I attended a night photography workshop in the Adirondacks last week and the weather for night shooting did not clear up until the last night of the workshop. This has been on my bucket list for years - to finally photograph the Milky Way in all of its majesty. I think I nailed it. Specs: Nikon 1 J5 with "pancake" 10 mm f/2.8 at f/2.8, ISO 6400, 30 seconds, auto WB, manual focus. Location is on the beach at Limekiln Lake Campground, just up the road from Inlet, NY, off Route 28. Oh - this is a 3 shot horizontal/vertically merged panorama.

For the past few months, I have been looking through my files for overlooked old photos that might lend themselves to black and white interpretation. I processed about 250 images and picked a few to share.

! New York: This photo was taken last June in lower Manhattan. I stepped out of the subway station and this is what I saw. The sky was unbelievable. Freedom Tower shot with a Panasonic GX8.

2. Prague: Prague City Hall Tower shot in 2011. Can't believe I didn't see the possibilities for this photo earlier. Shot with Canon 5D II with 24-105 L lens.

3. Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles I shot this shortly after the Disney opened in 2009. I like architecture and this site offers lots of opportunity. I may follow up with several more shots in a later post.

Alice Springs is almost in the geographical center of Australia. These shots were taken just west of Alice in an area that is almost totally dark. The red glow from the Pine Gap installation was not visible to the naked eye.
24 shots were "panorama'd" in the new version of Affinity. The first image is straight out of Affinity and the second after cropping and touching up. The vast number of stars is what one normally sees in this area.
Nikon D500. 12 - 24mm Nikor lens at 12mm and wide open at f/2.8. Each image was exposed for around 20 seconds.
The earlier version of Affinity could not handle a vertical panorama. The new version had no trouble matching 3 vertical rows and 8 each in the horizontals.

I recently retired from teaching and would like to learn to take great pictures of my grandkids in manual on my Pentax K-50. I have only shot photos in auto previously. I had two kit lenses which came with my camera, but the aperture only was f4. I wanted to be able to fade out the background, so I read some on the internet and ended up ordering a Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 lens. I am trying to figure out how to use this lens for individual photos and photos of my 6 grandkids altogether. Any helpful suggestions for a beginner photographer wannabe would be appreciated.