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I doubt I’ll ever have the patience to really embrace wildlife photography as my genre of choice, but I have to say that I’m very happy with how these two shots turned out. One nice thing about photography I’m discovering is that you get pretty much immediate feedback as to how you’re doing, which means you know when you’re leveling up a bit. Bigger versions can be found on my Flickr stream. Sharp photos of moving birds has been a challenge for me…and I didn’t even use burst to get these!   Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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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 skyDown the rabbit hole….

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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 asDown the rabbit hole….

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In Buffalo, the eclipse was simultaneously an astonishingly powerful and deeply disappointing experience. Clouds were in the forecast all along, but for the last several days, local meteorologists were constantly offering up reasons for optimism…which turned to “Sorry, we’re not clearing out until after totality, bummer, but it’ll still get dark and stuff.” I know these folks don’t control the weather, but for all the technology and scientific expertise they have, it sometimes seems that their ability to offer up any kind of reliable forecast has been whittled down to timeframes measured in hours, or even minutes. I know someDown the rabbit hole….

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Photography, that is. 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. IDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a repost from a couple of years ago. I chose to repost this, about a book by astronomer Sara Seager, because it has lodged in my brain since I read it. I generally try to avoid reading grief memoirs, for various reasons that mainly boil down to…well, I’ve had enough grief in my life already and I know that more is on the way someday*, and it’s a subject I don’t much enjoy plumbing any more than I have to. But sometimes I find a grief memoir that piques my interest and I read it anyway. Smallest LightsDown the rabbit hole….

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It is rapidly turning out that water is one of my favorite subjects for photography. It does so many fascinating things, and its relationship with light is particularly fascinating…. The top three are of Buffalo Creek as it flows past the Charles Burchfield Art and Nature Center. As the Creek tumbles over the rock beds there, it makes a nice bit of mild whitewater. The very first photo shows a phenomenon that whitewater boaters call a “hole”, when the water rushes over a rock in the stream and then falls back on itself, making a small water feature that looksDown the rabbit hole….

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I was at Knox Farm State Park the other day, and a theme that emerged in that day’s photography was “Fallen Giants”. I took a lot of photos of fallen trees and decaying stumps. I’m of the view that trees don’t stop being beautiful for not being in the ground anymore. The beauty of the woods lingers. Shots:   Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Erie County’s Chestnut Ridge park is one of my favorite places and has been for years. This park, larger than New York City’s Central Park, is set on the side of one of the higher hills to the south of Buffalo, and it is dominated by streams and gorges and beautiful meadows and one large hill that’s the regions preeminent spot for sledding when there’s snow…and there are even a few waterfalls. One such waterfall is particularly beloved, not just because it’s beautiful in itself, but because there’s a hollow spot worn into the shale bed over which it drops,Down the rabbit hole….