NY Through the Lens - New York City Photography

Skyscrapers. Financial District, New York City.

When I was very young, I remember learning about vast mountain ranges that existed in what seemed like universes beyond New York City. I would regale myself with images of these towering feats of nature trying to imagine what it was like to come in contact with such powerful natural wonders. I used to think to myself “There is nothing like this here in the city, all we have are buildings.”

It wasn’t until my teens when I lived in New Mexico for a little over a year and more specifically when I got to experience the majesty of Taos that I was able to understand how infinitely small everything seems in comparison to the vastness of the world.

And yet, while I was in school there in Albuquerque, other students would ask me daily to tell them what it was like to live amongst buildings that soared to the sky.

It never occurred to me before that time that the man-made feats of architecture that I viewed on a regular basis were for these students what the images of mountain ranges were to me before I had the experience of seeing mountains with my own eyes.

When I moved back to New York City, I carried that new knowledge with me like a precious gift, tucking it away for safe-keeping.

And it wasn’t until I discovered photography, that I took that knowledge out from where I tucked it away for many years and started to view my own city with new eyes.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t recall the time when I realized that New York City is its own man-made land of enchantment.

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Chinatown rooftop graffiti. Two Bridges, New York City.

New York City is an urban layer cake.

This is another one of my favorite views in lower Manhattan. It’s a small segment of an entire universe that exists above millions of New Yorkers.

Layers of colorful graffiti cover the rooftops of these Chinatown apartment buildings as rooftop doors blow open in the wind and colorful clothing sways on clotheslines high above the city below.

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Night. East Village, New York City.

As the city moves furtively into shadows, buildings render themselves one by one in the cold glow of street lamps whose light burns brightly against the dark expanse of night: supernovas pushing against gravity and their inevitable collapse into themselves.

And we wait: unaware of the solemnity of the situation.

We wait under these man-made white dwarfs pushing our dreams to the skies beyond our grasps forever propelling ourselves forward while standing completely still.

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Gifts, holiday cards, posters and prints featuring my New York City photography this holiday season - The complete list.

New York City in the winter. Soho.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned in a post about my business page on Google Plus that I have been creating and selling various things like invitations and holiday greeting cards with my photography for quite some time. More than a few people messaged me asking where to find these items and I told them I would make a master post about these items close to the beginning of December. While I would love to have this be a visual post, Tumblr has limitations in terms of images per post so I will provide quite a few links that are all intensely visual instead!

I curate a few pages over on Squidoo that serve as visual menus of everything I offer. I guarantee they are a lot of fun to browse and click through! Here are those pages:

New York City Holiday Cards : Holiday cards featuring photography of Central Park in the winter, Rockefeller Center, and New York City during the holiday season.

New York Gifts - The Complete Collection: A nice introduction to the variety of items that I design including calendars, puzzles, invitations, postcards, necklaces, posters, prints and more.

New York City Posters: A visual way to view my various travel posters and prints.

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For a direct store directory listing, here are just a few popular categories:

New York City Holiday Cards

New York City Travel Posters

New York City 2012 Calendars

New York City Invitations

You can view the entire store here if you wish:

The New York Through The Lens Store

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You can also view more New York City 2012 Calendars in this post which links to my other store. My other store is more print-centric and also where I tend to fill print requests from customers. For example, just recently I created a custom calendar for a customer over at this store.

I wanted to also take this opportunity to thank all of the kind people who have messaged me, shared my photography, purchased my work and who inspire me on a daily basis to keep doing what I am doing. You are all so wonderful!

If you have questions about custom orders or any item in my store(s), feel free to message me here or on my Google Plus personal page

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Staple Street traverse at dusk. Tribeca, New York City.

I have favorite streets. They haunt me in all the best ways. They represent the New York City in my mind. Everyone seems to have a different version of New York City in their mind. My version was formed early on, a result of falling in love with a combination of streetscapes in classic cinema, futuristic sci-fi city environments in literature and film, and years of traversing New York City on foot.

These streets tug at memories I haven’t made yet while yanking memories I treasure from the deep recesses of my mind. This is one of those streets. It’s Staple Street in Tribeca. A tiny alley-like street, it contains one of the most fascinating pedestrian bridges (also known as a skyway, traverse, skywalk and a host of other terms) I have ever seen in New York City. It’s history is interesting:

“In 1894, New York Hospital built the House of Relief, a downtown clinic, on Jay from Hudson to Staple, with an ambulance entrance facing Staple. In that year The New York Herald noted that the hospital was sending its ambulance out as often as seven times a day, sometimes on emergencies involving sunstroke, ”which so often occurs in the lower part of the city,” perhaps because of the large number of men working outdoors on the docks.

