summer.
I really think my problem with the Moon is one of getting the right focus and light settings.
Orion and Canis Major, rising over one of the big trees at the end of the street. I love astrophotography photos that combine the sky with a terrestrial element, like this tree.
Just Orion this time, with other stellar friends.
If you follow the three stars of Orion’s belt to the left–“southwest” across the sky–you encounter Sirius, the brightest star in our sky, in its constellation home of Canis Major. If you follow those same belt stars the other direction, though, you’ll find a small stellar cluster called the Pleiades. That’s them near the center of this photo. The Pleiades are utterly stunning through a telescope, but to the naked eye they are very dim. Luckily this timed exposure captured them nicely!
Of course, there’s a major celestial event coming up in just a couple of weeks that will test my photography skills in a unique way that I’m not likely to get another chance to practice in my lifetime. I’m starting to get excited for the eclipse!
Photos from a short walk at the Orchard Park Railroad Depot yesterday. The Depot, you may remember, has been lovingly restored after years of neglect after the trains stopped running, and the tracks are now a rail trail.
The glass insulators on the old railroad power line poles always fascinate me when they’re still intact up there, even after all these years. My father had a coworker years ago who loved railroads and he had a few of these insulators on the shelves in his office.
I hope this person properly penalized themselves a stroke! (The rail trail borders a golf course.)
My phone, taking a picture of me as I took a picture of it. Whoa.
I like how this turned out. I got the colors exactly the way I wanted them. This one, and the next, were edited in Snapseed; the ones above were edited in Lightroom.
I honestly think I nailed my personal appearance yesterday!
These weren’t the only photos I took! I actually took a bunch, but of those only these were the real keepers; some others were actually practice photos I really don’t intend to do much with. I was using a new ND filter that stops a ton of light, and I used it to practice a bit of shutter-speed work as well as a couple of shots of the sun, just to get used to using it before the Total Eclipse of the Heart–er, Sun happens on April 8.
Later this week, they’re saying we may get snow. I mean, fine, winter’s not technically over yet, but today, as I write this, is St. Patrick’s Day, which is generally my personal cut-off point beyond which I am pretty sick of snow. Though this year hasn’t produced nearly enough snow for me to be sick of, so…I guess we’ll see how I feel.
