Suite d’une série de photos de vitrines au magasin D’Aoust G & Cie, vitrines qui seront toujours dans une classe à part.

En fait, j'ai pensé à appeler cette image: photo de la bedaine. J'ai fait cet autoportrait, l'appareil pendu sur le ventre, retardateur à 2 secondes de délais.

Et j'ai eu une excellente nouvelle pour partir la fin de semaine, une de mes photos a reçu une mention honorable dans un concour organizé par le fabricant de lentille Lensbaby, un produit que j'affectionne beaucoup.

Devinez la quelle. Honorable Mention Gallery : -)

François Meehan

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Follow up on a series of reflections in a display, at D’Aoust G & Cie store in Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue, "vitrines" that will always be in a class apart...

I thought of calling this image; "The belly controlled pic" . Did the shot with the camera hanging on my stomach with a 2 second timer delay.

I have received an excellent news today, one of my pictures received an honorable mention in a "Get published" contest from the makers of the Lensbaby lens systems.

Guess which one! Honorable Mention Gallery : -)

François Meehan

Note: this photo was published in an Apr 11, 2011 blog titled "See New York Habitat Apartments with Online Video Tours." It was also published in an Oct 25, 2011 blog titled "The six-minute outline of a book by Tom Peters The Pursuit of Wow."

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in an undated (late Feb 2012) blog titled "How to Get a Book Published – You Can Become a Full Time Writer." It was also published in a Feb 26, 2012 Nice New York Hotels Search Photos blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written in this Flickr page. And it was published in a Mar 8, 2012 blog titled "A Preparation Guide for Glee 2012 Singing Auditions."

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Let me begin with a disclaimer: I do not dance the tango, and I know little or nothing about its history, its folklore, or even its steps and rhythms. I'm vaguely aware that it originated in Argentina (and Uruguay) in the 1890s, that a new style known as "tango nuevo" began to emerge in the late 1990s, and that various actors and actresses -- including Jessica Biel, Colin Firth, Antonio Banderas, Madonna, Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger(!), among others -- have performed the tango in various movies. But beyond that, it never really occurred to me that it played any significant role here in the U.S.

That is, not until the summer of 2009, when I happened to return to my hotel, on a business trip to Washington, DC, just as a local gathering of tango aficionados was dancing to their music in a nearby square known as Freedom Plaza. I photographed the event (see my Flickr set Last tango in Washington) and learned from one of the participants that there were similar informal events in New York City, at the South Street seaport, during the summer and fall weekends. When I got back to New York, I searched on the Internet, and found a schedule of upcoming tango events just as my Washington acquaintance had indicated; but travel schedules, inclement weather, and other distractions prevented me from actually attending any of them; by the end of the autumn season, I had forgotten all about it.

For some reason, something reminded me of the tango again this spring -- perhaps some music that I overheard, perhaps a scene on some otherwise forgettable television show. In any case, I searched again on the Internet, and discovered that a tango "event" would be taking place on a Sunday afternoon -- but not at the South Street Seaport (on the east side of Manhattan, near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges), but rather at Pier 45, where Christopher Street runs into the Hudson River in Greenwich Village. The event was scheduled to take place between 3:30 and 7:30 PM, and another quick search on the Internet informed me that sunset would occur at 7:30 PM. So I arrived a little before 6 PM, as the sun was beginning to drop down in the western sky, and photographed for a little more than an hour.

I captured some 522 images, of which 75 have survived in this Flickr set. For the majority of the photos, I stood at the end of the pier, with my back to the Hudson River and the sinking sun; the sun broken in and out of clouds on the horizon -- and because I was wearing sunglasses, I didn't fully appreciate the extent of sun-glare that was often striking the faces of the dancers, as well as the shadows where the sun wasn't hitting at all. But I think I recovered most of the inadvertent over-exposure and under-exposure with some post-processing on the computer... I was also able to get some shots facing westward and southward, so that you could see the New Jersey skyline behind the dancers; indeed, there are a couple of shots with the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Bridge in the background. (Note to self: come back here at twilight, on a Sunday evening in mid-summer; it could well be even more spectacular.)

Since I have no personal expertise (or even competence) at the dance, there's not much that I can say about what's going on; I have to let the pictures speak for themselves. Though it wasn't universally true, I noticed several occasions where the women were taller than their partners; I gather that that's an advantage when the dancers are twirling and twisting around. Also, I had the distinct impression -- just as was the case in Washington last summer -- that few (if any) of the dancers were "couples" in the traditional sense. Indeed, many of them seemed to be strangers who had met for the first time at this tango event, but who seemed to enjoy the experience of the dance together. And others, from what little I could tell, might have encountered one another at previous tango events -- but had no other interactions or relationship with one another.

In any case, I had photographed everything I could imagine photographing by a little after 7 PM. I put away my camera equipment, walked a few blocks east to Hudson Street to enjoy a delicious dinner at a local restaurant with my wife, and made a note to check the Internet again for future tango events in Central Park and the South Street Seaport. If you'd like to pursue this on your own, check out Richard Lipkin's Guide to Argentine Tango in New York City.