Holiday Photos with the Professor’s Wife – and the Professor’s Wife’s Husband – and a Bottle Service model, too!

It’s Saturday morning, November 12th, there’s a chill in the air, and the leaves are slowly rustling through the grass on the Siena College campus.

I’ve packed my Nikon D700 digital, along with my Nikon F100 film camera and a new camera that I’m not ready to tell anyone about just yet.  And now I wait.

And at the stroke of ten, right on time, I’m joined by Stephanie Snyder – she of the “Professor’s Wife” blog – and her husband, Todd the Professor.  Nice people.  Very nice.

A few days ago, Stephanie asked if I could take pictures of her and Todd for their Christmas cards.  This would be their first holiday season in the Empire State, and she wanted the pictures to be classy and heartwarming, and to prove to their families that when they said they moved to New York, that they’re not living in a cramped tenement on the East Side – any more than if I moved to West Virginia and had to photographically prove that I wasn’t living in a log cabin in the Appalachian Mountains.

We walked around the campus, taking pictures at various Siena monuments and locales.  It was fun, we had a great time, and it was a great opportunity for me to actually take one of those “We’re enjoying Autumn in New York, wish you were too” pictures.

You want to see the pictures, don’t you?

Okay, okay… here are the Snyders.  Just imagine these images arriving in your mailbox on a holiday card.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

One week later, I wanted to get some more late autumn pictures, so I contacted my friend Angela.  I met Angela when we were both working on the Bottle Service webseries, and we’ve stayed in touch.  Angela is an aspiring model, and she’s a good friend.  So when she wanted some more pictures, and I wanted some late autumn photography – well, it all worked out for both of us.

We started at Washington Park – while we were there, the Police Athletic League were setting up their annual festival of lights around the park.  Of course, your man wants to photograph the lights when they’re fully installed, but there’s nothing wrong with getting a few shots during the daytime.  Angela posed near the lights, near one of the big wreaths, even near one of the cop cars.

We then drove to the Corning Preserve, and took some pictures along the Hudson River.  It was great.  There’s some beautiful scenery along the waterway, and we captured some of the foliage as it was just about to fall off the branches.

Want to see the pictures I took of Angela along the Washington Park Lake and along the Corning Preserve?

Of course you do!

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

And you might say, “Chuck, big deal, you took some pictures of people.  Clap clap.”

Yeah, well for me it’s a big deal.  After all the crazy stuff that’s been going on for the past few days, it was a perfect time for me to turn my brain off and just take some photographs.

It’s like a healing in my soul every time I press the shutter button.

Plus, it allows my friends to have some great photos for their own personal use.