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(Note: more details later, as time permits.)
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As I have noted in several earlier Flickr albums, as long as I continue going to the same NYC dentist, you can count on two or three sets of photos of Bryant Park each year. The reason is simple: my dentist is located in mid-town Manhattan, about a block from the park — and when I'm done, I'm always tempted to walk over and see how the park looks. Consequently, I've collected almost a dozen separate sets of Bryant Park photos, which you can see summarized here on Flickr. (At least one or two of those other sets will provide you with the historical details of the park; or you can look it up here on Wikipedia.)
In late April and early May of 2013, I took another stroll through the park, not having been there for nearly nine months -- but not because of a visit to the dentist, but because of another common excuse for being in this part of NYC: I was taking a photography class at the nearby International Center of Photography, and I had half an hour of spare time before my class began. It was still early spring summer, but the weather was mild, and the central lawn was green and completely empty, because the groundskeepers had roped it off to ensure the grass would finish growing before it gets trampled over by millions of visitors
I wandered mostly around the periphery of the park, looking for interesting scenes to capture with the Sony Alpha-65 and NEX-7 cameras that I happened to have with me. I locked the camera into a wide-angle setting and a fixed f/8 aperture, and I just pointed the camera in the general direction of an interesting scene, and pushed the shutter button. Of the few hundred shots that I took during these strolls, there were a handful that seemed worthy of uploading; that's what you'll be seeing in this set. All of this took roughly an hour, at the end of which I put away my camera, and wandered off to my class in the ICP building ...
Twinned with Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
A site blessed by nature
A special destiny has permitted a town with origins that reach far into the past to exploit all the resources of a site blessed by nature, knowing how to seize opportunities and how to survive through the centuries while remaining always of its own time.
A lock town at the exit from a lake on a road crossing the great routes from Italy to Geneva, its site puts in contact with two zones: the pre-Alpine mountains of the Bornes and the Bauges on one side and the plain with the Albanais district on the other.
Its site is particularly blessed with the lake which has become its symbol, the Thiou, a former industrial route that has become a tourist attraction, the huge Semnoz forest which has remained wild, the spacious Fins plain well-suited to unlimited urban development, and finally the sloping border of Annecy-le-Vieux, the pleasant beginning of the northern landscape.
As for its history, the nearness of Geneva was to be the cause of successive rises in status as the town became in succession capital of Geneva county when the Counts chased from that city settled there in the 13th century, then a bishopric after the triumph of Calvinism in the 16th century.
Promoted in the 15th century to capital of an attached territory of the House of Savoie, it was to experience a radical transformation at the beginning of the 19th century by becoming an active industrial centre, a role which grew stronger in the 20th century without slowing the growth of tourism.
3100 years before Jesus Christ : a village on the shore-line
Annecy is probably one of the oldest inhabited sites in the Northern Alps. In fact, the recent digs carried out by the Department of Sub-Aquatic and Sub-marine Archaeological research, set up in Annecy, have allowed us to date the lakeside village which has been identified off the bank at Annecy-le-Vieux at 3,100 years before Christ.
The station known as “the Port” located near the Swan Island ; could be used to fix the date at 2,500 years before Christ.
Boutae in the Gallo-roman period
The Gallo-romain period started about years before our own and saw the rapid emergence of a “village” of about 2,000 people given the name Boutae whose expansion into a town on the Fins plain let enough remains to let us know the precise location of the Forum, Temple, Thermal baths (to be seen at 36 avenue des Romains), and of the theatre, the final element which could be restored.
The triangular shape of this town shows the importance of the traffic routes converging on this crossroads: points leading to Faverges (Casuaria), Aix Les Bains (Aquae) and Geneva.
After the dispersal of the inhabitants of Boutae in the 6th century, a new stage was begun from the 12th century with the progressive occupation of the banks of the Thiou at the lake mouth, an advantageous position controlling a vital part of the great north-south axis, crossing the river at the level of the island which was very quickly converted into a stronghold.
The medieval town
From that moment the medieval town began to be built on both sides of the Thiou protected by the fortifications which would become the castle. This was the beginning of “New Annecy” which is mentioned in a text of 1107.
The growing township was given an unexpected boost when it became the residence of the Count of Geneva when he was chased out of his capital after disputes with the Bishops.
Annecy becomes Savoyarde
This event triggered the building of the castle which became the prince’s residence until the extinction of the Geneva family in 1394 when the last member, Robert of Geneva, who had become anti-Pope at Avignon under the name of Clement VII, died. A few years later, in 1401, Annecy became Savoyarde with the absorption of the County of Geneva into the Savoyard state under its most prestigious ruler, Amadeus VIII, the first Duke of Savoie.
The former capital of the Geneva district, having lost its title, went through a period of sharp decline caused by a series of terrible fires which destroyed the greater part of the town in 1412 and then again in 1448. Amadeus VIII, realising the seriousness of the situation, took action to help the city to rise from its own ruins, undertaking reconstruction of the castle and the town.
He then completed these signs of regard for the town by creating an attached territory of Geneva for his son Philippe in 1444. And so Annecy rose from the ashes and regained its title of capital of a county including the districts of Geneva, Faucigny and Beaufort.
This brilliant dynasty of princes formed matrimonial connections with the royal family of France and received from Francis I the Duchy of Nemours (near Fontainebleau), conferring on these new princes the title of Dukes of Geneva-Nemours.
Annecy as a bishopric
This period left a permanent mark on the history of Annecy, when it became a bishopric after the Bishop of Geneva decided to leave the town after the Protestant Reformation in 1535. He was followed by several religious communities who further reinforced Annecy’s importance as a religious centre, which was such that some historians called it “The Rome of Savoie”.
From this period Annecy has preserved some beautiful buildings which permanently enriched its heritage: the Nemours Lodge, St Peter’s Cathedral, the Lambert House, the Note Dame de Liesse bell-tower. If we add to this the glorious history of the episcopate of St François de Sales, the opening of the Chappuisian College, and the creation of the Florimontane Academy, we can speak without doubt of a golden age for our town.
The occupation of Savoie by the French Revolutionary Army (1792) shook the town even though we notice a decline in religious fervour from the beginning of the 18th century.
An industrial destiny
Now open to new ideas, the town experienced a transformation for industrial uses of the sites vacated by the clergy, which was a considerable economic boost. Factories of all sorts were started, powered by hydraulic force from the Thiou.
