Looking forward to the 4th of July! While I've shot the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks show before, this is the display I won't forgot. I was shooting the lineup with friends when a private fireworks display broke out. Just crazy good luck. Love that view!
tech details: it's a single frame
Explored: July 2, 2023
Tags: new york city nyc new york statue of liberty empire state building one vanderbilt fireworks New York Harbor night photography long exposure manhattan cityscape skyline skyscraper
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Yesterday morning's 8% waning crescent moon rising behind the United States Capitol and the Statue of Freedom.
New camera and old tricks - I'm still doing the moon alignment thing. It's pretty cool when you can setup before moonrise using your plot and then the moon rises to the position you envisioned it would.
Explored: June 16, 2023
Tags: us capitol statue of freedom crescent moon moon waning crescent washington dc night photography nikonnofilter nikonz8 z8
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September's full moon / harvest moon rising over Edge NYC at 30 Hudson Yards and the Manhattan skyline
It was awesome to meet up with several photographer friends for the moonrise. After much planning and coordination (i.e., many text messages), we all made it in time for moonrise!
Moonrise aligned with Edge NYC / 30 Hudson Yards from this position and also with the Empire State Building from a couple of hundred yards down the trail to the right. Given the opportunity to shoot both at the same time, I pre-planned doing this shot via timer. Once I found my PhotoPills-plotted position on the trail, I set up the Nikon D750's timer, bracketed around the anticipated exposure, and walked down the trail to photograph the Empire State Building. My intention was to offset the moon to the right as you see since the Edge NYC platform is on the right. My friends stayed / photographed from this spot, keeping an eye on my camera. I didn't know for sure if this would work, but it was worth an attempt. Since the plot and exposure both worked out, this image is a total bonus! It's a single exposure image.
I haven't posted my Empire State Building moon alignment yet to flickr, but it turned out too. It's posted on my website. I chose to photograph the ESB alignment "live" since I was looking for an exact, centered alignment.
Explored: December 16, 2022
Tags: full moon harvest moon new york nyc new york city moonrise 30 hudson yards edge nyc empire state building empire state bldg citcyscape
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Yesterday's sunrise at Jones Point Lighthouse. The lighthouse is one of the country's last remaining riverine lighthouses (meaning a river lighthouse) and the only one remaining in the Chesapeake Bay area. It is located at the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia, near the original District of Columbia South Corner Boundary Stone (one of the stones marking the original boundary of the District of Columbia). The lighthouse is a National Park Service site as part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway,
Tech details: I used a neutral white flashlight to light paint the foreground in this 30s single exposure. It was only two minutes into blue hour (6:36am) so the foreground was much darker than it appears here. It was so dark that, if you look closely, you can even see a few (slight) star trails in the sky.
While the forecast was for clear skies (and it was accurate), you never know when you'll get lucky with some wonderful stray clouds. I've wanted to capture the lighthouse at sunrise with snow on the ground for quite a while. Glad the sky worked great with the day I finally ended up going.
Explored: January 9, 2022
Tags: jones point lighthouse snow george washington memorial parkway gwmp virginia alexandria dawn sunrise potomac river findyourpark alexandria virginia lighthouse riverine lighthouse chesapeake bay
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Yesterday morning's 97% Lunar Eclipse with the tip of the Washington Monument (taken at 3:59am). So cool to see and photograph!
For those wondering how the EXIF can say 8s, ISO 100: I used the iOptron Sky Guider Pro star tracker (w/ William Optics base) for this image. I first took the 8s moon shot. Then I turned off the tracker and re-focused to take the Washington Monument foreground shot (1:39 later). As with any star tracker shot with foreground, I then blended the foreground into the same position during post. It's a lot of work but it was also very rewarding to capture much better moon detail than I did during the 2019 lunar eclipse.
Explored: November 20, 2021
Tags: lunar eclipse beaver moon full moon lunar eclipse 2021 sky guider pro tracked tracking tracking shot washington monument national mall the national mall find your park dc national mall nps star tracker
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