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This is my third summer in Washington D.C. and I have seen quite a bit of the city. So while my sister was visiting we decided to go see what else this side of the country had to offer. We decided on friday night that we would go visit New York. So we woke up the next morning at 5 AM and drove the 4 hour drive to NYC. We wanted to see everything that we could in a day and most of the day we spent walking around.  Our first stop and one of the last stops of the day (on the way back to the car) was ground zero.

After that we walked down to Battery Park to check out the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately the line for the statue was insane and we would have had to wait for hours just to get on the ferry. So seeing as we just wanted to see the sites we opted for the harbor tour which may have even been better. We were told about everything we were seeing and still got all the pictures and things that we wanted.

The picture of the waterfall above is part of a beautification project going on in the harbor. After our tour of the harbor we made our way out to Central Park.

We found some baseball dimonds in the middle of Central Park which I thought were cool.

Central park was pretty neat and it really didn’t feel like you were in a city at all. I believe there is even a Zoo in Central Park, or at least it smelled that way from time to time. There was even a carnival going on. Unfortunately we did not walk through all of Central Park as it is very large and there were many things that we wanted to for the day.

Then like in so many movies that we have seen we had to go see the famous toy stores of New York City. First up was F.A.O Schwarz.

As you can see if was a popular destination and was very crowded. I was interested in only one thing: Finding that giant piano!. We eventually founded it on the second floor of the store.

We were lucky and there was a two person performance going on. The employees were actually quite good and I was impressed. Soon after they opened up the floor for anyone to play and we decided to move on.

We stumbled our way to times square.

Times square was a pretty happening… We soon found another toy store that I found to be more fun than F.A.O Schwarz. ToysR’Us in times square? Yea I didn’t think I would be seeing that ethier but it was pretty neat. If you look through all the pictures you will see much more of the store. They had a giant Barbie Dollhouse, life size (or semi lifesize but really big) legos, dinosaurs, and some really cool LIGHTING!

After that we decided to eat at Planet Hollywood and go home. It was a very enjoyable and tiring day. To see all the pictures click HERE. I will leave you with a few random photos of the day that I like.

It’s my last night in Austin for a while so I decided to go take some photos of, well, AUSTIN! I tried to get some of those night cityscape photos we are so use to seeing. In order to accomplish this I needed to find a place that was interesting that I could see the city. I used my wide angle lens 10-22mm for the shoot and all the shots here were 8 to 30 second exposures. I also waited until just after sunset to get started to try and find that sweetspot right before the sky gets really dark.

This was the first exposure that I took. It was an 8 second exposure but there was still a little too much light in the sky and I still wasn’t able to really get the lights to reflect off the water.

Still an 8 second exposure but 10 minutes later.

5 minutes later. Still an 8 second exposure. Was happy with the sky but the light reflections off the river were a little week for me I wanted more. I decided to increase the shutter time to a magical 20 seconds in order to allow more light to be gathered off the river. This lightened up the scene a little but the available light was diminishing quickly so what did I have to lose!

ROCKEN! I got what I was going for! Now to pop off as many as I can before the sun goes away for the day.

Now that I was happy with those photos I decided to take one of the power station just to the left (the direction of the setting sun, hence the photo is lighter).

I finished up the night at my favorite location in all of Austin. The cliff overlooking the 360 bridge. This location has gotten quick popular as there was quite a few people up there. I used to be able to go whenever and be the only one there. I wish I had another day here to do these like the ones above (with a little ambient but that will have to wait for another day). I hope you enjoy!

Tips for night photograph:

• Take a flashlight: makes it easier to find you gear put it together and set your settings.
• Shoot at a low ISO: lower the ISO the lower the noise in your photo.
• Don’t shoot wide open if you don’t have to: Most lenses aren’t their sharpest wide open and it is hard enough to focus in low light. Do yourself a favor and shoot with a smaller aperture. If you are having problems finding something to focus on (lights sometimes work well) then try setting your focus to infinite and backing off that just a bit.