NY Through the Lens - New York City Photography

New York City skyline and Central Park from above.

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When the day stretches out

leaving a trail of sighs

in its wake,

the sky

and the infinite

slowly implode

folding themselves into one another

until all that is left

is a never-ending horizon

reaching out towards

the rest of forever.

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This is a view of Central Park and the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan as seen from above. It was taken with the Sony A77 from the top of the Empire State Building on an impossibly perfect morning. Upper Manhattan sits in the distance with the Chrysler Building and Queens to the right. The trees of Bryant Park are peeking out in the bottom-left part of this image.

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New York City Skyline and the Chrysler Building as seen from Gantry Plaza State Park. Queens.

When clouds pull themselves over the city after sunset, the city reaches up to greet the night with stars in its eyes and a racing pulse.

And when the night reaches down to hold the city in the palm of its hands, the city’s lights spill out onto a dark sky peppering it with stars.

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There is a heady essence of myth and legend that permeates the in-between times of the day. It seems to seep out especially in the evening just after the sun has reached the horizon when the air is thick with legend. One of my favorite activities is waiting for night to fall while experiencing the deep inhale and exhale of the city. Light spills out from the buildings and pours itself onto the surface of the water and the sky while the blue of the day’s sky melts into the night’s palm.

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This was taken on a bitterly cold and windy evening at Gantry Plaza State Park in Queens with the Sony A99. The wind was whipping across the water with some ferocity and the dock was moving along with the wind gusts making even a 4 second exposure (as this is) quite a challenge. But the light and the storm clouds were magical that night and it was well worth the endless crossing of fingers hoping that the wind didn’t dance too much with the camera.

Some of the most beautiful views of the skyline are from across the East River and Queens has an impressive view of the skyline in Long Island City. When I was growing up in Queens, Long Island City was an almost entirely industrial area. It has become far more residential in recent decades and the areas that boast these views are now in high demand.

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New York City skyline and Chrysler Building - view from Roosevelt Island

My recent foray into experimenting with long exposures has been blossoming into a zen journey. I am a solitary shooter by preference. While I thrive on being around people, when I am shooting it’s an almost spiritual experience that I enjoy only when I am alone. The world tends to melt away and my thoughts evaporate into whatever it is I am shooting. I am not sure if it is because my mind runs at around 1000 miles per hour normally and resembles a rushing waterfall of activity that I seek out these types of experiences where I can calm the mental flow into a gentle stream of thoughts but I am finding long exposures to be an absolutely blissful experience.

This is the result of a 20 second exposure taken late last week from Roosevelt Island with the Sony A99. I have been shooting skylines for the past month for a secret project that I can’t talk about until later this month and it’s been interesting viewing the skyline from different vantage points throughout the boroughs. Roosevelt Island is a tiny island that sits in the East River overlooking the Upper East Side and midtown Manhattan. The Chrysler Building is a beacon of white, sparkling lights in a sea of skyscrapers lit by the yellow glow of the lights on the FDR Drive. It’s a rather calm place to visit at this time of year since it’s not quite warm enough for people to take full advantage of the promenade that runs parallel to this amazing view.

The night tends to fall quietly over the lights of Manhattan when viewing the skyline from this vantage point. The only sounds that are prominent are the sound of waves lapping up against the sides of the promenade as the rare boat speeds by. I find it endlessly fascinating how a long exposure can calm even those sounds down visually - smoothing out the water’s surface until the lights seem to melt into the water like liquid stars in a watery universe.

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The Chrysler Building and New York City skyline.

This is a favorite view of the Chrysler Building. In truth, the Chrysler Building is my favorite skyscraper in New York City. I have always loved the art-deco architecture of it’s spire and how its needle pokes out above the other skyscrapers that populate the New York City skyline in midtown Manhattan.

This particular view is looking west towards Manhattan and sitting in the foreground are the skyscrapers of Tudor City: neo-gothic historic buildings that lay their claim to fame for being part of the first residential skyscraper complex in the entire world.

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New York Winter - The New York City skyline in the snow.

Snowflakes swirl over the skyscrapers and buildings: confetti from the sky blanketing the buildings and streets.

And the world transforms into a giant snow-globe, if only for a brief moment.

