NY Through the Lens - New York City Photography

New York City night. Rain. Bryant Park. Midtown.

—-

Through eyelashes wet with rain,

a thousand thoughts fall

to the ground

and through the raindrops

the city lights blur together

as shadows make their way

into the night -

impermanence

registered with

every blink.

—-

View this photo with a comment thread on my Google Plus page

—-

View “New York City - Rain and Wet Sidewalks” in my photography portfolio here, email me, or ask for help.

Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge and the New York City skyline at night. Roosevelt Island view.

—-

When the night falls hard onto the city’s shoulders and the sky drapes a dark blanket over the skyscrapers and buildings, it’s hard to contain the effervescent charm that bursts forth after the sun has retreated.

—-

This is the Queensboro Bridge which is known by a few other names depending on where you are from and how long you have lived in New York City. Despite growing up in Queens, I will always think of this bridge as the 59th Street Bridge because I think I belonged to one of the few families in Queens that for whatever reason associated the bridge more with 59th Street in Manhattan. It’s also known as Queens Bridge which is a shortened form of Queensboro Bridge. Its current official name is the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, named after the now deceased former mayor of New York City who held office from the late 70s to the early 80s. He was definitely a “character” (as we say :) ).

The vantage point is from Roosevelt Island and this is the result of a 30 second exposure taken with the Sony A99. It was taken on a bitterly cold night in the beginning of March while I was having a spirited conversation with one of the Roosevelt Island security guards regarding the abandoned smallpox hospital further down the island. I tend to love to shoot long exposures alone but it was great to have the company (and quirky conversation) that night. It’s those type of moments that make me love the city: little bursts of spontaneity and brevity while watching the lights sparkle in the city’s eyes.

—-

View this photo with a comment thread on my Google Plus page

—-

View “New York Night - Queensboro Bridge and the Manhattan Skyline” in my photography portfolio here, email me, or ask for help.

New York City Skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge. Night lights bokeh.

If you stop to squint long enough

all the dreams whispered on the wind during the day

flicker like fireflies when the evening

stretches out across the sky

and the rain washes the city’s despair away

so it can dream itself into another sunrise.

—-

This was taken on earlier this evening with the Sony A99 overlooking the New York City skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn. I was taking long exposures earlier this evening and as the sky filled with enormous clouds shortly after sunset as the city’s lights sprinkled themselves like glitter all over the evening cityscape and it was as if everything else melted away.

These are the moments I want to bottle up and save for later. And that’s why I absolutely love photography.

—-

View this photo with a comment thread on my Google Plus page

—-

View “Brooklyn Bridge at Night - New York City” in my photography portfolio here, email me, or ask for help.

Under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Midtown. New York City

I had a recurring dream when I was younger that puzzled me for years. It involved boarding a hovering bubble shaped vehicle and ascending over the skyscrapers until I was soaring under the bridges and through the cavern-like spaces of the city. It was euphoric but also terrifying at the same time. When I was older, I finally relayed the dream to someone and they laughed and asked if I had ever taken the Roosevelt Island tram when I was very young. I had no recollection of it. It prompted me to ask my mother if we had ever done such a thing and she said it was possible but she couldn’t remember a specific time that we would have done it (my mother, like me, is absolutely terrified of heights). It’s possible that my family took the tram to Roosevelt Island at some point and the experience embedded itself deep into my imagination where it mixed with other flights of fancy (pun intended) of flying through a Gotham-like city like Batman.

So, when I found myself photographing the underbelly of the 59th Street Bridge (also known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge or just the Queensboro Bridge) with the Sony A99 late last week, it was hard not to recall those earlier dreams and feelings they invoked while I stood there waiting for the long exposure to capture 30 seconds of what had haunted me for years. The bridge is one of my favorite ones in the city. Its architecture is distinctive when viewed from the side but I absolutely love how slick and dripping-with-sci-fi-overtones it appears when viewed from below. The bridge travels from darkness into the light of a gleaming New York City as the water below it only stirs with the occasional disruption of a boat. You can also make out the cables that the Roosevelt Island tram travels on to the right of the bridge.

