A few photos from earlier this evening.. I was starting to make dinner for Molly and I and was keeping an eye on the storm clouds that were making their way across the sky… I was thinking about the lights.. would they be on tonight? Better get ready, I decided.

I got the stuff on the stove situated for a break and grabbed a D3 with, an old favorite, a 105mm 2.5 MF lens that used to practically live on an F3.. due to the dinner prep that was underway, I didn’t want to stray far and elected to just sit (ok squat) by our windows and see what would develop..

This is one of the first exposures I made, I intentionally underexposed the frame in order to make the clouds darker and try to make the lights stand out a bit – it was still fairly bright out.

World Trade Center memorial lights on for test run on Wednesday September 10th. Photo by M David Leeds ©2008 All Rights Reserved

I continued shooting for a few minutes, since I was on the move to catch the fleeting light, I didn’t stop to grab a cable release so most of the time was spent waiting for the timer to count down – which is a great trick if you’re shooting with a slow or long shutter release and are concerned with camera shake.. (just set the camera on a tripod or sturdy surface and use the time release function) – anyway, while I liked the composition with the 105mm, I saw some more clouds approaching which I thought might pass through the beams of light and maybe give a little accent to the photograph… So, I made a quick decision to switch to a wider lens as the clouds looked like they were too high in the air to be visible even if I went vertical with the 105.

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