Well, here it is – a day after Christmas. There are only a few days left in the year 2011, and I can’t bear to admit how long it has been since my last contribution to this site. No, I haven’t forsaken photography. It is true that I did not get as much time exploring out of my “home zone” compared to previous years. So the sheer number of images is down, but not my intent to create better images. Photography is all about “what have you done lately“. So to cap off the year, I am introducing three new galleries that cover my period “in absentia” from these pages.

Full Moon and Other Stuff reflects my continuing love and fascination with night photography, especially during a full moon. We were lucky to have a number of full moons this past summer with clear or wispy night skies, and I forced myself to suffer a little sleep deprivation in hopes of getting some unique images.  One of them, (Three AM), won an Honorable Mention at this years “Right Place Right Time” exhibit at the Finger Lakes Gallery and Frame in Canandaigua. Being tired for a few days was rewarded to some degree.

The “other stuff” is mostly old equipment hidden in the hills of the Southern Tier, and a shot from Susie’s always beautiful garden.

I was fortunate to get a call from friend, Peter Ryan, early in the fall selling me on the idea of hunting down a long list of old mines and ghost towns in Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.  Hmmm… it wasn’t a tough sell.  I was ready to get out of Dodge, (or was it go to Dodge?).  Anyway, Four State Affair picks the best of the ten day shoot, travel, shoot , travel process that is heaven for a shooter and hell for anyone unfortunate or not crazy enough to want to shoot everything in sight for days on end. There is absolutely amazing stuff slowly disappearing with the passage of time and what is often erroneously identified as progress. Photography helps preserve it.

Finally, after years of hints from ever patient wife, Susie, I arranged for a few days in New York City. We went as tourists and we saw an obligatory Radio City Music Hall show with the Rockettes, (they are amazing!), along with some of the normal tourist destinations. Of course, I brought one camera and lens…. just in case. I was drawn to the World Trade Center Memorial.  It is impossible not to be moved by the place and the enormity of what happened there.  New York, New York is a small collection of some of the places we visited.

I would be remiss not to mention what fun it was to take the train from Albany into Penn Station, Manhattan.  I saw three eagles along the Hudson, and we hit speeds of 108 MPH! (Confirmed by my GPS, yet hard to believe).  And since we walked right by B&H Photo on the way to our hotel, I had to visit this legendary photography store.  What an amazing place!

I am not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I do have some goals for imagesbypyarnall.com in 2012. I will be moving the site to a new host soon, and at some point I will change how the site looks and functions. It is too hard to get to the older galleries now, and while I have been pleased with the look of the galleries, they are Flash based, and that makes them non functional on portable Mac based platforms. There is no small irony in this since I LOVE my iPhone and iPad, but alas, none of my galleries will display on those platforms.  The three introduced here WILL work as they are HTML based, but sadly they are not quite so sexy.  For now  though, it will have to do.

Stay tuned!

In 2009 while I was frantically trying to capture Trinity Bay in the fading twilight, I was forced to take longer and longer exposures. There I “discovered” the surreal ability of modern digital camera sensors to “see” in a way I could not. Since then I have captured a few more wonderful images in the [...]

As much time as I devote to photography, I am more than a little embarrassed for my sporadic efforts in keeping this blog current. To those of you who have followed my imagery, I apologize for the long “dry spell” here. Photography is but one of the passions in my life, and sometimes one of [...]

The previous gallery, South Africa Photo Safari 2010, was all about the animals.  After all, that was the mission… see wildlife… shoot wildlife. While going through the thousands of images we brought back, I realized that there was also the human experience – the personal side to our adventure.  We were already friends with the [...]

The Impossible Dream It is probably fair to say that most photographers who shoot nature oriented images have  photo safari in Africa as a line item on their bucket list.  After a number of years looking at ads for African treks it seemed an impossible dream.  The typical prices for a couple to spend a [...]

I hope all my readers had great holidays with family and friends. It’s hard to believe “Twenty-O-Nine” is now “Twenty Ten”.  It will take me weeks to write dates without the hand writing “09″ when the head knows better! 2009 Recap Photographically, 2009 was a prolific year for me.  I took over 12,000 images from [...]

My first solo show ran the month of September at the Wood Library in Canandaigua, NY.  To tell you the truth, it felt a bit like I was promoting my own birthday party since I don’t normally try to draw attention to myself. I was pleased that the opening was very well attended with friends, [...]

I am very pleased to announce that I have been invited to show a collection of my printed images at the Wood Library in Canandaigua. I will feature approximately forty images that showcase a variety of the subjects I enjoy photographing including animals, travel, aviation and scenics from many of the places I have been [...]

It is incomprehensible to me how fast time rushes by these days but I now have some time to write as my wrist heals from carpal tunnel surgery. The irony is that driving a computer all day, either for work or for my photography, is what finally aggravated the symptoms enough for me to do [...]

I made some pretty radical changes to my digital darkroom last fall. I bought my first Mac (Pro) and I switched to Adobe LightRoom from ACDsee Pro. Either of these changes could fill several posts but this one will focus on what was a major annoyance to me in LightRoom… the apparent lack of a [...]

These are the final stats for the show. Out of 326 images which were submitted, 200 made the final gallery. Harbor Dawn scored a 55 tying for second in judging (first place scored 56.5), and won first in the popular vote. Glacier Rain scored a 52 and tied for second in the popular vote with [...]

I decided to enter the 12th annual photo exhibit in Rochester this year, A Photographer’s Path 12, (download below) held at the High Falls Fine Art Gallery. This exhibit provides an opportunity for area photographers to show their work in a fine art gallery for both jury and popular judging. I felt it was time [...]

It’s funny how one thing leads to another.  Late this past fall I decided that it was time to look for a replacement for my aging 1/2 ton pickup truck.  It served me faithfully for 10+ years, but was showing “the signs.” So I started the “hunt” while it still had enough value to be [...]

Well, here it is, day two of 2009. The past week has been one of focused attention on this new site, the new galleries, putting it all together….lots of hours parked in front of a keyboard. Where does the time go? Part of all this reorganization was revisiting and reviewing thousands of images from 2008… [...]