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!

When I learned of a workshop led by Lance Keimig to focus on night photography, at a reasonable cost and a rational distance from home, I signed up. There is nothing like committing time and money to make you focus!  Night photography is not technically complicated, but the results are more predictable when you apply an established methodology. Given the fact that typical exposures can run from a few minutes to half an hour or longer, the usual strategy of plinking off a few more shots does not apply.

What do you do while you are waiting impatiently for a looong exposure to finish? Well, you walk around in your scene with a flashlight “painting” in light to create your own unique version of that time and place. Great fun!

A night workshop leaves a lot of daylight hours to fill, so I also collected a few “normal” daylight photos while exploring historic and scenic Sleepy Hollow, NY. Check out my Sleepy Hollow collection here.

Footnote 4/22/11: There were 16 of us at the workshop and stalking around the cemetery at night. Two of my shots, #8 and #14, were inspired by fellow attendee Roman Hirsch, a shooter with a great eye and imagination. I added my own twist to them but I wanted to acknowledge Roman here.

Photography is but one of the passions in my life, and sometimes one of them has to make room for the other. Truthfully, most of my galleries are generated out of travels to new and stimulating places, and I haven’t been anywhere very exotic since the great African photo safari of last spring. In part I can blame the high cost of traveling these days, but then there is my lifelong love of motorcycling which was re-energized with the addition of off-road riding. That has diverted a lot of time and resources. (Ask me if I am having fun, though!)

My wife and I spent five weeks this winter driving to Phoenix to pick up a new-to-us camp trailer, making our way to Florida, and finally back to the frozen north a few weeks ago. I took photos when I could, but a 200 mile a day driving average did not allow for much “focused” photography. It really was a bit of a blur in retrospect.

Between that trip and some local shooting in the Upstate NY area, I collected a few images that I think you may enjoy and created two galleries for them.

Upstate NY 2010 includes images from Rochester, Watkins Glen, and points in between. I am learning that there is great photographic opportunity in my backyard, but I still have to get out there to take advantage of it.

Winter Trek 2011 picks a few highlights from Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida. Not particularly exceptional imagery, but I can at least share some of the interesting places we did get to see. Think of it as travel highlights.

Finally, an accomplished group of local photographers invited me to display my work along with their own in three upcoming local shows. If you live in the Upstate region I cordially invite you to visit. There will be some outstanding photography on display.

April 1-28, Finger Lakes Gallery and Frame , 175 S. Main St., Canandaigua, NY. Reception 4/8, 5 to 7 PM.

July 1-30, Booksmart Studio, 250 N. Goodman, Rochester, NY. Reception to be announced.

August 8 – Sept 13, Mill Art Center & Gallery, 61 N. Main St., Honeoye Falls, NY. Reception 8/4. 6 PM

I hope to see you there!