Union Square people

Union Square is a great place to watch people: it's full of all sorts of New Yorkers relaxing, waiting to meet someone, showing off, or protesting something or other, as well as musicians performing and street vendors doing their stuff. It seems to be a magnet for photographers as well, every time I go there I see guys with the big lenses prowling around. A couple of weeks ago I went down on a Sunday to have a go myself.

Serious business

I shot this in Madison Square Park, a few blocks up from Union Square. These two guys were sitting in front of the Shake Shack, which has a good reputation and always has a long line of customers (I've never eaten there though!). They looked like they were just hanging out, but those sunglasses ...

I'm telling you

Union Square punk

I like this guy as a subject, but the background turned out too busy (f/10, should have gone wider).

Oscar Wilde

Looking around carefully made me think that some people want to be photographed (probably including Mr Punk, above). I am still too much of a coward to contemplate asking someone if I can take their picture without becoming seriously uncomfortable, but you don't see a hat like this in New York every day, so I did my best. It turned out the guy had a story to tell: the standout part about the hat isn't the hat itself, but the necklace attached to it. He explained that it's an African necklace made from human wrist bones, and his family collects them to keep them out of the hands of people who don't value them. That turned out to be not at all what I was expecting to hear, and I was pleased that my first real attempt to ask a stranger for a photo was such a success (he explained that the hat was pretty ordinary, but he "takes it out to air it" once in a while). Moral: some people definitely are looking to draw attention to themselves.

On the lookout

East Midtown

Last Sunday I took a stroll around the east part of Midtown (40th-50th Streets) to see what I could find to photograph. Since I am trying to take fewer, better photographs recently I ended up taking not that many, these are a few of the better ones.

Autumn leaves in Spring

Earlier in the day I'd been reading a photography book that had a section on taking autumn photographs so I was surprised and happy to find this rather confused tree in a little garden at the foot of a skyscraper. Looking at it you'd think it was September and not the middle of May! Following what I'd been reading I took the shot from below to get backlighting and increased the exposure so that the leaves didn't come out too dark compared to the white, cloudy sky. I would have preferred a blue sky but you can't have everything -- next time maybe?

In between 

East River Drive

In the 50s there's a series of dead-end streets that overlook over East River Drive. I went down 52nd Street, which is lined with very swanky old apartment buildings, and found this view of the river and Queens on the far side.

Brooklyn Bridge through the mist

Taken from the same place, looking south towards Brooklyn Bridge, though in this shot I zoomed in to exclude the uninteresting stuff.

Gowanus Canal

A few weeks ago I went out to take photos around the Gowanus Canal, a disused canal running through an industrial area of Brooklyn. I've been seeing mentions of it from time to time for years in local newspapers so I had been curious to see what it's like, and it lived up to my expectations for providing interesting stuff to photograph. Some of these photos are actually from near the Brooklyn Naval Yard, which is now converted into a kind of industrial park (slogan: "We launched ships, now we launch businesses").

I've been fascinated by taking black and white photos lately, after figuring out the black-and-white filter modes on my digital camera. Skies are looking far more impressive now!

Chimneys, Brooklyn Naval Yard

This is a trick photo: that isn't really smoke coming out of the chimneys, just passing clouds.

Pipes, Brooklyn Naval Yard

The focus is a bit off in this photograph but the strong shadows make up for it (the sun was very bright).

View through a hole, near Gowanus Canal

The view through a hole in the gate onto a barren, fenced-off construction site. In the background you can see one of the bridges over the canal.

Power station, near Brooklyn Naval Yard

Barrier, Gowanus Canal

Pipes, Gowanus Canal