It was a also a revolutionary vision which inspired the town plan drawn up by Thomas-Dominique Ruphy in 1794 in which a wide rectilinear road on the main traffic routes was designed to divert circulation from the historic town centre.
During the period of Sardinian rule (1815-1860), the industrial destiny of the town was confirmed by the plan for hydro-electric power carried out at the end of the century.
But from the middle of the century, the new sensibility concerning Alpine sites opened the region to the fashion for tourism attracting ever-growing numbers of visitors to our lake.
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(more details later, as time permits)
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This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set)
): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project six years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past six years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
(more details later, as time permits)
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This is a continuation of Flickr sets that I created in 2013 (shown here)
2012 (shown here), 2011 (shown here), 2010 (shown here), 2009 (shown here), and 2008 (shown here) -- which, collectively, illustrate a variety of scenes and people in the small "pocket park" known as Verdi Square, located at 72nd Street and Broadway in New York City's Upper West Side, right by the 72nd St. IRT subway station.
I typically visit a local gym once or twice a week, and I get there by taking the downtown IRT express from my home (at 96th Street) down to the 72nd Street stop. Whenever possible, I try to schedule an extra 30-60 minutes to sit quietly on one of the park benches, and just watch the flow of people coming in and out of the park -- sometimes just passing through, to get from 72nd Street up to 73rd Street, sometimes coming down Broadway to enter the park at 73rd Street, but mostly entering or exiting the subway station.
You see all kinds of people here: students, bums, tourists (from New Jersey and from all four corners of the globe), office workers, homeless people, retired people, babysitters, children, soldiers, sanitation workers, lovers, friends, dogs, cats, pigeons, and a few things that simply defy description. Sometimes you see the same people over and over again; sometimes they follow a regular pattern at a particular time of the day, which always makes me smile — even though I never go up to them and introduce myself.
If I focus on the people coming south on Broadway, and entering the park at 73rd Street, and then continuing to walk southwards toward the subway entrance, I typically have five or ten seconds to (a) decide if they're sufficiently interesting to bother photographing,(b) wait for them to get in a position where I can get a clear shot of them, and (c) focus my camera on them and take several shots, in the hope that at least one or two of them will be well-focused and really interesting.
While you might get the impression that I photograph every single person who moves through this park, it's actually just the opposite: the overwhelming majority of people that I see here are just not all that interesting. (It's not that they're ugly, it's just that there's nothing interesting, memorable, or distinctive about them.) Even so, I might well take, say, 200 shots in the space of an hour. But some of them are repetitive or redundant, and others are blurred or out-of-focus, or technically defective in some other way. Of the ones that survive this kind of scrutiny, many turn out to be well-focused, nicely-composed, but ... well ... just "okay". I'll keep them on my computer, just in case, but I don't bother uploading them.
Typically, only about 1-2% of the photos I've taken get uploaded to Flickr -- e.g., about 5-10 photos from a one-hour session in which a thousand, or more, people have walked past me. There are some exceptions to this rule of thumb -- but in general, what you're seeing it is indeed only a tiny, tiny subset of the "real" street scene in New York City. On the other hand, it is reassuring to see that there are at least a few "interesting" people in a city that often has a reputation of being mean, cold, and heartless...
Stevens Bros. Circus Special Permit
This permit entitles holder to kiss the big elephant's ass. Matinee performance only. Subject to federal tax. Issued by ________. Stevens Bros. Circus.
An advertisement that appeared in the Circus Report, June 26, 1976, p. 17, suggests how humorous permit cards like this may have been used: "Moochers Circus Pass. A few years back all billers and lithographers ahead of a circus carried these moocher passes for those 'pain in the neck' yahoos they ran into each day. They were also great to bring 'know-it-alls' down a peg. If you never saw one of these gems, they read 'Circus pass entitles the holder to Kiss the Great Big Elephant, etc. etc.' Nice business card stock, just a small supply."
Posted previously on Ipernity.
(more details later, as time permits)
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This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set)
): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project six years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past six years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
(more details later, as time permits)
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About a year ago, I created Flickr album for photos that I had started taking with my iPhone5s; and now I’m creating a new Flickr album for photos that I’ve begun taking with myiPhone6, which just arrived from T-Mobile this morning.
In last year’s album, I wrote, "Whether you’re an amateur or professional photographer, it’s hard to walk around with a modern smartphone in your pocket, and not be tempted to use the built-in camera from time-to-time. Veteran photographers typically sneer at such behavior, and most will tell you that they can instantly recognize an iPhone photo, which they mentally reject as being unworthy of any serious attention.
"After using many earlier models of smartphones over the past several years, I was inclined to agree; after all, I always (well, almost always) had a “real” camera in my pocket (or backpack or camera-bag), and it was always capable of taking a much better photographic image than the mediocre, grainy images shot with a camera-phone.
"But still … there were a few occasions when I desperately wanted to capture some photo-worthy event taking place right in front of me, and inevitably it turned out to be the times when I did not have the “real” camera with me. Or I did have it, but it was buried somewhere in a bag, and I knew that the “event” would have disappeared by the time I found the “real" camera and turned it on. By contrast, the smart-phone was always in my pocket (along with my keys and my wallet, it’s one of the three things I consciously grab every time I walk out the door). And I often found that I could turn it on, point it at the photographic scene, and take the picture much faster than I could do the same thing with a “traditional” camera.
"Meanwhile, smartphone cameras have gotten substantially better in the past few years, from a mechanical/hardware perspective; and the software “intelligence” controlling the camera has become amazingly sophisticated. It’s still not on the same level as a “professional” DSLR camera, but for a large majority of the “average” photographic situations we’re likely to encounter in the unplanned moments of our lives, it’s more and more likely to be “good enough.” The old adage of “the best camera is the one you have with you” is more and more relevant these days. For me, 90% of the success in taking a good photo is simply being in the right place at the right time, being aware that the “photo opportunity” is there, and having a camera — any camera — to take advantage of that opportunity. Only 10% of the time does it matter which camera I’m using, or what technical features I’ve managed to use.
"And now, with the recent advent of the iPhone5s, there is one more improvement — which, as far as I can tell, simply does not exist in any of the “professional” cameras. You can take an unlimited number of “burst-mode” shots with the new iPhone, simply by keeping your finger on the shutter button; instead of being limited to just six (as a few of the DSLR cameras currently offer), you can take 10, 20, or even a hundred shots. And then — almost magically — the iPhone will show you which one or two of the large burst of photos was optimally sharp and clear. With a couple of clicks, you can then delete everything else, and retain only the very best one or two from the entire burst.
