I made a number of fundamental errors while taking these photos.

1. First and foremost, days before these were taken, I was fiddling with the camera settings in the BlackBerry which took these, and I set the color balance on the "Sepia" setting and never took it off.  Thus they look like ye olde turn-of-the-20th-century photographs. This was totally unintentional. It was pretty grey out that day anyway, so I'm not sure there was a whole lot of color to be seen.
2. I used a BlackBerry Curve 8330. I probably could have done a lot better with a camera with more electronics and more resolution. In particular, one with motion compensation would have been quite useful.
3. I should have asked my flight instructor, if we could have, to fly lower and further to the west.
4. I was too excited at the moment, so I pulled the trigger (well, mashed the trackball) too early. I got a way better shot of Cleveland Dr. where it goes over the NYS Thruway, Lochland, and Elaine; Susan where I live is very blurry and almost in the background.

Oh, well. Live and learn. I could always buy another Discovery Flight, or otherwise charter another flight.

Here is a map of the "target" area (be warned, this requires access to Google Maps and for JavaScript to be allowed):

View larger map

Here is the Blogger post describing the whole story.

A view of Buffalo-Niagara International Airport from the east of it, with rain falling just west of it (estimated heading: 260°):

Viewing rain coming down from clouds in the distance from the ground looks similar, but not quite like what I saw this day.

Two views of my neighborhood:

This is one where we were flying at a heading of about 200°.

This is a few seconds later when we were almost over Cleveland Dr. My street is barely distinguishable by the rows of houses on the east and west of it. The camera is pointing approx. SE. The 90/33 interchange to the south of my street is visible in the upper right corner of the picture.