According to the signs at the Botanical Gardens two Saturdays ago, those are the names of the persons who were getting married at a ceremony at the Gardens while we were there. Sure enough, as we arrived in one of the rooms bordering the courtyard, there was the wedding, just finishing up. How did I know they were just finishing up? Because we arrived in this room as “Ladies and gentlemen, I now present Mr. and Mrs. ____”, at which point the groom kissed the bride.
I, of course, armed with Miranda, saw a good opportunity for framing up a good shot.
A minute later I was at the other end of the room (the Orchids and Tropical Plants room), and our newlyweds did their recessional, which meant that they were walking toward me in the room, and when they reached the back of the courtyard, they paused for another kiss…which gave me another opportunity to frame them up:
Truth be told, I like the second one better than the first. They’re not partially obscured by their guests in their seats, and I was able to use the string lights inside to offer a bit of added symmetry.
I’ve noticed, as I practice photography, that I really like framing. I’m always on the lookout for good opportunities for framing, and the windows at the Botanical Gardens, with their old weathered glass and wood, offer up really nice opportunities for framing. I’m mildly amazed that Dave and Twiggy’s paid photographers weren’t inside getting good framed shots of their own. What were they thinking! Amateurs!
(I’m kidding there, by the way. I’m sure those photographers are professionals who know way more about wedding photography than I do.)
Anyway, congratulations to the happy couple, and thanks for providing a novice photographer a nice opportunity for practice!
Heavens, what a week it was! Bad? No, not at all. But very, very busy. Work gave me a quite proper arse-kicking this week, oh yes it did. I’ll recover in days to come, but for now, here’s a shot I quite like from our trip to Toronto in April. I love that city and this was our first trip there since my new dedication to photography in general and street photography in particular. This was taken on a Sunday evening at Sankofa Square, which is at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, just across from Eaton Centre. For this shot I slowed down my shutter speed to roughly 1/5 of a second, which is just about as slow a shutter as I can manage while shooting hand-held. The idea here is for some elements to be still and sharp, while elements that are in motion (people, cars) are slightly blurred.
I haven’t edited this photo yet, seeing as how I jut took it yesterday morning, and I’m a couple weeks behind on my photo edits. But I wanted to share this one now because I really love this vantage point. This was taken on Fuhrman Boulevard on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, down by Wilkeson Pointe (which is supposed to be open this year and sure doesn’t look close to being open, but that’s another thing for another time). I love how the Skyway dominates, but as it falls away, the city rises beyond. Unfortunately this vantage point is slightly marred by the presence of a chain link fence (I’m just now realizing that I should have taken my lens hood off and got closer…but in all honesty, I actually rather like the effect the chain link gives. It lends a bit of perspective, a suggested framing, to the image.)
I spent part of my lunch period at work today watching this video that applies thoughts on life and art and work by Hayao Miyazaki to photography. I will be returning to this one.
If you read my 2024 wrap-up post–which if you didn’t, why not, and hey, it’s right here, go read it and come back!–you noted that I decided to defer any photography in that post in favor of a separate one, because otherwise the original post would have become way too long. Well, it’s time, folks!
First, here are my favorite self-portraits of 2024. In a way, they do all look kinda similar, I must admit….
Charles Burchfield Nature and Art Center
Orchard Park Railroad Station
Chestnut Ridge Park
Overalls look cool from the back, too!
My “Renaissance Faire” fit for 2024!
Now, more general photos. But first, how did 2024 go for me, photographically? I think it went very, very well. I can only remember one or two outings that didn’t go terribly well, and that’s because the light on each venture was…disappointing. That’s to be expected, honestly, and I’m still trying to figure out my approach here. Some photographers won’t even venture out if the light isn’t great, while I am definitely more tilted currently toward “Meh, go out anyway, maybe you get an image or two you can do something with, and even failing that, being out is its own reward.” Honestly it’s not the light that tends to dissuade me from going out, it’s the weather. I can’t really be out shooting a lot if there’s precipitation (Miranda, my Lumix FZ1000ii, has no weather-sealing), and if it’s extremely cold or very windy, it just isn’t pleasant.
I’ve most definitely become more skilled with the technical aspects of photography, which was the whole goal all along when I bought Miranda in the first place. I’m learning more and more about composition and exposure, and just what all those dials and buttons on the camera actually do. And the upshot of that is learning to make better photographs, now that I’m finally to the point of having a solid foundation of the techniques involved. For a while, any really good photos I got were more a matter of luck than anything else, but now I’m starting to be able to visualize and compose my shots before I ever aim the camera.
