Manhattan skyline

Taken from Gantry Plaza State Park on the Long Island City side of the East River across from the United Nations building. When taking photos at sunset, you have to stick around for the best moment: this was quite a bit after the sun had "gone down", but this sky colour was more impressive than the rather disappointing sunset.

Autumn

Today I went up to Central Park to see how the leaves are doing, but they've still hardly started changing colour yet, so there's not a lot to photograph. After looking high and low, this is the best I could come up with!

Looking over photos I took last year, things should start happening in a week or two.

Grant's Tomb

Whenever I'm on Riverside Drive I'm always surprised to discover Grant's Tomb. Since I don't know the neighbourhood that well, somehow I'm never expecting it to be there.

The Cloisters

Last weekend I made a trip up to the Cloisters at the north end of Manhattan for the first time in a while. I'm always looking for chances to add a frame to a photo, here I was lucky to get two in one.

Horseshoe Falls at night

At night the falls at Niagara Falls are illuminated by coloured lights, but I this one better in black and white. The circles are caused by spotlights shining across from the other side of the gorge.

Bagpipe player

You don't see bagpipe players very often in New York anywhere except in a parade, but this one was dressed for the part.

Chess players

I'm fascinated by the chess players (or "chess hustlers") who hang out Union Square and some other major New York parks. I've never been particularly good at chess, so I've kept my distance, but there's something intriguing about the idea that chess is serious business for some people. This photo captures some of the feeling: the park is bustling with people but some of them are deep in concentration. I'm sure I've seen the guy in the leather jacket playing before.

Unearthly landscape

There's something about this sculpture that I find a little disturbing, like a procession of visitors from a distant planet.

Sunset, Chelsea Piers

A big detour on the way home from work on a day when there turned out to be an impressively unusual sunset. All the black stuff in the water is the remains of old piers, things were presumably much busier around here before the container traffic moved to New Jersey.

Unusual gathering

Coming across this large group of girls outside a store, I had trouble figuring out what was going on. Something a little out of the ordinary was definitely going on -- though maybe in New York it's not that out of the ordinary.

Piano player

This summer pianos have been set up in a couple of parks around the city for people to come by and play on. While I was Washington Square Park this guy sat down and played for while, apparently he's a regular (he was rather good). The fountain provides the backdrop. This is one of those photos that require patience, it was quite crowded so I had to wait a while for an unobstructed shot.

Birds in flight

The takeoff

Some very photogenic pigeons off Bleecker Street. Someone had scattered bird feed around, so they were drawn back to the same spot, every time a pedestrian came too close they would all fly off, and then come back and land again. Thanks to that, I was able to get a good shot or two.

Horseshoe Falls

Watching the Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. This telephoto shot is fairly aggressive, but I wanted compress the foreground and background together as much as I could.

Bleecker Street bar

While walking along Bleecker Street with my N80 loaded with a roll of Ilford Delta 400, I stopped for a beer at a bar. As well as a lot of cans in the window, this particular bar has an unusually long beer list.

Morning, Buffalo

Waiting to take off at Buffalo Airport on the way back from Niagara Falls on Sunday morning. Pictures from Niagara Falls to follow.

Yakitori

This isn't a recent photo, but it's one of my favourites from the photos that I took on our visit to Japan last year. After a busy day out we had dinner at a very small yakitori (grilled chicken) place that had just a counter and two tables. As well as yakitori they had an extensive selection of shochu (strong liquor that is always described as "like vodka", but it has more flavour and less alcohol aftertaste), which they demonstrated by decorating the walls with labels from shochu bottles. The blackboard lists the drink prices.

Gramercy Park

The entrance to an apartment building near Gramercy Park provided the subject for this unusual shot. I can't really imagine anyone decorating their building with something like this nowadays.

Sinister figures

Stairs

Not a great photo, but something about the lines and lighting appeals to me. One of those where I waited for quite a while to get a good subject to complete the scene.

The descent

Soho street corner

A candid shot on a street corner in Soho. I couldn't work what this woman was so happy to see, but it's a nice moment.

Expectation

Columbus Park

Walking around Columbus Park in Chinatown, the pose this guy took when he was thinking caught my eye.

The next move