Tag: Buffalo

Night Skies

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

Perhaps you know that this weekend is the peak of the Perseid Meteor Showers. Last night I... didn't really sleep. Just took a series of naps. I spent about an hour out on the back deck starring at the sky, and trying to catch a few streaks of light.

The funny thing is, being so close to the city the light pollution blots out most of the visible stars from your sight. However, with a long exposure, the camera can see a lot of what you can't. In the image above, I captured one meteor streaking across the sky. I didn't see it when it happened, it was too faint.

The other ironic part of this was most of the visible meteors I did see were to the north, right in the glow of the city, where I wasn't shooting.

In this one, right in the center of the frame you can see a streak that changed brightness. This was a satellite that I was tracking as it drifted across the sky. As these satellites travel, their brightness changes depending on the angle you see them at and how they are reflecting light.

As dawn approached I moved my focus point closer to the horizon to catch Venus rising. You can see how much the brightness of sky changes in the frame captured across just about 30 minutes of time from the last image to this one. In the upper right corner of the frame, a small meteor passed from the south to the north. I saw this one when it happened; it was bright enough against the early illumination of the Eastern horizon.

I looked at this picture more closely as I was posting this and noticed a dimmer streak just below the more obvious one. So I may have caught two in one shot.

I am disappointed I didn't see or capture any brilliant fire balls or larger meteors, but tonight is another night. If our moonless sky stays this clear, I might have a chance to catch more.

Well, thank you WGRZ’s Marketing Department!

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

Thank you for finding my humble little studio website and being impressed by my photography work! That kind of recognition is what keeps me striving to always improve, to keep my passion for my artistic work alive, to keep spending countless hours working to capture moments and memories that people can fondly look back on and relive through my efforts...

However you try to spin it though, asking me to PAY YOU in order to be your exclusive photographer for your business highlights, with the promise that you'll "feature my work" doesn't sound like a fair shake to me.

If you want me to buy a marketing package, just present one. Asking me to buy a marketing package AND work for you for free... I don't know where you went to business school, but that sure doesn't sound like a profitable scenario for me.

Either you want quality photographic work, and are willing to pay for it, or you want someone desperate to be associated with you in hopes that you get their work noticed. For anyone that does entertain this, they have to realize the self-defeating nature of it:

Paying someone so you can do work for them leaves you less time to do the paying working that they are claiming you can hope to get. All of the costs have to be considered....

Kayaking in the Buff

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

Yelp took the events to a new level last week, literally. A kayak tour up the Buffalo river and a tour of Silo City, where heady entrepreneurs are creating a rock climbing gym out of the abandoned man-made mountains of concrete and steel in what used to be the Great Lakes' busiest agriculture product distribution centers.

These monoliths of a time and economy long past still stand. Honestly, they're built more solidly than most fortresses - it would probably require more to take them down than do something with them standing.

And this is what someone is doing with one of them: the world's most unique exercise facility. The tallest rock climbing walls anywhere in the world. Rappelling, training, kayaking - all part of the revitalization of a waterfront once squandered.