Street Lamp

Another one from yesterday under the elevated section of the Henry Hudson Highway.

Down by the River

Devoted the afternoon today to just getting out and shooting. A better day.

Winter Discontent

I'm still not feeling it lately, but I don't want to go too long without posting something. I'm just not seeing anything I want to shoot. Maybe I need to go back to some of the exercises I worked on this summer with color, texture, and so on. Or maybe I just need to get away to a different neighborhood. It is my first winter trying to sustain photographic output on a regular basis, so maybe it's just a product of the season.

Brick Walkway

Under the Arcade in the park, snow blown in through the arches.

In the Snow

Sebastian in the Snow

Terrence with Board

Fort Tryon Park

I've been in a bit of a photographic funk lately, mostly from mental fatigue and having so little time to shoot. Even though we had a nice snowfall today, I had no drive to go out, until my kids wanted to go to the local park to sled/snowboard late this afternoon. So I followed them out with my camera to take a few.

The first shot is my favorite, Sebastian giving me a bit of the evil eye while lying on his "sled" in the snow. The middle shot is my experimentation with B&W flash, plus some added vignetting as inspired by Bill Wellham. Most of those were for the kinds of snapshots the kids may look back at one day and enjoy, but not anything I want to display publicly :-) The last one is mostly for context - we got about 4 inches today...

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Took this back in December while waiting for my son to finish his admissions interview at a nearby school.

This is a big steel rusted sculpture on the campus of what used to be called Martin Luther King, Jr. High School. Chris Rock had a routine where he commented on the fact that anytime something is named after Martin Luther King, a man who stood for nonviolence, there's sure to be problems. This high school was a chronically troubled place and ceased to exist as a single high school a few years ago. In its place Mayor Bloomberg's gimmicky small schools project took over, meaning the "campus" now houses several different schools.

The whole campus has a drab, depressing feel to it. Although I can appreciate the sculpture as art, it has a heaviness and dreariness that seem inappropriate to a high school setting, where I would prefer a more optimistic, light, and welcoming atmosphere. The pictures of the campus posted in the wikipedia article do not convey the actual feel of the place when you are standing outside - or inside.

It can't help that this school, which still pulls kids from poorer neighborhoods around the city, is literally across the street from Laguardia, which is selective in its admissions, prestigious, and pulls kids from wealthier neighborhoods around the COUNTRY (Madonna's daughter goes there). The contrast is jarring.

Warm Light, Cold Day

Very cold and windy day, today, barely lasted 15 minutes out there shooting and had to come back in to put my heaviest down-filled winter coat on. These are all from literally "my" back yard, overlooking the Hudson and the GWB. I say "my" in quotation marks because it's part of my co-op.

But I'm pretty lucky to live here, in more ways than one. We moved to the "Heights" before the real estate up here went through the roof, just as some rent stabilization laws were being phased out, making downtown unaffordable for people who had lived there for decades, and making this neighborhood a next logical bargain, temporarily, not so much any more.  

Backboard Shadows

The sun was setting in the west as the eastern sky was mostly cloudy, casting interesting shadows on the basketball goal in the local playground. I would have preferred a clear blue sky, the clouds compete with the shadows for attention.

Sporadic shooting for the foreseeable future - between work and the short daylight hours, it's hard to find the time.

m is for me

Part of a new photography club assignment to find environmental stuctures, manmade or natural, that resemble letters of the alphabet. This is the best example I could do in a hurry. As a bonus (or a distraction, depending on how you look at it) my reflection is in the glass and my first initial is of course M.

The Colonnade Revisited

Back in the city, from Sunday. This is the colonnade overlooking the Hudson River that I shot once before this summer. I was out about an hour before sundown, looking for dramatic "light & shadow" effects to go with the photography club assignment for this month. I didn't set out to shoot this particular structure, but when I walked by and saw it in this light the choice was obvious. Adjusted highlights and shadows in photoshop a bit to the accentuate the effect - I hope it doesn't look overdone.

The Black & White Rural

The last of the upstate series. It's nice to have the opportunity to see a different world and contrast it with the city, it sort of refreshes the senses. I'm happy to be back, though.

I grew up in a world more like upstate NY (not so mountainous, but equally rural) and I always wanted to get away to the "city" - although at the time the small town near where I lived, population 20,000, was my idea of a city.

After about a day up there I'm always itching to leave.

Forests & Trees

It's a rough environment for trees, cold long winters and a constantly shifting, terribly rocky terrain -you can't dig a hole in this ground here. Your shovel hits a large rock, you remove the rock, then hit another rock. I tried a little gardening a while back, and it was a royal pain. When you take away the rocks, there's nothing left - very little soil to speak of for gardening purposes.

But they survive and enough thrive that there's a fair amount of timber here for the taking, as witnessed in the picture of cut logs in the previous post. The road you see in this middle frame is a lumber road.