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Happy New Year!

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to preview the New Year's Eve ball the weekend before the big New Year's show, hosted by the Times Square Alliance and Waterford Crystal. There was champagne and cookies, hot chocolate and an ice cream sundae bar.

Of course, I had to bring my camera. Let me set the scene...

It's 4:30pm at the top of One Times Square. The sun is about to set. There's a giant 12,000-lb. crystal ball, illuminated by 32,256 Philips Luxeum Rebel LEDs. I have roughly 20 minutes to take pictures.

Inevitably, this happened:

And this:


And this (which actually looks pretty cool):



I adjusted the white balance, changed the ISO, checked the aperture, and anything and everything else. 5-10 minutes later, I finally captured this (I didn't even care that it was blurry):




And then...


It's not perfect, but what a sense of accomplishment!

Happy New Year, all! Here's to 2015!

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