In 1907 the hospital built an annex across Staple Street (replacing the saloon/row house at Jay and Staple) as a stable and laundry, connecting it at the third-floor level using a pedestrian bridge. Although Staple Street was then just an industrial alley, the hospital had the architects Robertson & Potter design a handsome little building with a terra cotta plaque bearing the ”NYH” monogram on the Staple Street side. The monogram is still there.” - from “Streetscapes: Staple Street in TriBeCa” New York Times By Christopher Gray, February 2001

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The New York City skyline as viewed from above looking out over the rooftops and architecture of Midtown, Manhattan.

There is an inherent romance that can be found in the sheer density of the architecture of New York City.

Buildings huddle close like lovers before a nervous first kiss. Their bodies rise up to the sky proud and majestic each one holding dozens if not thousands of stories. If you look intently you can see their bold spirits traveling with the wind carrying the hopes and dreams of those who share their world to soaring heights of possibility and promise.

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The New York City skyline featuring the skyscrapers of midtown. New York City.

I went to my first photowalk yesterday evening. A large group of around 20 (25?) photographers from Google + got together to walk around Greenwich Village with their cameras. It was a really interesting experience and I ended up meeting a few people I only ever interacted with online prior to the walk. The majority of the photographers were street photographers. Street photography (for those who don’t know) is a type of documentary photography that tends to feature subjects in candid situations within public settings. It’s not the type of photography I generally gravitate towards (although I have posted a few shots that could fall into that realm).

However, what was interesting was that in talking to several of the other photographers, I found that I had a lot of trouble categorizing my own photography. I initially started out by saying that I ‘do urban landscapes and some natural landscapes around New York City’ but that seemed so vague when I actually said it in conversation! In other conversations, I started to try to explain that I take ‘emotive urban’ photography which just ended up sounding incredibly pretentious. I also mentioned that I tend to link writing with photography which ended up being more confusing than anything. In actuality, it was quite amusing that I had so much trouble explaining just what it is I ‘do’. It’s a strange predicament to be in, for sure.

I was initially going to write quite a bit of prose to accompany this photo about how the city encompasses the individual leading the individual to seek to rise above the city and some other meandering thoughts about the greater concept of the city in relation to the lone individual. However, the photo discussions from last night have been foremost in my mind.

It’s sometimes difficult to explain how we focus our passions into tangible form. It could be the reason why humans developed music and art and other creative forms. These forms that exist alongside and sometimes outside of written and spoken language seek to make sense of what often can’t be explained with mere words.

When I was younger, I used to imagine what a world without written or spoken language would be like. If there were no words to express the complexities and beauty that surrounds us, what would we use to reel in the (often beautiful) chaos?

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I still need to go through the very few photos that I did take on the walk (and maybe share the photos I ended up in as well). I find that when I go out to shoot with people, I am more focused on observing without capturing. I look forward to more walks and more chances to figure out how to put into words that which I can’t quite find the words for.

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Love me - street art writing. Chinatown, New York City.

Little surprises like hot pink incantations nestled in among brightly colored tenements enchant the urban environment with a whimsical quality. These fleeting incantations stand out as thoughts breaking their way through the immense density of structures let loose if only for a brief amount of time.

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Gimbels traverse on 32nd Street. Midtown, New York City.

There is a green copper traverse that is situated high above 32nd Street in midtown Manhattan. In my ongoing quest to find the rare few traverses (also known as skybridges, footbridges and air spaces) that exist in New York City, I found myself under this one last week. This area of midtown is admittedly rather depressing. Having spent quite a bit of time here when I went to FIT nearly a decade ago, I can definitely say that most people who pass down this street are either in a rush to get to the transportation hub at Penn Station which is directly at one of the ends of this long block or are hurriedly rushing along to get somewhere (anywhere) else. It’s one of those streets that unless you have an affinity for dreary chain stores, you probably don’t end up on to admire the views (although, the block does have arguably one of the best 99 cent stores in existence, Jack’s 99 cent Store. So, it’s no wonder that this gorgeous skybridge traverse goes largely unnoticed.

Aside from being a beautiful work of architecture designed in 1925, this copper bridge which sits at three stories tall was the product of architects Richmond Shreve and William Lamb, two of the same architects who ended up involved in the design of the Empire State Building. The bridge was commissioned by the retail store Gimbels which was a department store that reigned supreme from the late 1800s to the late 20th century. It became the largest department store in the world in the 1930s even playing an interesting role in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street.

Gimbels had a spirited rivalry with Macy’s for many years. Macy’s eventually ended up outlasting Gimbels due to a number of factors such as reputation and brand identity. Many people felt that Macy’s outward image was more polished than Gimbels. Whatever the reasons, the skybridge in this photo was actually a product of Gimbels competitively branching out to a more ‘fashionable’ street in 1922. Both Macy’s and Gimbels were located in Herald Square (where Macy’s still stands) and in a move to migrate the store towards the more fashionable 5th Avenue, Gimbels merged with the Sak’s on 34th Street store. To link its Herald Square location to the newer 5th Avenue location, a grand skybridge was designed and built for Gimbels.

