Snow-Fall

An extremely early snow fall, wet and heavy, caused a number of trees to split. Branches still laden with leaves not yet turned to fall colors or just turned, littered playgrounds and sidewalks all over the city. In some places outside the city where power lines are above ground, of course, power was out from falling trees.

Ouch!

Spiral Shadow

After the early snow yesterday.

Birdy

A cardinal would have been nice, or a white pigeon, but you can't just order up a bird of your choice in this situation. I was shooting for the pattern anyway and the sparrow just appeared. And the space is probably too small for anything but a sparrow...

Can Can

Outdoor/sidewalk canned goods display at Antillana Supermarket on Nagle Avenue.

Crossed Shadow

I'm not a religious person, but churches, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. offer a lot of photographic opportunities. Couldn't resist the shadow play. Taken over the weekend.

On a side note, I'm finding the stress and workload of teaching are quite the impediment to inspiration. My photography requires a good chunk of time and a reasonably clear mind, neither of which I have in any abundance presently - even the weekends are now filled with activity and/or worry, so I go out to shoot but nothing strikes my fancy, I'm not "seeing" clearly. I may need to go back to giving myself an "assignment" again to focus on one thing and figure out how to make it work.

Cathedrals

God and Capitalism.

Red Fire Escape

An almost abstract mish-mash of light & shadow & color.

Cobblestone Driveway

Another shot from the archives. September again. Maybe this weekend I'll have a chance to get some new stuff.

Reproductive Efforts

I think this picture is fertile ground for a critical analysis :-) From my AP Biology textbook. I've not taken many pictures lately, a very busy couple of weeks and the days are getting shorter and shorter. This one is from back in late September.

Communication

Taken a couple of weekends ago down in the East Village area. Cargo containers on a construction site turned into public art. Don't know if it was "authorized" or not.

Hudson View Restaurant

Just off the subway entrance on 181st Street & Fort Washington Avenue.

Take-out

Trying to step back a bit from the details and get a bigger view of the world, at least a slightly bigger view. The local Chinese take-out in my neighborhood. We used to order out from here at least once per week, but have cut back a lot in the last couple of years.

Inaugural Exhibition

I've been very busy this week setting up the first exhibit of the photography club at my school. I had a couple of students working just as hard to help make it happen, but really it looks so simple and straight forward yet it represents a tremendous amount of work.

We had about 60 photos, (the opposite wall has an additional 20 or so pics) which had to be formatted for printing, uploaded to the printer (MPIX - Very nice quality at a good price*), then matted and framed. Add two solid hours for three people (two colleagues & me) to lay out and organize the pictures and then mount them on the walls, add labels, and all-in-all an exhausting final day of prep.

But well worth it and I'm looking forward to doing it again - with some adjustments. The next step is to make each student (or teacher - for this exhibit teachers & staff were also invited to participate) responsible for getting his/her picture done all the way through to the framing. We'll get there eventually.

*I also used Adoramapix in a rush on some of the pics, because I could pick them up locally at the store in NYC,  in a one-day turnaround - they're also a bit cheaper, though the colors of the prints are not quite as rich, a little more subtle, which may be preferable in some cases.  I didn't like their B&W work at all, though. MPIX was clearly better on that front. But Adorama is otherwise a reasonable option for sure. 

Occupy Wall Street - Final Set

Just thought I would end with a splash of color and occupation art.

OWS Part 3

Class War? Been going on for a long time now....

Union Man. The other guy didn't want to be photographed, I also blurred the petition, just in case.

More pay for NYPD. They're union too. Even after 9/11 they had to fight like hell with the city...

American Corporate Flag. Sadly, my beloved Starbucks doesn't rate well a corporate citizen...

I'll let the pics and captions speak for themselves this time.

OWS Part 2

The Library

Humanity & Modern Social Thought

Living With Bad Cops*

What is a Person?

Yes, there are a lot of "kids" in this occupation, many of them college students or of that age. They are often struggling to understand a world that simply doesn't function in accordance with anyone's idea of what is fair and just and equitable. And they are, thank god, still idealistic enough to ask why and to believe in something better and to strive for it. It's a development I see already in my upper level high school students. Is it naivete? Perhaps, but that's an essential ingredient - without some degree of naive belief that change is possible, there would be no progress...



*Although there were a few incidents earlier involving some bad cops doing stupid things (like pepper-spraying peaceful demonstrators who happened to also be women), there were several signs among the protesters voicing support for them and their rights and trying to get the message across that this new economic world order is no friend of cops either...more on that tomorrow.

Occupy Wall Street Part 1

Tear Down This Wall

Love Joy Peace

A Modest Proposal?

Liberty & Trinity

Got my first cold of the school year, always happens around this time, so not feeling that great. Nevertheless, I wanted to get downtown to the demonstration, mainly as a show of support, but while I was there I might as well document some of the action.

It was lively but peaceful, a ragtag bunch of people from various walks of life, but of course it's the hard-core that the media will focus on, the colorful characters, the dirty hippies, the anarchists. Never mind why NOW is the time they are rallying and sustaining a prolonged action that is growing and spreading, and now is the time middle class, middle-aged, bland, vanilla guys like me want to be involved. The rich have too much power and they're just getting more and more with no brakes in sight.

House on the Hill

I forgot to post this one. And since I missed yesterday, this will make a two-fer for today.

Again, and the last one for a while, from upstate NY. In contrast to the broken down old homes and the local economic woes, a few New Yorkers are rediscovering the Catskills as destinations for second, weekend and summer homes, so you see the occasional mansion or estate being erected, sometimes just old farmhouse are bought and renovated too. This one is still under construction.

Hanging Light

No time to shoot this week, this is from a couple of weeks ago. Shot from inside my neighborhood Starbucks looking out through the sunscreen onto 181st street.

Pine Grove

A small stand of pine trees in an otherwise deciduous forest. The dark trunks make a nice contrast with the pine needles on the floor and the light green/yellowish leaves of the deciduous trees and ferns surrounding them. Looked roughly like this straight from the B&W conversion with no selective manipulation of the color channels, just a little contrast adjustment.

Not that it matters, in the end either it's a good photo or it isn't, and I think I agree with Mike Johnston, no one cares how hard you worked for it or how easy it was...

Tool Shed

There's just something ironic about a tool shed falling apart....Look closely and you can see the wall on the left side is about to cave out. The ground up here is still moving, the house & shed located on a relatively steep hill. Combine with the freezing and thawing over the years, and the lack of maintenance, and it's a sad sight.

Conrad's

The other side of the beauty in upstate New York. Conrad was Elaine de Kooning's brother. He still lived in this little house up until a few short years ago. He passed away in 2009.

Rapids

Upstate New York, in Sullivan County, about 100 miles from NYC. Not the most dramatic rapids in the world, but part of my "territory." Not quite peak fall colors yet, but enough that you know what season we're in. I did not directly manipulate color saturation in this pic (just contrast & brightness), it's really that intense here after a wild stormy night and in the soft early morning light.

Swirls

I'm going out of town today, so again an "old" shot, this time from the summer. I think it fits the "simplicity" idea, even though I wasn't shooting with any awareness of the concept at the time, it's kinda what I was going for unconsciously...