—-

View this photo with a comment thread on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “Under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge - New York City” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

New York Winter. 5th Avenue in the snow. Midtown.

This is one of my favorite scenes from last Friday night’s snowstorm. Quite a few people asked me how I was able to take photos without having snow and water droplets on my camera lens. It was quite a production actually. As I explained in my initial post, I wrapped my camera lens in plastic and then poked a hole in a plastic bag and threaded the lens through that hole. The rest of the plastic bag went over the camera as a covering. I secured the plastic with a lens hood which came in handy during periods of blowing snow. When I wasn’t taking a photo I would point the camera down lens to the ground so that when snow blew towards me, it would blow and collect on the outside of the lens hood keeping the lens relatively dry and clean. I also had a lens filter on the lens.

This meant that I only had a tiny amount of time to shoot each shot. I shoot in manual mode because it’s a long-standing preference of mine so I already had set up the settings that worked for the majority of shots (I did have to adjust a lot once I got to the Times Square area due to the lighting there). In the event that there was a shot I wanted to go for that was in the direction of blowing snow, I would just quickly take the shot and then scurry towards an awning, scaffolding cover, or dry entrance where I would wipe the lens down with a lens wipe.

I finally got around to putting some of the more popular photos from my winter storm Nemo in NYC set that I took and shared this past weekend during the (non) blizzard in my main portfolio and store. They are scattered throughout the rest of my photos. A number of people asked when I was going to put them up for sale so I have been slowly putting the photos from the set into my portfolio - store. I actually have more photos that I haven’t even touched from that night that I hope to go through in the next few weeks and eventually share.

I really didn’t expect the response I got for the photo set over on Flickr! Over the weekend, my Flickr was viewed 175,000 times and the winter storm Nemo photoset (in its entirety) has been viewed nearly 30,000 times (with each photo being viewed anywhere from 900 to over 4000 times). Over on G+, the main photo that I shared has been viewed 189,000 times. Craziness! Thanks all for all of the awesome messages, comments, shares and love for New York City in the snow :).

View this photo with a comment thread on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “New York Winter Night - Midtown in the Snow” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

New York City at night. St.Mark’s Place. East Village.

When the days concede to night in the winter, there is a certain comfort in the glow of neon city lights.

This particular view is of St. Mark’s Place in the East Village. The giant cow on the right belongs to the restaurant Mark (“We grind our own beef”) and the colorful neon signs belong to Andromeda - a tattoo and piercing establishment that merged with the West Village’s Cassioppia a few years back.

The sign that is partially concealed on the left under the tree branches (with shoes hanging off of them!) is Rockit Scientist Records which was a great records store that dated back to the mid 1990s when the East Village was home to far more records stores and had a more eclectic vibe.

There is a coldness to neon that is eclipsed by a peculiar sort of warmth when the windchill dips into the single digits. It’s a sign of life. People tend to huddle under the glow of the lights in the winter with a frequency that isn’t seen as much in warmer months as if they are city moths drawn to the glowing promise of warmth.

—-

Since people have asked, I am going to include the camera/lens combos I used for each photo on this blog from this point on (or at least I will try!). This was taken with the Sony a99 and my 35mm lens.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “St. Mark’s Place at Night - East Village - New York City” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

Lower East Side at night. New York City.

At night, as the street lights guide urban wanderers home under a blanket of darkness,

the mist from the fog of millions of thoughts exhales at once into a sky heavy with dreams.

—-

This is a view looking down Rivington Street towards Suffolk Street on the Lower East Side in lower Manhattan. The building in the foreground with the colorful street art and graffiti is ABC No Rio, a center for art and activism that has been in this neighborhood since 1980.

This was taken with the Sony a99. It feels great to capture night scenes with this camera since it performs really well in low-light. During winter here in New York City, the nights seem endless so it’s nice to be able to capture what I experience and see on a daily basis after the sun goes down .

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “Lower East Side - Night - New York City” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

Times Square. New York City.

Times Square is its own universe.

It’s New York City filtered through cinematic dreams and commercially-tinged aspirations wrapped up in flashing lights and colorful billboards. There is a familiarity to it that is tinged with a wild-eyed estranged quality that makes it all the more alluring.