"With that in mind, I’ve begun using my iPhone5s for more and more “everyday” photo situations out on the street. Since I’m typically photographing ordinary, mundane events, even the one or two “optimal” shots that the camera-phone retains might not be worth showing anyone else … so there is still a lot of pruning and editing to be done, and I’m lucky if 10% of those “optimal” shots are good enough to justify uploading to Flickr and sharing with the rest of the world. Still, it’s an enormous benefit to know that my editing work can begin with photos that are more-or-less “technically” adequate, and that I don’t have to waste even a second reviewing dozens of technically-mediocre shots that are fuzzy, or blurred.
"Oh, yeah, one other minor benefit of the iPhone5s (and presumably most other current brands of smartphone): it automatically geotags every photo and video, without any special effort on the photographer’s part. Only one of my other big, fat cameras (the Sony Alpha SLT A65) has that feature, and I’ve noticed that almost none of the “new” mirrorless cameras have got a built-in GPS thingy that will perform the geotagging...
"I’ve had my iPhone5s for a couple of months now, but I’ve only been using the “burst-mode” photography feature aggressively for the past couple of weeks. As a result, the initial batch of photos that I’m uploading are all taken in the greater-NYC area. But as time goes on, and as my normal travel routine takes me to other parts of the world, I hope to add more and more “everyday” scenes in cities that I might not have the opportunity to photograph in a “serious” way.
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Okay, so now it’s September of 2014, and I’ve got the iPhone 6. They say that the camera is better, and that the internal camera-related hardware/firmware/software is better, too. Obviously, I’ve got the newer iOS, too, and even on the “old” phones, it now supports time-lapse videos along with everything else.
I’ve still got my pocket camera (an amazing little Sony ERX-100 Mark III), and two larger cameras (Sony RX-10, and Sony A7), but I have a feeling that I won’t even be taking them out of the camera bag when I’m out on the street for ordinary day-to-day walking around.
That will depend, obviously, on what kind of photos and videos the iPhone6 is actually capable of taking … so I’m going to try to use it every day, and see what the results look like …
Like I said last year, “stay tuned…"
(more details later, as time permits)
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Once upon a time, I had serious intentions of running the New York marathon. It was back in 1979, and the whole thing was much less formal than it is now. Indeed, it was sufficiently informal that Rosie Ruiz was accidentally given a “finished time” of 2:56:29 for the New York event that year, which qualified her for the 1980 Boston marathon. It was later discovered that she had not run the entire NYC course (nor did she do so up in Boston on April 21, 1980), and her time was ultimately rescinded in both races. Had her times stayed in the record books, her Boston time of 2:31:56 would have been the fastest female time ever in the Boston marathon and the third-fastest female time ever recorded in any marathon...
Informal as the New York marathon was in those ancient days, you still couldn’t just show up at the starting line and expect to be welcomed. On the other hand, all that was necessary to get an official invitation was going down to the main branch of the U.S. Post Office on 34th Street at midnight on some long-forgotten summer night,and waiting in line with a bunch of equally crazy people. I got my entry ticket (or letter, or certificate, or whatever it was) a few days later, and began following a fairly serious training regimen, working my way up to a modest 10-mile race … until a business trip took me to Sydney, Australia for most of the month of August, 1979. Between business and social events, and the cold, wet weather of Sydney’s winter season, I didn’t do any running at all for that whole month … and with my training regimen broken, I wisely decided not to run the marathon at all.
But since then, I’ve always had a fondness for the NYC marathon — especially considering how much it has grown, and what a city-wide celebration it has become. I missed the event in 2013 and 2012, so it has been three years since I watched on the sidelines in 2011. With the promise of cold-but-sunny weather this year, I decided to return once again — and, as in 2011, I positioned myself at roughly the 24.5-mile point, at the beginning of a downhill run at roughly 78th Street, at the side of the Central Park “inner roadway.”
The runners pass by all afternoon, and well into the evening; but it’s a little more difficult to anticipate when the lead runners will reach any particular point. There are now so many participants in the marathon (about 50,000) that the runners are released in “waves,” beginning with those on hand-operated wheelchair/bicycles, and the “elite” women, the elite men, and three or four waves of mere mortals. There was an additional delay this year, because the headwinds were so strong that the initial wave had great difficulty propelling their wheeled vehicles up over the “hump” of the Tappan Zee bridge. So if you’re standing somewhere along the route, at the 10-mile mark, or the 20-mile mark, or (as I was) the 24.5 mile mark, you can only guess at the moment when the lead runners — or a friend or family member whom you want to cheer onward to the finish line — might be coming near you.
On the other hand, there are some clues. Helicopters hover above the lead runners, low enough that you can hear the roar of their blades; and there are two or three waves of police cars and motorcycles zooming ahead of the runners, pushing people back to the sidelines, and ensuring that there are no disruptions or obstacles to slow them down. Then — and it’s always an adrenaline rush! — you see the official race car, driving just a few feet ahead of the lead runners, with a huge race clock mounted on its roof, showing those fast-moving runners the exact number of hours, minutes, and seconds since they started their journey back at the edge of Staten Island.
The lead runners, of whom there are often two or three or four even up to the last mile, are often several minutes ahead of the next ones; but those who are in positions three, four, five or ten, and who will get no recognition at all from the press, the media, or the crowd when they finish … well, they still run as if their lives depend on it. And the crowd cheers them on, clapping and calling out their names and urging them onward.
One of the differences I noticed this year was the widespread use of bicycle horns and cow-bells that the onlookers used to create a cacophony of merry noise; I don’t know if the runners took it as a sign of encouragement, but it sure sounded that way to me …
I stayed longer than I had intended, and took several hundred more photos that I had planned … but they’re all just bits on the camera’s digital memory card, so it doesn’t really matter. One might argue that I should have stayed for eight or ten hours, until the last runner had straggled by. And perhaps I should have photographed each of the 50,000 runners, for I’m sure they each had their own story to tell. But after a while, it gets overwhelming — and the faces and bodies and brightly colored shirts and tights and shoes begin to blur…
I think I got a representative collection of photos; and the video clips will give you a sense of the noise and the motion of what seemed like an endless stream of humanity racing past … but to really understand it, you need to be there in person. Barring a crippling storm (like Hurricane Sandy, which forced the cancellation of the 2012 marathon), you’ll find another crowd of 50,000 runners racing through Central Park at the end of next year’s marathon, on the first Sunday in November. And with any luck, I’ll be there with my camera …
Who knows: maybe even Rosie Ruiz will be there, too. It turns out that she was arrested in 1982 for embezzling $60,000 from a real estate company where she worked; after a week in jail and a sentence of five years’ probation, she moved back to south Florida, where she was arrested in 1983 for her involvement in a cocaine deal. But as of the year 2000, she still insisted that she had run the entire 1980 Boston marathon. C’est la vie...
