Matt
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« Reply #360 on: September 05, 2017, 07:55:59 PM » |
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Yes! I had hied over to the local camera emporium B&H the day before (Sunday morning) and queued up for some of the last eclipse glasses to be had in New York City. They only came in five-packs, so I had four extra pairs to share with my colleagues in my office. My appreciative boss sent around an e-mail saying anyone whose schedule allowed it (some people work on public service desks) should take the opportunity to go outside and take a look. In our location, the peak time was about 2:45, which I arranged to coincide with my lunch hour. I got the following shot on my phone by pure happenstance:

You're seeing an office tower just south of the Library, where I was standing on the wide plaza off Fifth Avenue with a whole mob of other eclipse gazers. When I snapped this picture, the sun was slipping in and out of light cloud cover. You see the actual partially veiled sun at the upper right corner of the tower ... but look on the facade. That crescent spot is a reflection of the sun's reflection, about 70% eclipsed.
I had no idea I had captured that until a couple of days later when I was looking back through my photos.
Wow, it's spectacular! What a very cool and unique shot of the eclipse. You should find somewhere to send that, to whatever publication publishes photos of it. It's just such a cool perspective.
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Matt
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« Reply #367 on: September 07, 2017, 05:58:34 AM » |
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That's why they call it digital photography, I guess.

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Matt
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« Reply #369 on: September 16, 2017, 07:46:37 PM » |
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Here's some more pics from Alaska. So, we're on a 60 passenger ship, much smaller than regular cruise ships, and the reason I wanted to go on this type of ship was for photographing whales. I had seen the humpbacks in Hawaii in January, and left feeling really discouraged that I hadn't gotten a good opportunity to photograph the whales. So, I followed them to Alaska where they migrate in the summer. I have to say that although I got better photos this time, I still feel discouraged because I didn't get a magnificent shot. And that's now my life goal. I'm probably going to keep following humpbacks around the world until I get a shot that I'm satisfied with. And I like that goal a lot, because I'll see some fantastic things trying to achieve it. Anyway, here's the best shot I got:  Not bad, but not stunning. But, I did get to watch two whales swimming together and diving for about an hour, and that was breathtaking. This is the same dive, just a half a second later:  Here's a whale diving, in sequence: First you see them arch their back (and after watching them a bit, you start to get excited when you see this because you know you're about to get a tail sighting):  They lift their tail:  The back of their tail flips up:  The underside of their tail sinks into the water after them:  Here's a shot of the two together. I believe it's a mother and her calf.  One more shot:  And just to break up the monotony, another shot of the sun trying to fight its way through the clouds.  We'd see a lot more whales later this night at dusk, but I don't think I got any decent photos -- it was too dark, and they were far away, but I'll post something later anyway even if it's not that good. 
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Matt
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« Reply #376 on: October 14, 2017, 10:13:50 PM » |
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So, a few more from Alaska. These are more photos from the same day as the first bear photos I posted. We counted fourteen bears in this area, four of which were cubs, and these families fished and lived together in harmony. It was an amazing thing to witness these bears fishing, and from what I can tell -- the females were fishing, and then taking it back to the shoreline where the cubs were waiting for dinner, and they'd eat together. This first photo will explain why there were so many bears in this area -- the salmon were plentiful and leaping out of the water.  This cub doesn't yet have that deadly stare in his eyes like the father we saw earlier:  Speaking of the father -- here he is, and I think that's the same cub:  These are all brown bears (Grizzly Bears), but they almost look like two different breeds. This seems to be a female bear, and she has a totally different look from the father bear. I had my camera on her for a while -- she kept dunking her head under and coming up empty. I knew it was just a matter of time, and then she came up with this:  And then took her catch to share with her cubs:   That's her on the bottom left of the last photo... and as you can see, plenty more bears are wanting to get in on that salmon-eating action.
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Matt
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« Reply #379 on: October 15, 2017, 11:38:08 AM » |
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« Last Edit: October 15, 2017, 12:30:32 PM by Matt »
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