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What’s more magical than New York City in the snow (when it first falls, of course)? This winter cityscape view is of the skyscrapers of the New York City skyline in midtown Manhattan including the Chrysler Building, the MetLife Building and a barely visible 59th Street Bridge (also known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge).

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New York City

Growing up in Queens, a borough of New York City, I was surrounded by a general attitude of contempt and disgust regarding anything tourist related. My father who worked nights as a newspaper pressman in Manhattan hated going into Manhattan for anything other than work (his job was back-breaking) and my mother echoed the same jaded sentiment towards ‘touristy things’ in Manhattan as her other outer-borough friends. The ‘city’ (as many people still call it) was something to be proud to live in very close proximity to but anything too popular in the ‘city’ was the subject of eye-rolls.

I grew up mimicking this sentiment; a sort of ‘been there, done that’ mentality. We would only ever go to things like Times Square and the Empire State Building when relatives or friends visited and there was a silent stoicism related to showing ‘the sights’ to ‘out-of-towners’. I always found this amusing. These sights that were derided as nothing more than trite spectacles were the same sights that my parents deemed worthy to spend time taking people to when people came to visit us.

When I moved to Manhattan a decade ago, I carried this attitude with me. It wasn’t until I started taking photos that I fully opened my eyes (so to speak). Granted, I had always found beauty in the things many people passed over; architectural details on tops of buildings, the way that sunlight hit buildings at different times of the day. However, when I finally discarded the jadedness that permeated my early years I started realizing how utterly phenomenal and fascinating all those ‘touristy’ things are.

It may have taken me many years to fully grasp why people come from all over the world to gaze lovingly at sights and architectural marvels like the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building but now that I know it’s hard not to gaze at these sights with anything but wonder. There is so much to be in awe of in this spectacular city.

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This is an early morning view from the top of the Empire State Building looking out over the huge variety of skyscrapers that populate the skyline of midtown Manhattan.

Central Park stretches out in the distance with the MetLife Building and Chrysler Building to the right in this image and Bryant Park and Rockefeller Center towards the left and center. The Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge) is to the right of the Chrysler Building in this view and Queens can be seen to the right of the bridge disappearing into the haze.

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The New York City skyline featuring the Chrysler Building. Midtown.

I have always been partial to late summer skyline views here in New York City.

The haze that hangs over the horizon like a misty veil seems to lend a special sort of immediacy to the skyscrapers that assert themselves in the foreground.

The Chrysler Building, New York City’s art-deco masterpiece of architecture, always looks so regal positioned in front of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge). Four smokestacks playfully draw the eye towards the rest of Queens that sprawls out in the distance towards the fading horizon.

It’s as if the sky is locked in an embrace with the rest of the city while the skyscrapers that make up the midtown Manhattan skyline are enraptured and wrapped up in their own special moment with the Chrysler Building.

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Painted Memories. Future New York City. Chrysler Building. Midtown.

We looked at old photos of the metropolises we once called home with their towers reaching up to an unexplored sky. These structures stood tall in a universe full of wonder and dust from an infinite number of stars.

Our breath stopped, caught in our throats as our tears diluted the remnants of paint that had found their way onto these crumbling archaic testaments revealing entire cities beneath the caked, colored surface.

For a brief moment, it was as if our tears had the power to unearth memories from the recesses of time.

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This is not a phone photo. This is an ongoing side project: surreal future-dystopian (and utopian) cityscapes incorporating iconic NYC architecture and landscapes: part of a larger and strange sort of New York fairy tale series that I am imagining that takes place in the future.

View the other work in this ongoing series here: New York Fairy Tale

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Buy “Painted Memories - The Chrysler Building - New York City” Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

Monolith of a distant past. Surreal New York City. Chrysler Building. Midtown.

We kept pieces of the old cities in place to remind us of a time when we were bound to the earth.

Their buildings stood empty yet proud: monoliths constructed in a time when wonder could be extracted from the tiniest of glimpses into an unexplored sky.

They stood there: remnants of times when white clouds were all that was plentiful and when our faces replicated themselves temporarily onto their gleaming facades.

While the rest of the world pushed forward under red skies dotted with emulsified exhaust, we stopped to take in a view of a distant past.

And I scratched our memories into the sky with an old key.

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This is not a phone photo. This is an ongoing side project: surreal future-dystopian (and utopian) cityscapes incorporating iconic NYC architecture and landscapes: part of a larger and strange sort of New York fairy tale series that I am imagining that takes place in the future.