Permit to shoot?
Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, my friend and I drove to the Embarcadero Center from Union Square to continue shooting holiday decor and lights. As soon as we crossed from One Embarcadero to Two Embarcadero, security personnel accosted us and asked if we had permits to shoot within their property. Huh? What permit? We left the property disappointed, strike one!
We walked down to the Hyatt Regency hoping to shoot inside at the atrium but forgot it was almost midnight, so hotel personnel said we cannot go in unless we were hotel guests. Bummer, strike two!
On maybe the last day before holiday decor and lights are taken down, we return to the Hyatt Regency to shoot at the atrium. We got rained on but we were determined to get our pictures. I guess the third time's the charm because we shot until we dropped (or gave up for the night).
This is looking straight up at the holiday lights which are strung from each floor of the hotel.
(more details later, as time permits)
************************
This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set)
): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project six years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past six years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
(more details later, as time permits)
************************
In late May of 2014, my wife mentioned that she had seen a New York Times article indicating that some interesting sculptures were being installed in Riverside Park South — the stretch of Riverside Park (along the Hudson River, on the western edge of Manhattan) between 70th Street and 59th Street. If you’re interested in checking it out, the article is titled "Sculptors to bring works to city parks,” from the May 29, 2014 issue of the paper.
Of course, I thought that the sculptures might be really interesting, and thus worthy of some photographs; alas, they turned out to be rather mundane (at least from a photographer’s perspective), but there was no way I could know that until I saw them first-hand.
I had been down to this section of Riverside Park once before to photograph — but I was shocked to see that it had been four years earlier, in May 2010. If you’re curious, you can see those photos here on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/sets/72157624207637080
Here’s an excerpt/summary of what I wrote after that initial May 2010 photo-stroll:
"After lunch [at an outdoor cafe at the base of the pier that extends out into the Hudson River at 70th Street], I was planning to walk north and check out the new pathway [connecting Riverside Park to Riverside Park North] ... but first, there was an old abandoned freight elevator at the edge of the water, which I decided I should photograph. It was just to the south of the 70th-Street cafe, and after taking the photos, I looked a little further south, and saw that there was a broad pathway, carefully mowed grass, and lots of people strolling ... where? further south!
"So I followed the path, and found that it expanded into a complex web of sidewalks, mini-gardens, mini-piers jutting out into the river, wooden-slat chairs, picnic benches, and boardwalks leading through wild grass and flowers that had been carefully planted. All of this continued, block after block after block, down below the elevated West Side Highway, all the way down to 59th Street. And it turns out that that is where "Riverside Park South" actually starts.
"So that's where most of the photos in this set were actually taken. There are some strange sights along the way, because the whole area used to be occupied by working piers that loaded and unloaded ships filled with freight and cargo, on and off railroads that snaked their way along the west side of Manhattan. But as ship-borne cargo was gradually replaced by truck, rail, and air cargo, the piers and docks gradually fell into disuse; and when the Penn Central Railroad went bankrupt, they really fell into disuse.
"It turns out that there was a massive fire along this area back in June of 1971 (a time when I lived in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, and was more-or-less oblivious to what was going on in Manhattan), and the fire was so hot that it melted and warped the steel girders of many of the docks, cranes, and loading structures. When the whole area was renovated recently (apparently part of a required "civic contribution" by Donald Trump when he acquired the rights to build condos and apartment buildings along the stretch of the far West Side of Manhattan, from 72nd Street to the mid-60s), the city planners initially intended to remove all of the old twisted metal and rotting wooden piers. But local civic groups prevailed upon the city to leave some of it intact, as a reminder of what was there before... I could go on with more details, but you can check it out for yourself here on Wikipedia…”
So, now — in early June of 2014 — I took only a few photos, including two out on the pier that extends into the river at 70th Street. You’ll get a sense of the grass and the trees and the spring season that lent a magical air to everything in the park at that point. But as for the sculptures: yawn. Maybe if I was a “real” artist, I would be better equipped to understand and appreciate them. Maybe the problem is that I really only know how to do “street photography.” Anyway, I’ll leave the sculptures to someone else to capture...
(more details later, as time permits)
**********************************
For much of my life, I’ve had the bad habit of visiting a new city for a week of intense activity — and, on occasion, even living in a new city for as long as a year — without ever getting to know it. It’s easier than you might think, if you have a set routine: you get up in the morning, you take the same route to school or work, you come home at the end of the day, and that’s that. I think I may have also been slightly warped by the childhood experience of moving every year (17 schools before college), and concluding (perhaps subconsciously) that there was no point really getting to know anything about (or anyone in) the current town, since we’d be moving within a year …
Anyway, I resolved to try harder during a recent weeklong Thanksgiving trip to visit the west coast contingent of my family, which involved our driving from Portland to a rented house in Bend, Oregon — located roughly in the center of Oregon. I had never been in Bend before, and I probably never will be again … but even so, I wanted to get a sense of what the town was all about.
Bend turns out to be the largest town in central Oregon, but its estimated population in 2013 was only 81,236. If you include the surrounding area of “metropolitan Bend,” that number increases to 165,954 — but that still makes it only the fifth largest metropolitan area in Oregon, and probably about the same as an individual neighborhood in New York City.
Compared to NYC, Bend’s recorded history is also much shorter — though that ignores the fact that Native Americans lived in the area for some 12,000 years before fur trading parties arrived in 1824, and succeeding generations of pioneers, intent on pushing further west to the Pacific Coast, forded the Deschutes River at a shallow point known as the “Farewell Bend” — which ultimately gave the town its name (you can blame the U.S. Postal Service for shortening the original name to “Bend”).
