I was walking towards Chelsea to find The Highline this particular morning. I was quite a ways from the Empire State Building, camera on my shoulder when, waiting for the pedestrian signal to change, an elderly woman standing next to me struck up a conversation. As we talked she noticed my camera and pack and insisted I walk back a block where there was a great place to view and shoot the Empire State Building. She was very insistent I see this particular spot so we walked and talked until we came upon the spot you see in the photo with the partial tree. I think her point was that shooting the building with a tree in the foreground would give a softer or less harsh glimpse of Manhattan; New York was more than steel, glass and cement. So, that is the story of the shot with the tree in it. She placed me right in a spot on the sidewalk that would catch the view she enjoyed sharing.
Since this is my 2,000th posting on this blog I was thinking I should dig through the archives for something befitting the milestone. Fortunately, that was just a passing thought.
This is the James A. Farley General Post Office just across the street from B&H Photo in the north Chelsea area of Manhattan. I guess, technically, both buildings are between the Garment District and Chelsea-for those who know their way about Manhattan much better than I do :-).
The last two times I have visited New York, B&H Photo in north Chelsea has been closed. The store was closed this time as well. One of these days……Probably just as well as I might have been tempted to procure something I may not really need. Most of my DSLR lens’s have come from B&H.
This building is probably only fit for reptiles and rodents. I would have liked to have gone inside, but it is fenced off. It’s always a good sign when you see foliage growing out of the sides of a structure.
This first image looks a little like a fish. I thought I needed to take a few days off from the Gowanus Canal photos. Even I have limits on how much urban decay I can tolerate :-). I found this section of beach at Chambers Bay really fun to explore.
Here is a similar image, totally unedited/cropped, to the posted “mystery image” of Nov. 4th. The colors on the bubble are a little more vibrant in this image, but also the background is more diverse and I was looking for a nearly monochromatic background. Anyway, mystery solved and I thank all of you for playing along with me for a couple of days!
This is the answer to the mystery image I posted a couple of days back ( Nov. 7th ). I got the type or quality of the previous image due to the overcast day. The cloud cover provided a totally gray background and by focussing on the edge of that particular bubble I got the image I did. This guy was amazing to watch! I was with him for about 45 minutes, talking and laughing and just having a great time as a kid. The children that did get to watch him-he ran out of magical bubble ingredients just as I was leaving- were totally thrilled. It is a pretty simple idea with just two sticks, a piece of rope and the liquid mixture. The trick and talent lies within the manipulation of the stick and rope device and then always being mindful of the wind direction. Shooting through a bubble with people on the other side of the bubble created a cool effect, I think.
The recent flood waters came up to the first seat in the boat, which means that the water travelled west on this street reaching a depth of about 12″-18″. The Gowanus Canal itself is behind the guard rail and down about 6′-8′ during normal times. Between the high tide and tidal surge that hit on that fateful evening it was just too much for the canal to handle.
This image was taken outside in Central Park. By itself, it looks like something I conjured up in a photo editing program. Actually, there was little editing involved with this image. In a future posting I will explain what I was shooting. For now, I just wanted to post the image to let it stand on its own or be viewed without the back story.
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