Another couple years, and I think I’ll be able to start getting really good at this!
(I think I will write a longer-form exploration of my year in photography on the Substack.)
Anyway, here’s a short selection of my favorite photos from 2024. I went through all of my photos from last year and picked out a whole bunch of favorites which I gathered into this Flickr album, for a total of 50-some shots. (Maybe 49 or 50, and then add in the self-pics above.) I’m not reproducing all of those photos here, because who wants to scroll through 50 photos, but these are representative. And at bottom is my favorite shot of the entire year. All of these were edited either with Snapseed (for photos taken on my phone) or Lightroom (for photos taken on Miranda…I also started shooting RAW in 2024).
Here we go! I’m going to group these by photography genre.
Nature/Landscape/Wildlife
I’m not sure what I’d call myself when it comes to these three related, but distinct, genres. I think “Nature” is probably the best descriptive term to what I do, because, well, I shoot anything and everything that captures my eye. I’m just as likely to seek out and shoot a spectacular vista as I am to capture a small waterfall on a stream in the woods that’s not even big enough to have a name on the map. As far as wildlife goes, I like shooting it–but I don’t have anywhere near the right equipment to really get into making wildlife photos, and I also don’t have anywhere near the knowledge the good wildlife photographers need. All of my best wildlife shots to date are birds, and they’re almost exclusively of birds taken near local waterways where there’s lots of people and walking paths and boats. Why is that? Because the birds who hang out in such places generally aren’t terrified of humans and are easier to predict and photograph.
You’ll also notice throughout, in many of my genres, that “People walking away from me” is a common thread. I suspect this is all part-and-parcel of my fascination with street photography and my slow progress at it…but more on that below.
Chestnut Ridge
Chestnut Ridge. This waterfall is very small; the total drop is probably all of three or four feet.
Pure luck! I barely registered that a bird was flying over, so I aimed Miranda and hit the shutter. I didn’t realize it was an eagle until I got home and reviewed that day’s shots on my computer.
A strong contender for my favorite shot of the year. I learned some stuff in making this one. I may discuss it in a video!
It’s amazing to me that I owned Miranda for about 15 months before I ever ventured up to Niagara Falls with her.
Golden hour at the Outer Harbor. I took a lot of good bird-in-flight shots that evening.
Streetscapes/Infrastructure
My favorite genre may well be what’s called “Street Photography”, though I’m still not entirely sure what qualifies as street photography and what does not. Does street photography require people to be present? Does it have to be an urban setting? Is it all candid, or can it sometimes be posed or at least prompted? I’m honestly not sure. I love photographing people doing interesting things, but I also love photographing buildings and architecture and roads and also infrastructure; the way things are made tends to fascinate me. So, all of this falls under that general view. My personal preferred term is Streetscapes, because it echoes Landscapes and because I think it generally sounds a bit more inclusive than Street photography.
Umbrella mobile at the Botanical Gardens.
Woman with phone, Highland Park, Rochester, NY. Taken during the Lilac Festival. She was sitting here talking into her phone. I don’t have any idea if she was on a call or recording a Tiktok or what. I like photographing people doing things. Doesn’t matter if I know what they’re doing.
Person walking along the Outer Harbor. I like the giant grain elevator as backdrop. Also, this photo was my first test-case for Lightroom’s “Remove objects” tool. Originally there were two big, ugly garbage cans marring the shot. Not there aren’t!
Acrobatics at the Sterling Renaissance Festival
Below a power-line tower, looking straight up.
Buffalo Metro Rail train arriving at the station. This is inspired by Kenneth Hines Jr., a favorite photographer and content creator online. He loves subways and public transport and trains and he always takes wonderful photos of trains in motion (or not).
The Giacomo, Niagara Falls, NY
Underside of the observation platform, Niagara Falls State Park, NY
Candid, through foliage. I’ve been practicing my framing skills.
Grain elevator at golden hour. I’m telling you, folks, Buffalo has some of the best sunsets anywhere.
Finally, you gotta get the dogs, because…dogs.
(Dogs are also great practice for wildlife action photography, especially for working with shutter speed and using burst-mode!)
Big stretch!
And here, finally, is my favorite photo of the year. I thought it would be harder to choose, but for some reason, this one just registers with me. I love that I was able to capture this…even if I may have done something slightly, um, less-than-legal to do it.