Not much happened until 1901, when the Pilot Butte Development Company built a commercial sawmill in Bend; a city was incorporated there in 1904 by a general vote of the community’s 300 residents. From what I can tell, the town then continued to grow, thrive, and prosper for another 30 or 40 years … after which it seems to have stagnated. Walking along Bond Street and Wall Street — the two busiest downtown streets — I saw a number of plaques on the side of buildings indicating that they had all been built in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s …
As for today, tourism is probably the most significant economic activities — focused around skiing at Mount Bachelor, and recreational activities around the nearby Cascade Lakes. Bend is also home to the Deschutes Brewery, which is the 6th largest craft brewery in the nation. And the town has hosted on of the top indie film festivals in the nation (the BendFilm Festival) each year since 2004. For whatever it’s worth, much of the town’s growth in recent years is due to its attraction as a retirement destination (I guess there must be a rational explanation for the decision to retire here, perhaps including a low crime rate or a low cost-of-living — but I found the concept quite mind-boggling) …
But none of this explains the look and feel of the houses in the “historical district” a few blocks away from the center of town. This is where my family members and I spent Thanksgiving week, and I walked through several quiet, empty blocks during the few days that it wasn’t raining … and while the photos in this Flickr album will give you some idea of what the houses and people look like, I’m at a loss for words to characterize what’s going on around here.
For one thing, it seems that every house is different. They’re all on tiny lots — probably about 1/4 of an acre — but they’re all different sizes, painted different colors, with different designs and architectures. I’m used to towns where all of the houses in an entire neighborhood are identical, because they were all designed and constructed by the same real-estate developer. And my son pointed out that in Portland, just a few hours away by car, the houses in several neighborhoods may look different from the house next door — but they all fall into five or six basic styles. Not so in Bend: it seems that nobody talked to anyone else, and nobody looked at any other house in the neighborhood, before they came up with their own unique design.
And with one or two exceptions, none of the houses are “modern” in any sense of the word. Many of them remind me of the neighborhoods were I lived as a child in the early 1950s; and I have a strong suspicion that many of them are much older than that, perhaps having been built in the 1920s or 1930s. Like the rest of the town, it seems that everything thrived here until the beginning of the 1940s … and then stopped.
Which then raises another interesting question: who actually lives in these houses today, in late 2014? I really couldn’t tell, because the streets were generally empty. and the only thing I saw through a living room window was a football game on a large TV screen. But I noticed that the cars parked on the street were by no means as old as the houses; most of them appeared to be less than five years old, with many large, modern trucks and Jeeps. There were a few bicycles and other indications of childhood life, along with a significant number of brightly-painted lawn chairs, an occasional barbecue grills (including some big, gas-powered grills on the front porch!), and lots of American flags …
If I had had a little more time or energy, I could have gone into the Deschutes County Museum (housed in what had been a stand-alone school house built in 1914), or perhaps the Town Hall, to learn a little more … but I didn’t.
And so Bend will remain a mystery, as we pack up and drive back to Portland tomorrow morning. And while nobody here will care, or even notice, I will go on record with the following prediction: I won’t be retiring here.
Construction permits - but no demoliton permit - have been issued for the 1941 house, which sold for $1.025 million in May 2020. The three-story residence will contain five units. The house was owned by the founder of a nearby restaurant, who passed away in May 2021.
(more details later, as time permits)
************************
This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set)
): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project six years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past six years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
(more details later, as time permits)
************************
This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set)
): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project six years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past six years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
(more details later, as time permits)
***************************
This is one of approx 260 photos that I decided were not so bad that I had to delete them and recover every wasted binary bit of storage on my computer disk ... but also not good enough to warrant uploading to Flickr as a "public" photo.
Since Flickr now provides so much storage to us picture-crazed photographers, I've decided to upload all of these "random pix" as restricted "friends and family" photos so that most of the world doesn't have to suffer through them ...
I've cropped and edited these photos, but have not gone to the additional trouble of geo-tagging them ... sorry about that.
**************************
In the spring of 2014, we came to Paris for a week of relaxed vacationing, mostly to wander around and see some old familiar places. It was a “return” trip for both of us, though in my case I think it’s probably been more than 15 years since I was even here on a business trip.
Business trips to any city don’t really count as a “visit” -- since they basically involve flying into a busy airport at night, taking a taxi to a generic business-traveler’s hotel (a Hilton in Paris looks just like a Hilton in Cairo), and then spending several days working in the hotel (if the purpose of the trip was a seminar or computer conference), or at a client’s office (also “generic” in most cases — you can’t even tell what floor you’re on when you get off the elevator, because every floor of “open office” layouts is the same). The trip usually ends in the late afternoon or evening of the final day, with a mad dash back to the airport to catch the last plane home to NYC. Thus, a business trip to Paris is almost indistinguishable from a business trip to Omaha. Or Albany. Or Tokyo.
But I did make a few “personal” visits to Paris in the 1970s and 1980s, so I looked forward to having the chance to walk through some familiar places along the Left Bank. I’m not so interested in museums, monuments, cathedrals, or other “official” tourist spots (but yes, I have been to the Eiffel Tower, just as I’ve been to the Empire State Building in NYC), so you won’t see any photos of those places in this Flickr set.
As a photographer, I now concentrate mostly on people and street scenes. The details of the location don’t matter much to me, though I do try to geotag my photos whenever I can. But for the most part, what you’ll see here are scenes of people and local things in Paris that made me smile as I walked around …
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(more details later, as time permits)
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Once upon a time, I had serious intentions of running the New York marathon. It was back in 1979, and the whole thing was much less formal than it is now. Indeed, it was sufficiently informal that Rosie Ruiz was accidentally given a “finished time” of 2:56:29 for the New York event that year, which qualified her for the 1980 Boston marathon. It was later discovered that she had not run the entire NYC course (nor did she do so up in Boston on April 21, 1980), and her time was ultimately rescinded in both races. Had her times stayed in the record books, her Boston time of 2:31:56 would have been the fastest female time ever in the Boston marathon and the third-fastest female time ever recorded in any marathon...
Informal as the New York marathon was in those ancient days, you still couldn’t just show up at the starting line and expect to be welcomed. On the other hand, all that was necessary to get an official invitation was going down to the main branch of the U.S. Post Office on 34th Street at midnight on some long-forgotten summer night,and waiting in line with a bunch of equally crazy people. I got my entry ticket (or letter, or certificate, or whatever it was) a few days later, and began following a fairly serious training regimen, working my way up to a modest 10-mile race … until a business trip took me to Sydney, Australia for most of the month of August, 1979. Between business and social events, and the cold, wet weather of Sydney’s winter season, I didn’t do any running at all for that whole month … and with my training regimen broken, I wisely decided not to run the marathon at all.
