Millions of tiny dramas are happening every day in New York City. Turn your lens in any direction, focus on even the smallest fragment, and you’re bound to capture them.
Shot with Canon 5D MkII with Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator. You can view it in HD on Youtube.
Music: Life with Lights by Ballerina Black – from www.musicalley.com
On this last trip to NYC, we stayed at the Standard Hotel, located on Washington Street in the Meatpacking District. While there are many things non-standard about the Standard Hotel, what I found most interesting about it was its location straddling the High Line, an abandoned elevated rail line that has been converted into a pedestrian walkway and garden. It’s about 15 blocks long and is not only beautiful, but also practical; it’s a great way to see the stretch of Manhattan between 14th and 32nd Streets. The gardens are made up of a variety of local plants and flowers, decorated by public art pieces. It’s divided into a number of different “neighborhoods” along the way, including a sort of urban beach and an area for public performances. There are plenty of comfortable places to sit and gather with others. It’s inspiring to see urban spaces renewed and reused in this way. Not only is property value increased dramatically along this corridor, it provides a welcome refuge from the sweltering concrete jungle.
Here are some of my photos of the Standard Hotel and the High Line.
I did a shoot with Shirley on Aliso Beach in South Laguna, California. We set up the shoot by email, and initially, Shirley was a bit nervous about how it was going to go, but I assured her that it would be fun. After all, how could it not be? We’d be hanging out on a beautiful beach, the wind in our hair and the surf at our feet, with my camera riding along as an unobtrusive observer. I couldn’t see how it wouldn’t be fun. When I met Shirley, I was struck by her radiance. She positively glows, and it was indeed easy to get fun and beautiful photos of her. I think the ocean brings out a sense of joy in all of us, and it didn’t take long for us to relax into a flow of playful shooting.
Shooting contre jour in that brilliant California sun provided dramatic accent to the already spectacular setting. The ample light also afforded me the luxury of high shutter speeds, even with my camera dialed down to ISO 50. One of the reasons I really like Canon DSLRs is that they have the ability to shoot at ISO 50. Sure, high ISO speeds are desirable in low light conditions, but low ISO speeds are also handy because they allow me to stop down to f2.8 in sunny conditions. Anyway, because of the bright light, I took the opportunity to encourage Shirley to move, jump and dance. Freezing action amps up the fun and energy levels of a photo.
Shirley’s in the process of choosing her final images from the shoot, but I couldn’t resist sharing these few samples of our fun afternoon on the beach.
I love shooting at night. It’s quiet, peaceful, and the closest thing to meditation that I do. Tonight’s model was this little tree–a maple, I think–located at Spencer Smith Park in Burlington. I noticed the tree when I was out with Laura last night, and returned tonight to shoot it, for no other reason than I thought it looked cool and ghostly. I love the bending shape of its trunk, and how its leaves were at the point of bursting to life from tight buds. It was lit by a nearby street lamp, which gave it quite a strange orange color. The air was quite still, so even though some of my exposures were nearly 30 seconds long, I was still able to capture lots of tiny details.
You can get some really unusual results when you take long exposures. In reality, the color was most like the first of the three images below. Pulling the white balance way towards the “cool” end while processing the third photo made the tree look a bit more like its real daytime color.
Maybe these aren’t the most exciting photos in the world, or the most elaborate I’ve ever taken, but often I find the joy of photography in the act of pure creation, with no goal other than to see something familiar in a new way.
Tonight we’re observing Earth Hour, which means we turn off our lights for an hour in consideration of the environment. Of course, it’s a symbolic gesture. After we turn the lights back on, most of us resume our normal lives. But, in terms of raising the consciousness of environmental issues, I don’t see how it can do anything but good. I decided to do a couple of conceptual photos to celebrate the occasion. In the process, I sacrificed some cooking wine, soy sauce, corn starch and a light bulb I bought a few months ago, incorrectly thinking it would fit in my fridge.
After taking a few photos with the bulb intact, I put it in a plastic bag and smashed it. Then I dumped the pieces onto a glass plate and drenched it in “blood.” I shot a few frames, but discovered that the corn starch was drying in a very un-bloody way on the big shard of glass closest to the bulb’s base. I carefully extracted that piece with needle-nosed pliers, washed it, then put it back into the composition.I believe in getting photos as good as they can be in camera so they don’t have to be Photoshopped to death, so to speak.
I shot these photos with a Sigma EX 105mm f2.8 macro lens. I staged it inside a light tent I borrowed from a friend. It was lit from below and from both sides by Alien Bees B800 strobes.