Tropical Storm Irene close to a year later

We are approaching the one-year anniversary of Topical Storm Irene here in upstate New York. Tropical Storm Irene hit the Catskill Mountain top area with a vengeance on August 28th 2011. It was September 11th I decided to take a trip up to Hunter and Windham area of the Catskill Mountains. It was heart breaking seeing what Mother Nature had done to this area and the destructive force of this storm.

Today I went back to some of the same locations as I was at back last year. These images are from the same location showing the hard work of mankind to restore towns and roadways. It was nice to see things being restored and people getting back to a normal life, but still sad to see areas that homes where totally destroyed that have force families to leave the area.

Life can be tough but events like this make use tougher and bring us closer together to help out our fellow neighbors.

iPhone Photography

The iPhone is becoming one of the most used cameras for taking photos today. I have only had a iPhone for the last 6 months or so and here area few images that I have taken and processed directly in the iPhone. I will say the image quality is not at the same level as my Digital Nikon SLR but if it is the only image capture device I have on hand it is great.

NY State Capital

I have not been out taking pictures that much but here are a few images I took at NY State Capital back in late January.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception has always been one of my favorite locations to do High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. I was lucky to be allowed to go up into the upper level where the pipe organ once restored will reside which allowed me to capture the cathedral from high above the floor. Here are the HDR images I did using Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro 4. The third photo is from the alter area looking to the back and in this image you can see the balcony area I took the other two photos from.

State Capital – Albany, New York

I have lived here in New York State all of my life (55 years) and until last week I have never been inside New York’s Capital building located here in Albany. I spent a few hours shoot images of the assembly chambers and the main staircase, commonly referred to as the “Million Dollar Staircase”. Below are a few of the images for my first visit to the New York State Capital Building.

Devil’s Kitchen Waterfalls

It has been some years since I have went out a shot cotton candy waterfall photos. A few weeks I had to go up on the mountain top area of the Catskills to document some of the damage from tropical storm Irene so I stopped by one of favorite locations. This is the Devil’s Kitchen that is at the top of the Platte Cove area, this small waterfall is just down in off the road, very easy to get into and grab a few quick shots.

These images are shot using a 2 stop neutral density filter to lengthen the exposure time resulting in the cotton candy water effect. After image capture I processed images with Adobe Lightroom and NIK Software Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast filter.