But since then, I’ve always had a fondness for the NYC marathon — especially considering how much it has grown, and what a city-wide celebration it has become. I missed the event in 2013 and 2012, so it has been three years since I watched on the sidelines in 2011. With the promise of cold-but-sunny weather this year, I decided to return once again — and, as in 2011, I positioned myself at roughly the 24.5-mile point, at the beginning of a downhill run at roughly 78th Street, at the side of the Central Park “inner roadway.”
The runners pass by all afternoon, and well into the evening; but it’s a little more difficult to anticipate when the lead runners will reach any particular point. There are now so many participants in the marathon (about 50,000) that the runners are released in “waves,” beginning with those on hand-operated wheelchair/bicycles, and the “elite” women, the elite men, and three or four waves of mere mortals. There was an additional delay this year, because the headwinds were so strong that the initial wave had great difficulty propelling their wheeled vehicles up over the “hump” of the Tappan Zee bridge. So if you’re standing somewhere along the route, at the 10-mile mark, or the 20-mile mark, or (as I was) the 24.5 mile mark, you can only guess at the moment when the lead runners — or a friend or family member whom you want to cheer onward to the finish line — might be coming near you.
On the other hand, there are some clues. Helicopters hover above the lead runners, low enough that you can hear the roar of their blades; and there are two or three waves of police cars and motorcycles zooming ahead of the runners, pushing people back to the sidelines, and ensuring that there are no disruptions or obstacles to slow them down. Then — and it’s always an adrenaline rush! — you see the official race car, driving just a few feet ahead of the lead runners, with a huge race clock mounted on its roof, showing those fast-moving runners the exact number of hours, minutes, and seconds since they started their journey back at the edge of Staten Island.
The lead runners, of whom there are often two or three or four even up to the last mile, are often several minutes ahead of the next ones; but those who are in positions three, four, five or ten, and who will get no recognition at all from the press, the media, or the crowd when they finish … well, they still run as if their lives depend on it. And the crowd cheers them on, clapping and calling out their names and urging them onward.
One of the differences I noticed this year was the widespread use of bicycle horns and cow-bells that the onlookers used to create a cacophony of merry noise; I don’t know if the runners took it as a sign of encouragement, but it sure sounded that way to me …
I stayed longer than I had intended, and took several hundred more photos that I had planned … but they’re all just bits on the camera’s digital memory card, so it doesn’t really matter. One might argue that I should have stayed for eight or ten hours, until the last runner had straggled by. And perhaps I should have photographed each of the 50,000 runners, for I’m sure they each had their own story to tell. But after a while, it gets overwhelming — and the faces and bodies and brightly colored shirts and tights and shoes begin to blur…
I think I got a representative collection of photos; and the video clips will give you a sense of the noise and the motion of what seemed like an endless stream of humanity racing past … but to really understand it, you need to be there in person. Barring a crippling storm (like Hurricane Sandy, which forced the cancellation of the 2012 marathon), you’ll find another crowd of 50,000 runners racing through Central Park at the end of next year’s marathon, on the first Sunday in November. And with any luck, I’ll be there with my camera …
Who knows: maybe even Rosie Ruiz will be there, too. It turns out that she was arrested in 1982 for embezzling $60,000 from a real estate company where she worked; after a week in jail and a sentence of five years’ probation, she moved back to south Florida, where she was arrested in 1983 for her involvement in a cocaine deal. But as of the year 2000, she still insisted that she had run the entire 1980 Boston marathon. C’est la vie...
(more details later, as time permits)
*******************************
Once upon a time, I had serious intentions of running the New York marathon. It was back in 1979, and the whole thing was much less formal than it is now. Indeed, it was sufficiently informal that Rosie Ruiz was accidentally given a “finished time” of 2:56:29 for the New York event that year, which qualified her for the 1980 Boston marathon. It was later discovered that she had not run the entire NYC course (nor did she do so up in Boston on April 21, 1980), and her time was ultimately rescinded in both races. Had her times stayed in the record books, her Boston time of 2:31:56 would have been the fastest female time ever in the Boston marathon and the third-fastest female time ever recorded in any marathon...
Informal as the New York marathon was in those ancient days, you still couldn’t just show up at the starting line and expect to be welcomed. On the other hand, all that was necessary to get an official invitation was going down to the main branch of the U.S. Post Office on 34th Street at midnight on some long-forgotten summer night,and waiting in line with a bunch of equally crazy people. I got my entry ticket (or letter, or certificate, or whatever it was) a few days later, and began following a fairly serious training regimen, working my way up to a modest 10-mile race … until a business trip took me to Sydney, Australia for most of the month of August, 1979. Between business and social events, and the cold, wet weather of Sydney’s winter season, I didn’t do any running at all for that whole month … and with my training regimen broken, I wisely decided not to run the marathon at all.
But since then, I’ve always had a fondness for the NYC marathon — especially considering how much it has grown, and what a city-wide celebration it has become. I missed the event in 2013 and 2012, so it has been three years since I watched on the sidelines in 2011. With the promise of cold-but-sunny weather this year, I decided to return once again — and, as in 2011, I positioned myself at roughly the 24.5-mile point, at the beginning of a downhill run at roughly 78th Street, at the side of the Central Park “inner roadway.”
The runners pass by all afternoon, and well into the evening; but it’s a little more difficult to anticipate when the lead runners will reach any particular point. There are now so many participants in the marathon (about 50,000) that the runners are released in “waves,” beginning with those on hand-operated wheelchair/bicycles, and the “elite” women, the elite men, and three or four waves of mere mortals. There was an additional delay this year, because the headwinds were so strong that the initial wave had great difficulty propelling their wheeled vehicles up over the “hump” of the Tappan Zee bridge. So if you’re standing somewhere along the route, at the 10-mile mark, or the 20-mile mark, or (as I was) the 24.5 mile mark, you can only guess at the moment when the lead runners — or a friend or family member whom you want to cheer onward to the finish line — might be coming near you.
On the other hand, there are some clues. Helicopters hover above the lead runners, low enough that you can hear the roar of their blades; and there are two or three waves of police cars and motorcycles zooming ahead of the runners, pushing people back to the sidelines, and ensuring that there are no disruptions or obstacles to slow them down. Then — and it’s always an adrenaline rush! — you see the official race car, driving just a few feet ahead of the lead runners, with a huge race clock mounted on its roof, showing those fast-moving runners the exact number of hours, minutes, and seconds since they started their journey back at the edge of Staten Island.