And when a yellow New York City taxi cab drives by at the speed of light under all the flashing lights, it’s hard not to smile.

—-

Taken with a Sony a99 using the Miniature setting creative style. The Sony a99 has around twenty different creative styles and while I usually shoot in RAW format and do my editing after the fact, I have to say that the Miniature setting was just way too fun to play with especially in Times Square! The results are similar to a Tilt Shift Lens (or I suppose a Lens Baby as well) and you can adjust where you want the focus and blur to end up.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “Times Square - New York City” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

New York City at night - Financial District street with a smoke stack.

At night after the multitudes have retreated to their homes away from the buildings and streets that hold them close during the day the city relaxes shaking the dust of the long day from its concrete limbs.

The street lights flicker like dream-heavy blinks of an eye while smokestacks exhale world-weary breaths of smoke into the yawning night air.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “Smoke - Night - New York City” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.

Buckyball by Leo Villareal- Madison Square Park Art. New York City.

This is a large-scale work by light installation artist Leo Villareal called Buckyball that is on display in Madison Square Park until February 1, 2013.

The work’s two nested geodesic spheres are comprised of 180 LED-tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons that contain thousands of individual pixels capable of displaying 16 million distinct colors. Controlled by custom software designed by the artist, the 30 foot tall illuminated sculpture animates Madison Square Park’s natural landscape with dynamic, random light sequences of varied color, opacity, speed, and scale.

Zero-gravity couches, are placed at the base of the sculpture to allow viewers to gather and contemplate the artwork. The couches and sculptural aspects of the installation reference elements of the park and add a physical and temporal dimension to the viewer’s multisensory experience of Buckyball.

—

I went for a little walk in the fog last night and ended up sitting on one of the zero-gravity couches in Madison Square Park (as mentioned above) and staring at this installation for quite a long time since it constantly changes. This installation is quite a sight to behold and is very mesmerizing. The fog was quite thick last night as well as you can see through the light next to the tower in the background which is the MetLife Tower. Not a bad way to spend a foggy evening in New York City!

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

View my photography portfolio and store here, email me, or ask for help.

New York City street at night. Tribeca.

These city streets: at night they pulsate through our dreams branching out like dendrites sending their synaptic transmissions into our collective memory.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “These City Streets - New York City Alley at Night” Posters and Prints here, View my store, email me, or ask for help.

East Village street at night. New York City.

At night when the city pauses, street lights flicker; electrical synapses trigger dream sputters and whirring blinks of sleepy eyes open and shut in the darkness.

Traversing this elaborate noir dreamscape, reverie-wayfarers pause; stop-motion refugees lit only by the cool blinks of neon signs. In these solitary single frames, night’s blackness vignettes these stolen illuminated interludes cradling them in its steady embrace.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “Reverie-wayfarers - East Village - New York City” Posters and Prints here, View my store, email me, or ask for help.

Soho cobblestone street at night. New York City.

There is a certain serenity that can found when wandering New York City streets at night. These moments pause the forward motion and flow of city life. Street lights flicker against wet cobblestone and glass windows stare back languidly. Remnants of previous signs of life sit on curbs while bicycles lean against stoops resting briefly in the calm embrace of the night.

Someone suggested a few months ago that a common theme to my photography was loneliness. I recounted to him how in the earlier days of my website, people would message me asking if I deliberately removed people from my shots. They couldn’t believe that in a city as densely populated as New York City, moments like the ones I am fond of capturing exist in reality. I can definitely say that I have never removed anyone from my shots.

The truth is that even in a city of a little over 8 million people, the city often pauses and takes a breath. The in-between moments where life empties from the streets, when the city becomes a private sanctuary are captivating.

These moments are fleeting and short-lived but they breathe life into the same streets that boast activity in the moments that tend to define them.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “In-Between Moments - Soho - New York City” Posters and Prints here, View my store, email me, or ask for help.

Summer night. Central Park, New York City

Over the glistening cobblestones in the late summer haze, the twinkling lights of oncoming cars cast their glow like fireflies in a dense urban forest.

This is when the city dreams.

—-

View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

—-

Buy “Nocturne - New York City” Posters and Prints here, email me, or ask for help.