What happened was this: I spent a Sunday morning shooting at the Buffalo Outer Harbor, but then when I was done, I decided to venture into the city just to see if I could find any inspiration. So I turned onto NY 5 heading east, which in this case takes you up and over the Buffalo Skyway, a big concrete bridge that crosses the Buffalo River and the ship canal area before descending again into downtown. (There’s been a lot of debate in recent years about whether or not the Skyway should be demolished, since it theoretically hurts waterfront development to have this big bridge towering over everything. I personally think that of all the problems facing Buffalo that one is really far down the list, and anyway, I like the drive over the bridge.)
The light that day wasn’t terrific, but I had a nice clear view of downtown looming ahead of me…and a glance at the rear-view mirror revealed that there was literally nobody behind me for at least half a mile. And also, I had not turned off Miranda, so the plan was simple: slow to a crawl on the skyway, grab Miranda and snap a photo of Downtown Buffalo, and then resume acting, well, normal.
It went off perfectly. A bit of processing in Lightroom later, and voila:
Downtown Buffalo, NY, as seen from the apex of the Buffalo Skyway.
Yes, it was a really good year for me and my camera. Here’s hoping for even better returns in 2025!
I took this photo of Orion the Hunter as he rose over my backyard the other day, and then I did two different edits of him in Lightroom. I’m honestly not sure which one I like better. (This was a quickie shot taken on Ophelia, my phone.)
I’m leaning toward the second, because it’s darker and has a bit more contrast for the stars, which makes the Pleiades (the little cluster upper right) a bit more visible. What do y’all think?
A few weeks ago I spent a morning at a particular spot in Chestnut Ridge Park, about as far into the park as one can get without getting out and walking. It’s a spot most people at the Ridge don’t go to, because it’s so far into the park’s interior, but it’s hardly deserted; it’s just far from the entrance. At this spot, one of the park’s streams–I believe this one is actually the one that goes over the Eternal Flame Falls, farther upstream–drops something like, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 or 30 feet, over a few hundred feet of stream bed. So there are a lot of short drops, sloped spots, and deep plunge pools.
On this particular day there wasn’t much water–there usually isn’t, in August and September–so there wasn’t much to photograph by way of flowing water. So while I did get in some nice practice with shutter speed and working with the light, I didn’t get a ton of images from the session that I really liked…but I did like this one. It’s almost an abstract, almost impressionist in what it suggests without being able to depict it without enough water to do so.
Also that day, I photographed this wonderful old well house. Chestnut Ridge has a lot of these, and I’m saddened to think that they’re probably going to all have crumbled away within another decade or two. This one, by its surroundings and the way it always seems to be sitting in half-light, makes me think that I’ve entered a Hayao Miyazaki movie every time I see it.
Last weekend I had an opportunity to go out and do some shooting at Golden Hour, which is what photographers call the rough hour at sunrise or sunset. I hadn’t had an opportunity like that yet, and I am thrilled with the results. I haven’t edited them much, but I did edit this one just to give a taste of what the evening was like.
The old Bank of Buffalo (now M&T Bank) building, with the Electric Tower behind, in downtown Buffalo, NY. Both are reflected in the pool at Fountain Plaza, across the street.
I took the above image last Tuesday, when I spent the entire business part of the day walking around the city of Buffalo, taking photos of streetscapes and doing street photography. This was part of an eight-day vacation I took starting two Wednesdays ago. It was a wonderful vacation: two days at the Erie County Fair, walking the city of Buffalo, going to Chestnut Ridge Park. I took almost a thousand photos during my time off. I also got some writing done, read a lot, and ate and drank very well.
The price had to be paid, though: I returned to work on Thursday and fell “into the fire”, so to speak. We are getting the store ready for a Very Special Event (they happen), which means that I have been incredibly busy there with a ton of projects. The sum of that has been…no posting here for six days.
I can’t promise a return to quite regular posting yet, but…we’re getting there. I think.
From a walk at Buffalo’s Canalside and the Military and Naval Park a couple weeks back, the USS Little Rock presented a particularly nice look. I was there early enough that the sun was reflecting off the water in between the ship’s starboard side, casting a wonderful shimmering dappled effect on the hull. I like that because of photography I am starting to see what light is doing, in addition to just seeing where light is.
The shift in thinking about photography, from capturing images or subjects to capturing light, has been one of the most fascinating parts of this entire enterprise for me.