The lead runners, of whom there are often two or three or four even up to the last mile, are often several minutes ahead of the next ones; but those who are in positions three, four, five or ten, and who will get no recognition at all from the press, the media, or the crowd when they finish … well, they still run as if their lives depend on it. And the crowd cheers them on, clapping and calling out their names and urging them onward.
One of the differences I noticed this year was the widespread use of bicycle horns and cow-bells that the onlookers used to create a cacophony of merry noise; I don’t know if the runners took it as a sign of encouragement, but it sure sounded that way to me …
I stayed longer than I had intended, and took several hundred more photos that I had planned … but they’re all just bits on the camera’s digital memory card, so it doesn’t really matter. One might argue that I should have stayed for eight or ten hours, until the last runner had straggled by. And perhaps I should have photographed each of the 50,000 runners, for I’m sure they each had their own story to tell. But after a while, it gets overwhelming — and the faces and bodies and brightly colored shirts and tights and shoes begin to blur…
I think I got a representative collection of photos; and the video clips will give you a sense of the noise and the motion of what seemed like an endless stream of humanity racing past … but to really understand it, you need to be there in person. Barring a crippling storm (like Hurricane Sandy, which forced the cancellation of the 2012 marathon), you’ll find another crowd of 50,000 runners racing through Central Park at the end of next year’s marathon, on the first Sunday in November. And with any luck, I’ll be there with my camera …
Who knows: maybe even Rosie Ruiz will be there, too. It turns out that she was arrested in 1982 for embezzling $60,000 from a real estate company where she worked; after a week in jail and a sentence of five years’ probation, she moved back to south Florida, where she was arrested in 1983 for her involvement in a cocaine deal. But as of the year 2000, she still insisted that she had run the entire 1980 Boston marathon. C’est la vie...
(more details later, as time permits)
*******************************
Once upon a time, I had serious intentions of running the New York marathon. It was back in 1979, and the whole thing was much less formal than it is now. Indeed, it was sufficiently informal that Rosie Ruiz was accidentally given a “finished time” of 2:56:29 for the New York event that year, which qualified her for the 1980 Boston marathon. It was later discovered that she had not run the entire NYC course (nor did she do so up in Boston on April 21, 1980), and her time was ultimately rescinded in both races. Had her times stayed in the record books, her Boston time of 2:31:56 would have been the fastest female time ever in the Boston marathon and the third-fastest female time ever recorded in any marathon...
Informal as the New York marathon was in those ancient days, you still couldn’t just show up at the starting line and expect to be welcomed. On the other hand, all that was necessary to get an official invitation was going down to the main branch of the U.S. Post Office on 34th Street at midnight on some long-forgotten summer night,and waiting in line with a bunch of equally crazy people. I got my entry ticket (or letter, or certificate, or whatever it was) a few days later, and began following a fairly serious training regimen, working my way up to a modest 10-mile race … until a business trip took me to Sydney, Australia for most of the month of August, 1979. Between business and social events, and the cold, wet weather of Sydney’s winter season, I didn’t do any running at all for that whole month … and with my training regimen broken, I wisely decided not to run the marathon at all.
But since then, I’ve always had a fondness for the NYC marathon — especially considering how much it has grown, and what a city-wide celebration it has become. I missed the event in 2013 and 2012, so it has been three years since I watched on the sidelines in 2011. With the promise of cold-but-sunny weather this year, I decided to return once again — and, as in 2011, I positioned myself at roughly the 24.5-mile point, at the beginning of a downhill run at roughly 78th Street, at the side of the Central Park “inner roadway.”
The runners pass by all afternoon, and well into the evening; but it’s a little more difficult to anticipate when the lead runners will reach any particular point. There are now so many participants in the marathon (about 50,000) that the runners are released in “waves,” beginning with those on hand-operated wheelchair/bicycles, and the “elite” women, the elite men, and three or four waves of mere mortals. There was an additional delay this year, because the headwinds were so strong that the initial wave had great difficulty propelling their wheeled vehicles up over the “hump” of the Tappan Zee bridge. So if you’re standing somewhere along the route, at the 10-mile mark, or the 20-mile mark, or (as I was) the 24.5 mile mark, you can only guess at the moment when the lead runners — or a friend or family member whom you want to cheer onward to the finish line — might be coming near you.
On the other hand, there are some clues. Helicopters hover above the lead runners, low enough that you can hear the roar of their blades; and there are two or three waves of police cars and motorcycles zooming ahead of the runners, pushing people back to the sidelines, and ensuring that there are no disruptions or obstacles to slow them down. Then — and it’s always an adrenaline rush! — you see the official race car, driving just a few feet ahead of the lead runners, with a huge race clock mounted on its roof, showing those fast-moving runners the exact number of hours, minutes, and seconds since they started their journey back at the edge of Staten Island.
The lead runners, of whom there are often two or three or four even up to the last mile, are often several minutes ahead of the next ones; but those who are in positions three, four, five or ten, and who will get no recognition at all from the press, the media, or the crowd when they finish … well, they still run as if their lives depend on it. And the crowd cheers them on, clapping and calling out their names and urging them onward.
One of the differences I noticed this year was the widespread use of bicycle horns and cow-bells that the onlookers used to create a cacophony of merry noise; I don’t know if the runners took it as a sign of encouragement, but it sure sounded that way to me …
I stayed longer than I had intended, and took several hundred more photos that I had planned … but they’re all just bits on the camera’s digital memory card, so it doesn’t really matter. One might argue that I should have stayed for eight or ten hours, until the last runner had straggled by. And perhaps I should have photographed each of the 50,000 runners, for I’m sure they each had their own story to tell. But after a while, it gets overwhelming — and the faces and bodies and brightly colored shirts and tights and shoes begin to blur…
I think I got a representative collection of photos; and the video clips will give you a sense of the noise and the motion of what seemed like an endless stream of humanity racing past … but to really understand it, you need to be there in person. Barring a crippling storm (like Hurricane Sandy, which forced the cancellation of the 2012 marathon), you’ll find another crowd of 50,000 runners racing through Central Park at the end of next year’s marathon, on the first Sunday in November. And with any luck, I’ll be there with my camera …
Who knows: maybe even Rosie Ruiz will be there, too. It turns out that she was arrested in 1982 for embezzling $60,000 from a real estate company where she worked; after a week in jail and a sentence of five years’ probation, she moved back to south Florida, where she was arrested in 1983 for her involvement in a cocaine deal. But as of the year 2000, she still insisted that she had run the entire 1980 Boston marathon. C’est la vie...
