New stuff coming soon!

I know it's been a little longer than I usually like between new posts... I'll have something new up this weekend. We're in the process of buying a house, so my mind has been on other things lately. But I check my stats and I see you guys visiting and waiting patiently for something new, so I'll have something for you in the next few days (^_^)

I went through this period when I was younger of trying to shoot all these nasty urban photos of a dying, decaying city. When I came back to New York in the early 1990's, that's pretty much what it was.

When I look at those photos now they're mostly not composed very well and they just feel kinda old. I still like this one, though, mostly because I get to make up some sort of new outlandish story about how I took it every time somebody asks - I was leaning out over the ledge holding onto a storm drain; I put my camera on a timer, held it on a rope and tossed it over the ledge; I strung it across the two halfs of the building on a wire. I love telling people stuff like this.

(Ok, I'll come clean - it wasn't really that hard.)

This may look oversaturated, but trust me, it isn't. I walk by this building every day on my way home, and I really doubt I could even crank the saturation up high enough to match the way this really looks. This particular evening had a great deep blue sky, and the light from this sign always just totally lights up the street green - the wash of color is tough to capture but I did my best.

Looked down this little street in Boston and just liked the color of the sky. The shot actually came out pretty much crap but I was able to rescue it with a few tweaks in the RAW conversion and some noise reduction. (I've still got some blown highlights, but I can live with them.) Still probably not my favorite shot, but I think I impress myself more when I manage to make something out of nothing than when I get lucky with a photo that's perfect straight out of the camera.

Trying a new way of posting this time...

This is the view outside my office window. I took it as a total throwaway image out of boredom (my internet connection was down today, and I couldn't do any work), but I actually like the way it turned out. I even like the window reflections. (And yeah, I know the corners are not completely straight...) Eh, what do I know...

I'd better post this before I change my mind - I'm playing around with a new lens and thought this came out kinda nice. Just four bottles sitting on a shelf in my apartment.

If you look at the photo of the tracks a few shots down, this was taken at the same spot looking in the opposite direction. This was part of the Sunnyside yards in Queens, NYC, and at the time this area was pretty derelict. It's hard to tell from this photo (and I wish I could have gotten closer) but the trains here were literally falling over, some of the cars were derailed, and all of them were covered in graffiti. It was really pretty cool. It's only been about five years since then but this whole area now has been completely cleaned up.

(By the way, if you look way off in the distance, near the center of the photo, you can see the World Trade Center.)

I'm posting these old photos because I feel like I'm sort of stuck in a rut right now. I have a lot of newer photos that I want to post but I just can't bring myself to hit that "submit" button - the more I stare at my photos, the less I like them. I've even gotten so far as typing up a submission for a photo and then said "nah" and cancelled at the last minute. I guess it's the photographer's equivalent of writer's block. I never really intended this blog to be only new photos but instead to be a mix of everything I've ever done, but until I get over this I'll probably just keep posting some of these old standbys from my collection.

This is not the most artistic photo, but I just think it's really cute.

This was taken near my office. I work near Times Square. (Watch for the obligatory Times Square panorama shot any day now!)

I just re-uploaded the big version of this photo to my own server, so even if you clicked through before you might want to do so again to get a cleaner look.

I just liked the light on this one, and the pattern...

BlogSpot is compressing the hell out of this photo - it looks slightly better if you view the full size version, though even that's questionable. Oh well.

This place no longer exists. It is now a grass field.

I found these metal handprints embedded in the sidewalk down in lower Manhattan. Just one of those random New York things...

You might recognize this area from the photo below it. I really love this picture, actually; it is just so New York in so many ways.

I shot this RAW, as I usually do, and it was a real challenge pulling anything useful from it. A shot like this is a real test of a digital camera's dynamic range, and the original values used by the camera for the exposure resulted in a photo that was over-exposed on the window scene and under-exposed for the interior of the train car. I had to perform some pretty extreme adjustments in the RAW conversion to end up with this. I think I did a pretty decent job, though I'm obviously keeping the RAW file around in case I feel like revisiting it later - I'm never sure if anything is really the best I can do.

This was taken tonight, 9/11. This is the "Tribute in Light" that has become a traditional yearly memorial to the twin towers. I was about 5 miles away when I took this picture. Sorry, no clickable larger image this time - the original was too noisy; it's not worth seeing at a larger size. I was shooting handheld so using high ISOs - I wouldn't even be posting this if not for the subject matter.

Photos of this tribute do not do it justice. It's really amazing to see these two beams of light stretching up into the sky as far as the eye can see...

A brief interlude...

Today is 9/11. In 2001, I didn't have a very good camera - just a 1.2 megapixel Fujifilm MX-1200, which was among the earliest generations of digital cameras. It was capable of taking decent shots (see the Chiba Marine Stadium shot a bit further down the page), but it had its definite limitations.

Anyway, the point is this is the camera I had on hand on 9/11/01 and in the days after. I took some photos and eventually put them up the following year on my old Geocities page. They're still there, if you want to see them, as my own little memorial.

The page is here.

I'm not sure if I like this photo or not. It's emotional, but does it stand on its own as a photo? I really don't know - as someone who lived through 9/11 I'm not that good at separating the emotion from the technical elements. I think the DOF effect might be a little extreme, though. I have a series of these, maybe I'll post a couple others somewhere down the line.

One more...

These are both from Bowl-Mor Lanes here in NYC, taken yesterday. I couldn't decide which one I liked better so I'm posting both. The second shot has a weird reflection on one of the pins, I know (it's actually a light reflecting on the glass case) - I could Photoshop it out but just didn't take the time to do it. I actually think I might like that shot a little better anyway, but the longer shot has a lot more going on in it. So I go back and forth.

Blogger seems to have some issues with compressing both of these photos - I'm linking to Flickr for the big ones this time, as it seems to do a little better job (still not very clean, though). The Flickr images are pretty large, so you may need to resize the photos if your browser squishes them.

Chiba Marine Stadium at dusk (or was it dawn?). Shot with an early 1.2 megapixel digital camera and not retouched at all.

Comments are welcome...

I know nobody wants to be the one to break the ice, but don't be shy - I left the comments switched on purposefully.

I do see that I'm getting visitors here, so don't be afraid to tell me what you think of my stuff. I reserve the right to delete anything I personally find offensive, but generally that will not include constructive criticism.

New photos coming in a day or two...

A reflection of the World Trade Center in the rain.

I've shown this photo elsewhere and it usually gets a strong reaction. Some people call it "exploitive", which seems odd to me. This was taken in around 1996, when the twin towers were just two great buildings that I worked near and I liked the reflection in the rain, with the texture of the rainwater and the rain drops.

All four photos I've posted so far have been silhouettes - I'll mix it up a bit with the next batch.