I just happened to be at a Rockies game and there were lighting storms. It was hard to know where it would hit next, but I kept pointing my camera in the general direction of where I thought it would hit next and got lucky a few times. One of the pictures came out pretty nice.

I haven't got any lightening photos. That doesn't seem to be something we get much of in Seattle. Plenty of rain and cloud cover, but not much else. In California, I saw lightning strike the ocean again and again ... but that was before I learned to use a camera.

It's a shame that once I learned how to approach lightning ( tripod + long shutter speed ) I don't see any of the stuff. I need to save up for a cross country road trip.

Do you have a motorcycle?

If you make to the Northeast I could show you all the great vantage points. Riding during fall folliage around here would be a never ending start and stop kind of ride.

I've been thinking a lot about getting a motorcycle. I ride a bike, the kind you petal yourself, to get around Seattle, and really enjoy it. A motorcycle would be a much cheaper way to get across country, and fun.

I haven't been to the East Coast in years, but I grew up in Connecticut until I was 18 ( and then spent a year doing volunteer work in California ). I really miss it, especially in the winter. I've been considering a cross country road trip in the late fall, to capture some foliage, and also hoping to shoot some stone walls in the snow. The history is amazing, a completely different experience back east.

What part are you in? I'll shoot a PM if I make a New England trip happen.

I don't have many photos from the east coast; I didn't learn to use a camera until I'd settled on the West Coast. I had been interested in photography for a while, but intimidated by all the complexity. It really wasn't until digital that I got comfortable experimenting with things, seeing the results, being able to isolate different things I can change and actually learning. But I've been waning to fill out a New England portfolio for a while.

It's funny, though. I love all the mountains out here, jagged, steep, and covered with snow and the occasional glacier ... but the two decent photos I have from Connecticut look a lot like what I've been shooting lately in the Pacific Northwest.




Out here we have aspens instead of birches, and a forest tends to be 10,000 of the same type of tree, where back east the woods are really mixed. I prefer the landscape in the Rockies and west of them, but living out here still makes me appreciate the east a lot more.

I certainly prefer the landscape that away as well. It stills takes me back a little bit to see only small patches of green surrounded by the ugliest brown on the hills during the winter. I'm just so use to everything being green.

Just yesterday I did a little calculating to see how much it would cost me to get back to Seattle on my bike and I came up with ~$75 for fuel (it's that cheap because I have a starter goober-mobile 99' Honda Rebel 250).

I live in the Berkshires (Williamstown, Western Mass, surrounded by Mass-holes) by the way. I am litteraly right on the border of New York and Vermont and about 20-30 minutes from the New Hampshire border.

I grew up not too far away from you, just a few hours. Born in Brooklyn, but raised on Long Island. I've lived all over New York State and lived in the Catskills for a few years while in school. My brother went to school in Albany, which I'm guessing isn't too far from you.

I think New England is beautiful and New York doesn't get the credit it deserves either for its landscape. Too many people think New York is Manhattan and never realized upstate New York has some great views and photo ops.

Of course I'm in Colorado now and it really is one of the most beautiful states in the country. It's hard to have your eyes open and not see great scenery.

Upstate New York is gorgeous!! Everybody's seen the inspirational poster of the guy hanging from a rock overhanging the edge of a cliff, and I thought it was somewhere in the Rockies, really had a hard time accepting it was New York. The whole area around Sing Sing is fantastic, too.

My grandparents lived in Long Island; we used to make this long drive down, and cross a bridge that looks just like the one in the Sopranos credit sequence.

Back to the West, and I tend to agree on Colorado, especially places like Buena Vista, Leadville, and basically half the state, this is from earlier today ... but in Washington: