I wish this little guy a long, healthy and happy life!

Hope you love these as much as I do.

Photos are from Death Valley, My room at the MGM and on the Las Vegas strip…. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

So now, do I go to sleep having successfully viewed this heavenly event or take out the camera…. I guess every self respecting photographer has to at least try, but I knew that it wasn’t going to happen through that window since it was double paned and thus showed a double image at an angle…

Outside it was into the 27 degree cold….. brrrrrrrr. But at least we were blessed with absolutely clear sky in New Jersey… perfect for lunar photography!

I managed to snap some shots of the moon’s eclipse, that which will not occur on the Winter Solstice for another 400+ years. Sadly, my longest lens was a 200mm. Even with a DX body and 1.4 teleconverter it was still pretty small in the frame.

This first picture is a handheld shot at relatively high ISO no teleconverter as the moon is entering into full eclipse. Believe it or not, that moon moves! Even with a tripod, any long exposure will show motion blur so you need a somewhat  fast shutter speed.

After going back in to get a few more precious minutes of sleep I returned outside. This photograph was taken at the other end of the eclipse as the shadow of the earth was moving off the moon. This photo is a composite of 3 images to show the part of the moon struck directly by sunlight and the other side still in the Earth’s red shadow. It was at this time I was joined by my neighbor Joe… It was good to know I wasn’t the only one out there in the middle of the night in the cold!

Harriman State Park is where I cut my hiking teeth. I was introduced to it by a singles hiking group about 12 years ago or so… that scene wasn’t for me, but I did re-discover my love for the outdoors (called nature boy as a kid (don’t ask)) and was introduced to this majestic park. At the time it was only 20 minutes away from home and I learned many lessons there about hiking the hard way… Once, early on, I went to the top of one of the mountains to witness a beautiful sunset only to realize that I was going to be going down in the dark…. The woods is not a friendly place in the dark. At the end it, was only by seeing a light at the visitors center that was I able to make it back. You would think that I would have learned the ‘don’t hike in the dark lesson’ but nooooo… Though I didn’t go to see the sunsets anymore unprepared, I certainly did underestimate the time to get out (OK, I still do this one). One time during a 6 hour classic 5 peak grueling Bear Mountain hike I didn’t think about the fact that the hike finished on the dark side of the mountain, combined with the just changed daylight savings time, I was in the dark again… ironically I had a GPS with me, but no lights! So with the GPS I made a B-line for the road… not knowing what ditch, bramble, stream or hill I would have to cross along the way. Embarrassingly, my sister called the police and they were waiting for me when I finally emerged from the woods near my car, lights flashing and all….. Lesson finally learned – since that day I will never go on a hike without a light and backup batteries. I’ve had to pull my light out on more than one occasion, and it’s not ideal for seeing the big picture in the woods, but I am not going through the bramble and ditches anymore.

Document it!    That’s what I was told by my friends and family, so I bought my first digital camera – a compact Olympus  6MP. That thing was great! Lightweight, metal body, high resolution (for the time), and overall well featured. So document I did – with encouragement and feedback from those around me I began to shoot, shoot, and shoot. Occasionally there would be a really great picture – I thought I was quite the photographer at the time. But what I didn’t realize is that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I could not reproduce the results or understand why the pictures were so good sometimes and so bad others. So I began to study…. research on the internet, books, and eventually classes and seminars – initially just focused on landscape photography. The camera is where my heart was, and still is today. Who knew at the time that I would become a passionate New Jersey wedding photographer? Early on, like many, I thought the gear would make the difference in my pictures, so I got better camera gear – but folks, I’m here to tell you, that won’t do it for you – Certainly, better gear gives you more options, but like any other tool, if you don’t know how to use it your results will vary. Gear is no replacement for understanding the basics of photography – light, composition, and posing. This is why I feel so bad for people who choose uncle Bob or a friend to shoot their weddings just because they ‘have a good camera’. Folks, you will never get that day back – unless you have no choice, photography is a bad place to skimp for your wedding. Ok, Ok, I’ll put that soapbox away now….

My hike yesterday…     It was great to return to Harriman. The air was brisk, the light was dramatic, and the colors of fall were fantastic. I decided to limit the hike to just one peak since my hiking legs are a bit underutilized lately. Photographically speaking, I would typically bring lots of gear with me, but I felt like pushing myself this time by limiting the camera to just an iPhone…. Yep, there lots of examples of iPhone photography out there, and here is a small one of mine. I hope you all enjoy them and realize it’s not the camera that makes the difference….

It’s traditional for local folks to paint ‘painted rock’ for events like weddings on the island…  by the next day it was already painted over!