View the other work in this ongoing series here: New York Fairy Tale

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Buy “Monoliths From a Distant Past - Chrysler Building - New York City” Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

The Chrysler Building and New York City skyline as seen from the Empire State Building.

Looking out over New York City from up high, the skyscrapers rise from the ground proudly as if they are marching towards the horizon where the city and the sky meet briefly and where steel dissolves into light.

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This photo was taken with my phone and edited with Camera +. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other phone photography posts made to this blog here, my mobile photography photos on Flickr here, and my phone photography for sale here.

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The Chrysler Building. New York City.

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And out of the earth rose the monoliths: giant world pillars rising up to greet the sun and sky.

As the sun kissed their spires with its luminous glow, the shadows embraced the streets below.

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This photo was taken with my phone. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other Instagram posts made to this blog here. You can check out all of my Instagram photos on Flickr here. Additionally, you can view my phone photography for sale here.

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Buy “The Chrysler Building - New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

The W.R. Grace Building and the Chrysler Building. 42nd Street. Midtown, New York City.

There are certain views in the city that seem to have embedded themselves in my mind over time.

This view, is one of those types of views. When I think of some of the first times I noticed the Chrysler Building when I was much younger, this is the view that immediately springs out of the recesses of my memory. I can’t quite remember the first time I took in this view but I also can’t remember viewing the Chrysler Building from any other vantage point when I think back on my first impressionable views of the iconic art deco masterpiece of architecture.

It’s as if this portion of the city didn’t exist until I saw it in this exact way as if once I laid eyes on this scene, my mind dream-sketched it into existence.

Perhaps that’s how we all form our own significant impressions of our surroundings. The memorable bits inhabit a place in our minds where they can spring forth when thinking of a certain place: a treasure chest of imagery that sits in our minds waiting for us to open it with our eyes.

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This particular view is adjacent to Bryant Park on 42nd Street. The sloped building in the foreground is the W.R. Grace Building which was designed by Gordon Bunshaft and completed in 1974. When I was little I used to imagine how awesome it would be to slide down the facade of the building. It turns out, I wasn’t the only one who imagined such a thing. In 2007, the Grace Building was featured in the 2007 Marvel Comics motion picture Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The Silver Surfer, pursued by the Human Torch, surfs down the south face of The Grace Building, imploding windows in his cosmic-energy wake.

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Manhattanhenge overlooking 42nd Street and Tudor City Overpass. New York City.

This was taken during last year’s Manhattanhenge sunset.The experience was rather intense. Even though I got to the overpass an hour and a half before sunset, I was told that many photographers had set up their equipment as early as 3 pm. When the sun started its very dramatic descent all that could be heard was the sound of cameras clicking away. It’s definitely a phenomenon I don’t plan to ever skip now that I have experienced it.

While the sun’s dramatic dip only lasts for a few minutes, it’s enough to take one’s breath away for the entire duration. The city is bathed in the light from the sun and the most beautiful red glow is cast through the streets.

Manhattanhenge is a semiannual occurrence in which the setting sun aligns with the east–west streets of the main street grid in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The term is derived from Stonehenge, at which the sun aligns with the stones on the solstices. It was coined in 2002 by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

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The Chrysler Building. Midtown, New York City.

If you are fortunate enough to look up at exactly the right time, you can catch the sun dancing along the top of the Chrysler Building.

As the sun glides across the iconic spire, it leaves glimmering trails: shimmering footsteps connecting the sky to the city.

The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture. Designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler, it 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 its completion on 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.

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The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and the New York City skyline.

I had the fortune and pleasure of getting to visit the Google NYC headquarters this past weekend. While the offices are a lot of fun to visit, photos are obviously prohibited for the most part in the majority of the interior parts of the building so here is a shot from the outside terrace of their cafeteria. What a view, right? Lucky Googlers!

I should be back to my normal posting schedule soon. This past weekend was a whirlwind of fun and laughter due to over 70 people from Google Plus descending on NYC (from all over the world!) for a photowalk, concert and general mayhem. You can see some photos I am in (taken by others) from the weekend here if you are interested.

Can’t wait to go through the rest of my photos and get them online! Enjoy this in the meantime :).

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