I love that the skybridge has survived all these years. Gimbels is long gone and the neighborhood has gone through many architectural changes but this little reminder of the dynamic and spirited department store wars of the mid-20th century still sits above 32nd Street.

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The Chrysler Building and the Socony Mobil Building. Midtown, New York City

Touching the sky and brushing against clouds, the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan rise up like enormous man-made stalagmites. Shadows cast themselves on these giant structures while sunlight streams over the tops connecting the sky with the earth.

The Socony Mobil Building (in the foreground) is composed of approximately 750,000 pounds of stainless steel which is pleated to enable the wind and rain to keep it clean. It was built in the mid 1950s and the developers of the building had deep connections with the United States Steel Corporation who were keen on promoting steel as an alternative to aluminum. However, steel proved to be a very expensive alternative and stainless steel never quite caught on as a popular wall material for large structures.

The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture. It was designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler and was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid 1950’s. Even though the building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for the construction of it and never owned it, as Walter P. Chrysler decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it. Upon completion, May 20, 1930, the added height of the spire allowed the Chrysler Building to surpass 40 Wall Street as the tallest building in the world and the Eiffel Tower as the tallest structure. It was the first man-made structure to stand taller than 1,000 feet. Source

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East Broadway buildings and architecture. Chinatown, New York City.

This is a view of the buildings that line East Broadway in the Two Bridges neighborhood that borders Chinatown and the Lower East Side. I posted a variation of this view a few days ago here: Above Chinatown.

What I love about this view, aside from the girl perched on one of the roof tops on the right in this photo, are the two water towers that sit above the buildings. A water tower is a large elevated drinking water storage container constructed to hold a water supply at a height sufficient to pressurize a water distribution system via hydrostatic pressure.

The usage of roof top water towers dates back to the 19th century when New York City required that all buildings taller than six stories be equipped with roof top water towers. If you look closely at this photo, many of the buildings are shorter than six stories high. If water towers are utilized in buildings lower than six stories, a high pressure situation could occur leading to burst pipes used.

Why aren’t more modern alternatives utilized in this day and age? The answer has to do with public health risks. “Alternatives to water towers are simple pumps mounted on top of the water pipes to increase the water pressure. This new approach is more straightforward, but also more subject to potential public health risks; if the pumps fail, then loss of water pressure will result in potential public health impacts, typically associated with entry of contaminants into the water system.” Source

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The Flatiron Building illuminated by late afternoon sunlight. Flatiron District. Midtown, New York City.

The sky was absolutely stunning earlier this evening. I had a few things I needed to take care of in this particular area of the city and decided to stop to admire the iconic Flatiron Building as the sun dramatically played a game of hide and seek behind and through some rather persistent storm clouds.

“The Flatiron Building, or Fuller Building, as it was originally called, is located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhattan, New York City and is considered to be a groundbreaking skyscraper. Upon completion in 1902 it was one of the tallest buildings in the city and the only skyscraper north of 14th Street. The building sits on a triangular island block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway and East 22nd Street, with 23rd Street grazing the triangle’s northern (uptown) peak.

The Flatiron Building was designed by Chicago’s Daniel Burnham as a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling. Unlike New York’s early skyscrapers, which took the form of towers arising from a lower, blockier mass, such as the contemporary Singer Building (1902–1908), the Flatiron Building epitomizes the Chicago school conception: like a classical Greek column, its facade – limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terra-cotta from the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in Tottenville, Staten Island as the floors rise – is divided into a base, shaft and capital.” - Source

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The Empire State Building and the midtown New York City skyline from above. New York City.

I love the variety of architecture present in the skyscrapers that surround the Empire State Building when looking out onto New York City from high above.

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City skyline as viewed from the High Line Park. Chelsea, New York City.

I love the sunlit moments before a storm.

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Looking out onto the Two Bridges neighborhood from the Manhattan Bridge. Chinatown, New York City.

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This is one of my favorite views of Chinatown. A girl sits on one of the rooftops eating a bowl of food in the upper right hand corner of this photo (you can view the photo in larger detail here: On 500px). The Municipal Building sits in the distance.

This particular spot is a Chinatown neighborhood known as ‘Two Bridges’. Two Bridges sits along the East River and has long been a dwelling spot for many different immigrant communities over the years. It sits alongside the infamous and historic Five Points area where Irish, Jewish and Italian gangs battled to the death in the mid-19th century. It is currently home to a large community of Chinese immigrants and many of the buildings are tenements dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.