B-Sides: Lovers

By Minako Yonisho. Taken last summer, installation along the Hudson River. The base is made up of broken bluestone with love notes/messages, each written by a different individual, in black sharpie.

Another Sunset...

Another year. Another one rising. Let's hope it's a good one!

George Washington Bridge from the roof of my building. It was glorious. No, photos don't do it justice. Taken 2 days ago, but I wanted to post something finish off the year. Thanks to everyone who visits and comments!

Winter Skyline

Rock, Paper, Water

Sporadic posting after a long dry spell. Hope to get back on track soon.

Barges

That little ray of golden sunshine on the water to the right is annoying, but this shot doesn't appear very often or predictably.

Winter

A day late, but this was an assignment to shoot "winter." I saw this on the way home today and it seemed apropos.

UPDATED: Fixed some of the blue color cast and a couple of other problems with the original posting that bothered me.

Snowy Palisades

From yesterday, a little landscape. Looking up the Hudson River at the snow-covered tree tops along the Palisades disappearing in the fog. The color shift on the left is from the late afternoon sun finally peeking out way south of this point and coloring the clouds. You can see there's no snow on the trees this side of the hudson.

G15 Sensor Problem

I noticed the dark splotch in the upper right hand corner in a shot from the weekend with a clear blue sky. At first I thought it was maybe just a puff of cloud or smoke that I hadn't noticed in the scene. Then today I took some shots with a lot of sky in them such as this one and the splotch is there again. It's subtle and you might think it's just a jpeg artifact or dust spot or something, or you might not even notice it if I didn't point it out, but it's unacceptable to me. I am returning the camera. It's a little more obvious in this shot oriented vertically, it's in the left top edge of the frame.

Oddly, it doesn't appear in every shot, so I don't know if it's the focal length or the angle of the light source or what. It should appear in this one (from a few days ago) but doesn't, while other similar shots have it:

I bought this camera refurbished from canon direct. Don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I still intend to replace it with another G15. A new one. And then test it thoroughly.

UPDATE: Returned defective copy, replaced with new one. Tested, no problems.

Base of Tower

GWB, on the New Jersey side. The New York tower is not planted in water.

Slow week, in a blogging sense, but I've been shooting some film for reasons I will go into in another post. And practicing some lighting techniques from the Strobist - again for reasons I will discuss in a separate post.

Pier 54

The indecipherable lettering reflects the changing corporate management of the pier mid-20th century. Read about it here. This is the pier from which the Lusitania launched its final voyage, and the Titanic survivors arrived here as well.

GWB at Night

I'm pretty happy with this one - I mean, it's just a pretty picture of a bridge,  but I took a chance and went out late in the evening when it was getting dark and still raining and just hoped it would stop at the right time or my umbrella would keep the rain from blowing in onto my lens, and I lucked out.

This is on a tripod with 25 sec exposure. I had actually shot this scene the night before hand held (at higher ISO, faster shutter, and larger aperture), but the only one that came out sharp was badly composed with a slanted horizon too close to the bottom of the frame. So tonight I knew what I was looking for and when to go for it. Unfortunately I forgot the bug spray and got eaten up by mosquitoes or some such blood-sucking pest.

But, horizontal or vertical?

Message in a Bottle

A little color today for a change. I've been going out with the intention of shooting b&w but this one just looks better in the subtle bronze and stainless steel tones. Interior of Private Passage by Malcolm Cochran, a giant bronze and zinc wine bottle made to look like the cabin of a luxury liner on the inside.

Mad Clouds

It's been like this for several days, terrible air quality as well. I guess we're paying for that relatively cool spring we had this year. I was playing around with a circular polarizer today, gave me a little bit more separation between the clouds and sky, still needed a good punch in software, though.

Roughly northern view across the Hudson into New Jersey. Take from approximately 86th street in Manhattan.

Three From The River

Tripod, telephoto, small aperture. Still not as much depth of field as I would like in the last shot. Probably needed to get closer and use less tele, but see below about the freaking cold. I like the results from using a tripod, but man do you have to slow down and take fewer shots and be committed to what you are shooting because fiddling with all the knobs and adjustments on the tripod is such a hassle.

Discovered the zoom feature in live view mode for manual focusing is quite nice. Also need to remember that live view is practically 100% view - I'm used to allowing a little play around the edges when using the viewfinder, so the tip of the log in #1 is cut off. Too cold, though, today. Even with gloves my fingers were frozen after a brief time by the river - wind chill, mainly.