NY Through the Lens - New York City Photography

I need help with this contest!

All you have to do is Go here and click COLLECT ME

It’s for a photography contest which includes a chance of winning $10,000 and a showing in Times Square. You are all invited if (by a super long shot) I win! :)

Thank you in advance! ♥ View my photography for sale here.

Wild flowers along the High Line. Chelsea, New York City.

I have grown to love less than optimal natural lighting. There is a moodiness evident that doesn’t necessarily always occur when the sun is bright and the sky is clear.

When I took this particular photo, a thick storm cloud obstinately placed itself over the beautiful wild flowers and buildings in the foreground while the sky had just opened up over the buildings in the background revealing the bright late afternoon sun. It was a beautiful visual contrast to witness while standing in the midst of wild flowers staring out at the cityscape in the distance.

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Perry Street. Greenwich Village, New York City

On summer days like this, the bright summer sun barely cuts through the branches of trees canopies that line the street while brownstones and bicycles revel in the cool shade. Some people flee the city in the summer, preferring cooler climates free of hot cement. For me, there is nothing that comes close to summer in the city.

It’s true that often the air is held captive by the high heat and the sun scorches the pavement but when a breeze is allowed free reign to fly through the trees, something magical happens. Streets breathe a sigh of relief and warm tones of muted sunlight cast upon buildings languishing in the shade inspire smiles of contentment.

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The roof top graffiti of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Two Bridges, New York City

Looking out over the roof tops of Chinatown, it’s hard not to notice the layers of graffiti that cover the tops of the tenements. Roof top doors are often ajar and clothes carefully hung on clotheslines to dry sway in the wind .

These tenements are part of an area called Two Bridges which sits between the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge at the southern end of the Lower East Side in an area that is also disputed to be Chinatown.

Sitting along the East River, Two Bridges 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. Currently home to a large community of Chinese immigrants, many of the buildings are tenements dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A neighborhood council was formed for the Two Bridges neighborhood back in the 1950s. “At that time, the area was becoming one of the City’s first racially integrated neighborhoods. Tensions were high and gang violence was common. Two Bridges was created to resolve racial conflicts and to serve as a channel for communication among settlement houses, churches, and community leaders.

By the early 1970s, large-scale real estate development, which threatened to level a large swath of the neighborhood, was the principal obstacle to community harmony. The mission of the neighborhood council evolved to focus on neighborhood preservation and the creation of affordable housing. Two Bridges became the most successful nonprofit affordable housing developer of in Lower Manhattan, creating more than 1,500 units of low- and moderate-income housing.” Source

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The New York City skyline in silhouette at sunset. New York City.

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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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Echinacea “Mama Mia” coneflowers along the High Line Elevated Park. Chelsea, New York City.

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The High Line park has around 210 species of flowers and plants that grow along the elevated railroad tracks which line the park’s paths. Because there are so many different species of flowers and plants you are bound to see different varieties depending on the season.

These particular flowers are some of my favorites that bloom in the summer. They are (I think) a variety of Echinacea called ‘Mama Mia’. Echinacea are found primarily in central and eastern parts of North America and are known for their showy petals which I love!

Jules Julien - Rebus mural, part of a series - via Overall Murals and an important article about Google + and what it means for photographers. East Village, New York City.

There are a few articles making the rounds on the internet regarding Google Plus’s TOS and how it affects photographers. Their wording is rather scary and if you don’t read through the actual contract and/or simply go by what is said in these articles (not going to link to them because I feel they are wrong on quite a few levels) you probably will come away with a healthy dose of fear.

However, I am going to take the time to link to what I feel is a far better article. It’s about why the Google + contract isn’t the root of all evil and why this is all a (in relative terms) non-issue. The article which I urge everyone to read is: How I Evaluate Terms of Service for Social Media Web Sites – Google+ written by professional photographer (and avid Google + user) Jim M. Goldstein. The article is good for several reasons. Jim breaks down the contract piece by piece after also describing how to think in terms of intellectual property as a photographer (which is useful in and of itself to be quite frank).

As someone who has a contract with Getty Images and who has been enjoying an unprecedented level of positive engagement on Google + with other photographers and photography enthusiasts over the past week, I am not worried. Your mileage may vary.

You can find me on Google + here: My Google + profile. Feel free to add me if you wish. :)

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Metropolitan Life Building skyway bridge connecting to the Metropolitan North Building. Midtown, New York City.

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The Banco Santander and DuMont Buildings. Midtown, New York City.

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One of the most distinctive features of the Dumont Building is its broadcasting antenna that dates back to the skyscraper’s role in the first ever television broadcasts of the station WNYW in the late 1930s.

“WNYW traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded W2XVT (re-named as W2XWV in 1944), an experimental station. On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license — the third in New York City — on channel 4 as WABD after DuMont’s initials. It was one of the few stations that continued broadcasting during World War II, making it the fourth-oldest continuously broadcasting commercial station in the United States.” Source

The Williamsburg Bridge pedestrian walkway, New York City

I might be a bit biased since I live so close to the Williamsburg Bridge and have crossed it quite a bit on foot but it’s one of the bridges in lower Manhattan that remains close to my heart. Spanning a little over a mile, it opened in 1903 and it’s one of only two bridges in New York City that carries both train and car traffic.

There is just something so oddly endearing about its steel architecture and bright red fence.

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The last days of Mars Bar. East Village, New York City

I have written about Mars Bar and its demise many times now, I know. However, there is something about this image that resonates with me.

It was taken a few weeks back on an oppressively humid and rainy day. I was on my way to my local grocery store which is in the same area and I stopped to talk to a Mars Bar regular who was standing and staring wistfully at the wall in the image in this post. We talked about the history of the street art on the facade, his life in the East Village twenty years ago and he shared some off-the-wall stories about his experiences at Mars Bar over the years. He wanted to know why I wanted photos of “the joint”.

I looked at him and said “I want to possess a relic of that certain something that is long gone from this neighborhood, that something that Mars Bar possesses that can’t quite be found here in the East Village anymore.” He looked at me, took a long drag of his cigarette and then nodded in agreement.

A few days ago, Gothamist published an opinion article called Mars Bar Will Close In “Four To Six Weeks” And That Is OK which incited some passionate comments. A key quote from the article was: “If you loved Mars Bar you should mourn it (you loved it after all) and move on. Trust us, the owners will be fine. But please—oh, please—when it finally closes can we not turn it into the commercialized fake memory that CBGB’s has become, with T-shirts sold to tourists by the truckload? Because, to use a phase often heard in the bar, fuck that.”

I agree with this sentiment. I appreciate the mourning for the loss of Mars Bar because the mourning is really over the loss of many of the things that made the East Village into something special years ago. It’s the loss of that certain something that drove us to the East Village and the Lower East Side initially, the hard edged creativity fueled not by development money but by little more than dreams and gumption. It’s hard to not mourn, quite frankly.

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Toys “R” Us Ferris Wheel. Times Square, New York City

The 60 foot ferris-wheel in the Times Square flagship Toys “R” Us is just one of the surreal things contained in the huge store. There is also a 4000 square foot Barbie dollhouse and a life-size T-Rex dinosaur that roars.

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Delancey Street sunset. Lower East Side, New York City

The other night the sky was absolutely magnificent during sunset. I had just stepped out of my apartment and my jaw literally dropped when I looked up.

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