Last month my good friend Rob invited me to NYC for a long weekend together and do the tourist bit, along with a jaunt out to Queens were we each lived as kids. Being August, it was hot, which made for some balmy evenings to shoot. The evening I arrived, I met with Kay Kenny, an NYU photography professor and good friend (who also teaches night photography) and we took the subway out to Coney Island where we wandered on the boardwalk to do some shooting.
The old parachute jump has been restored but doesn’t operate any longer. The red light flickered on for a few seconds during this exposure, but we never saw them again.
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Further down the boardwalk, I was fascinated by this old roller rink, now closed. It has a colorful mid-eastern theme. I used custom white balance on this shot to neutralize the overpowering orange sodium vapor lamps. We were one day before the full moon, which is helping to illuminating the sky.
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There was so much to shoot at night at amusement parks like Coney Island. I made about 50 images in the rides section alone.
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At around 10pm, all of a sudden fireworks started and gave us a 20 minute show. You would think as a night photographer, fireworks would be a common theme for me, but in reality, I have not shot fireworks in years. I felt like the City was welcoming me with this show! It being the weekend, there was lots going on, with families and friends everywhere. You can see that nearly full moon and the reflection off the water.
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We wandered out on to the sand. This exposure is 30 seconds, and the “Welcome to the Beach” sign is waving slightly in the breeze. I like the rim lighting from the moon (hidden behind the sign) on the trash cans.
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Street shooting in the subway is always fun. Note they guy with a bass fiddle on his back and the people in shorts as it was quite hot that evening. This was shot from the hip leaning against an I-beam across 4 sets of tracks with a slight telephoto lens on my Sony NEX-5.
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I wandered down the end of the subway station beyond a “No Entry” sign where there was a bare bulb illuminating the catwalk down the subway tunnel. Using my handy-dandy pocket tripod, and positioning myself to hide the lamp behind some plumbing, where I made this 10 second exposure. It really shows how old the subways in NYC are. It was a lot darker than it appears here and it smelled strong of urine.
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I was walking up 6th Avenue hoping to see the Jefferson Market Courthouse, but unfortunately it was tented for a major reconstruction. The library is still open late where I shot this image in the side staircase. The play of light and color caught my eye.
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One of the touristy things we did was go to the Top of the Rock there is an observation deck on the 67th floor of Rockefeller Center. Sure, there were nice images to be had outside, and I made a few, but I was looking for something different where I shot this in the corridor that leads to the roof. That green “fireworks” above the Empire State Building is a reflection of a light fixture behind me. The arc is part of the GE logo on the outside of the building. It is all about finding the right position.
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How can you go to NYC in August and not get rained on? We did on two nights where it came down in buckets. Here are a few street shots near Times Square where you can see how hard it rained. I shot these from sheltered overhangs.
It is difficult to actually photography raindrops, as the light has to hit them just right, which it did in the above shot.
Police are everywhere in the Times Square area to keep an eye on the guys with bags on their heads! We spoke to one cop who said just the sight of them keep ‘problems’ down.
We were lucky to get a cab back from dinner that night.
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While we were out at dinner, I set up the camera to shoot a three hour time-lapse sequence from one of our rooms that had the best view. The window opened from the top a few inches, and we had to put the tripod on a table and stack up suitcases to get it to go up to 7 feet. Notice the fast moving clouds and off-and-on rain that evening. The flickering lights are spill from all the signage at Times Square. The view is looking west down 47th Street towards the Hudson River.
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On the last evening, we were talking about how you don’t see any Checker Cabs anymore in NYC. I told Rob I had not seen one in years on the streets of the City. A few minutes later, what do we see, but a Checker Marathon cab parked near Grand Central Station!
The guys in the back seat had video cameras, so I think this was some sort of photo shoot. The car had no license plates, either.
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One of the things I wanted to see on this trip was the Night Vision–Photography After Dark show on the “history” of night photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met is always worth visiting, but with a show on night photography, I had to see it.
It covered the early master works including Paul Martin, Alfred Steiglitz, and Brassai, but also had some contemporary photography. There were about 40 images displayed on dark blue walls, which I thought was effective. Seeing original prints of images such as Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Broadway at Night and Berenice Abbott’s Nightview, New York is always a pleasure. Back in late 2010 on another trip to NYC, I had seen a major show of Steiglitz’s work at the Seaport Museum, including many of the famous night images.
Important work from photographers such as O. Winston Link were missing, and there also was no color work which was another disappointment. I also felt the contemporary work was weak and even a bit contrived , such as the aerial photographs of Los Angeles houses spotlighted by a police helicopter. I had the feeling that the curator simply pulled night images from the Met’s vast collection.
Several New Yorkers warned me that I probably would be disappointed, but it was worth seeing anyway. The show came down last week.