Writing, Photography, and the life lessons I learned from Street Academy
Here I am, once again, parked on the banks of the Sacandaga River. Here I am, poised and ready for one of the few times when the Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson Railroad journeys from Corinth to Hadley – and, in doing so, crosses the Sacandaga. Yeah, I know I blogged about taking photos at the…
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For the past three weeks, I’ve hoped to get a swank shot of the covered bridge in Arlington, Vermont – a bridge that spans the Battenkill River and also leads into an access road to a beautiful white-wooden church. It’s one of those quintessential Vermont images. Right up there with pennies in a stream and…
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This was a complicated confluence. But somehow, some way … I still achieved great things from it. Let me explain. I adore astrophotography – Milky way, meteors, eclipses, star trails, all of that. And the original plan was to travel to Brown Tract Pond in Raquette Lake, New York – New York’s darkest night sky…
Read MoreWhile walking my camera around the Saratoga Race Course last Sunday, I positioned myself for a shot of the horses as they left the starting gate for the fourth race. Figured I’d get a nice angle and capture the horses as they start. While the photo I did get was okay … it really didn’t…
Read MoreI purchased this old Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 lens nearly 20 years ago. It was the first external camera lens I’ve ever purchased that wasn’t primarily a kit lens, and I purchased it so that I could capture fast indoor action shots, so long as I had the lens open wide (at f/2.8 aperture) and cranked…
Read MoreOkay, which one of you messed with my calendars? Here’s how Competition Season is supposed to work. I get my four images ready for Iowa. Then I take a couple of those images, add a few more, get six choices, and submit them for the New York Stater Fair’s photo salon. Then I take the…
Read MoreToday’s headline is the first lyric of singer-songwriter Cris Williamson’s song Waterfall, from her legendary album The Changer and the Changed. Fifty years later, it still holds up today. And it’s kind of an inspiration for today’s blog, as I get back into making my cameras work for me. I need to make sure all…
Read MoreIn modern photography, the “Petzval Mod” is a camera lens hack that will turn a dull, run-of-the-mill Soviet camera lens into a dreamy, kaleidoscopic master shooter. The modification will provide a surreal, swirly background field, or bokeh, that envelops the center subject. To put it in basic terms, you need a HELIOS 44-2 common 35mm…
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“Manhattanhenge” is a combination of astronomy and architecture. Because New York City’s streets have a nearly perfect east-west pathway, there are several times during the year when the sun sets RIGHT in the pathway of traffic, or rises RIGHT in the pathway of traffic. To capture a “Manhattanhenge” photo is an accomplishment in and of…
Read MoreWell, it happened. Two years after Fuji ended their Velvia 100 slide film stock, my supply of Fuji Velvia 100 has dried up. All gone. I have one 35mm cartridge left. And after that … all I have are two more 120-size rolls of the product. As for my 35mm stock, the only slide film…
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Chuck The Writer 
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