I'm now permitted to reveal the fantastic collaboration I have been working on for the last few weeks and months.
The endangered animals series.
This series will eventually be available for purchase as a postcard set.
We are also hoping to get a big animal charity on board so hold on for more news!
This project is still ongoing but I think we are at a point now where we can show some of the images we have been working on so hard.
Us is me and the fantastic Mr. Jamie Mills. twitter.com/JamieMilk
I'm a big admirer of his work and I'm so happy our styles gel so well.
See how I rhymed that last line.
You should definitely go and pay his blog 365 days a visit! jamiemilk365days.blogspot.com/
See all of the animals in progress:
sandradieckmann.blogspot.com/2010/08/collaboration-reveal...
(more details later, as time permits)
***************************
About a year ago, I created Flickr album for photos that I had started taking with my iPhone5s; and now I’m creating a new Flickr album for photos that I’ve begun taking with myiPhone6, which just arrived from T-Mobile this morning.
In last year’s album, I wrote, "Whether you’re an amateur or professional photographer, it’s hard to walk around with a modern smartphone in your pocket, and not be tempted to use the built-in camera from time-to-time. Veteran photographers typically sneer at such behavior, and most will tell you that they can instantly recognize an iPhone photo, which they mentally reject as being unworthy of any serious attention.
"After using many earlier models of smartphones over the past several years, I was inclined to agree; after all, I always (well, almost always) had a “real” camera in my pocket (or backpack or camera-bag), and it was always capable of taking a much better photographic image than the mediocre, grainy images shot with a camera-phone.
"But still … there were a few occasions when I desperately wanted to capture some photo-worthy event taking place right in front of me, and inevitably it turned out to be the times when I did not have the “real” camera with me. Or I did have it, but it was buried somewhere in a bag, and I knew that the “event” would have disappeared by the time I found the “real" camera and turned it on. By contrast, the smart-phone was always in my pocket (along with my keys and my wallet, it’s one of the three things I consciously grab every time I walk out the door). And I often found that I could turn it on, point it at the photographic scene, and take the picture much faster than I could do the same thing with a “traditional” camera.
"Meanwhile, smartphone cameras have gotten substantially better in the past few years, from a mechanical/hardware perspective; and the software “intelligence” controlling the camera has become amazingly sophisticated. It’s still not on the same level as a “professional” DSLR camera, but for a large majority of the “average” photographic situations we’re likely to encounter in the unplanned moments of our lives, it’s more and more likely to be “good enough.” The old adage of “the best camera is the one you have with you” is more and more relevant these days. For me, 90% of the success in taking a good photo is simply being in the right place at the right time, being aware that the “photo opportunity” is there, and having a camera — any camera — to take advantage of that opportunity. Only 10% of the time does it matter which camera I’m using, or what technical features I’ve managed to use.
"And now, with the recent advent of the iPhone5s, there is one more improvement — which, as far as I can tell, simply does not exist in any of the “professional” cameras. You can take an unlimited number of “burst-mode” shots with the new iPhone, simply by keeping your finger on the shutter button; instead of being limited to just six (as a few of the DSLR cameras currently offer), you can take 10, 20, or even a hundred shots. And then — almost magically — the iPhone will show you which one or two of the large burst of photos was optimally sharp and clear. With a couple of clicks, you can then delete everything else, and retain only the very best one or two from the entire burst.
"With that in mind, I’ve begun using my iPhone5s for more and more “everyday” photo situations out on the street. Since I’m typically photographing ordinary, mundane events, even the one or two “optimal” shots that the camera-phone retains might not be worth showing anyone else … so there is still a lot of pruning and editing to be done, and I’m lucky if 10% of those “optimal” shots are good enough to justify uploading to Flickr and sharing with the rest of the world. Still, it’s an enormous benefit to know that my editing work can begin with photos that are more-or-less “technically” adequate, and that I don’t have to waste even a second reviewing dozens of technically-mediocre shots that are fuzzy, or blurred.
"Oh, yeah, one other minor benefit of the iPhone5s (and presumably most other current brands of smartphone): it automatically geotags every photo and video, without any special effort on the photographer’s part. Only one of my other big, fat cameras (the Sony Alpha SLT A65) has that feature, and I’ve noticed that almost none of the “new” mirrorless cameras have got a built-in GPS thingy that will perform the geotagging...
"I’ve had my iPhone5s for a couple of months now, but I’ve only been using the “burst-mode” photography feature aggressively for the past couple of weeks. As a result, the initial batch of photos that I’m uploading are all taken in the greater-NYC area. But as time goes on, and as my normal travel routine takes me to other parts of the world, I hope to add more and more “everyday” scenes in cities that I might not have the opportunity to photograph in a “serious” way.
**************************
Okay, so now it’s September of 2014, and I’ve got the iPhone 6. They say that the camera is better, and that the internal camera-related hardware/firmware/software is better, too. Obviously, I’ve got the newer iOS, too, and even on the “old” phones, it now supports time-lapse videos along with everything else.
I’ve still got my pocket camera (an amazing little Sony ERX-100 Mark III), and two larger cameras (Sony RX-10, and Sony A7), but I have a feeling that I won’t even be taking them out of the camera bag when I’m out on the street for ordinary day-to-day walking around.
That will depend, obviously, on what kind of photos and videos the iPhone6 is actually capable of taking … so I’m going to try to use it every day, and see what the results look like …
Like I said last year, “stay tuned…"
A popular outdoor site for weddings and receptions, Cape Royal Amphitheater is located 23 miles (37 km) from the North Rim developed area. A sign points beyond the picnic area to a site with low log benches. Accommodates up to 40 people. NPS Photo by Michael Quinn.
To be married in the park, obtain an Arizona marriage license, acquire a Special Use Permit from the park, and arrange a Justice of the Peace, Municipal Judge, or an ordained clergy to perform the ceremony. All sites must be cleaned after use.
Learn the details here: www.nps.gov/grca/parkmgmt/upload/get-married-grca.pdf
(more details later, as time permits)
*******************************
I have a confession to make: I’ve lived in New York City for 45 years — but until last night, I had never attended, observed, photographed, or participated in the annual Halloween Parade that takes place in Greenwich Village. I can’t be blamed for the first few years: I moved to NYC in the late 60’s (on Bleecker Street, right in the middle of the West Village), and the parade did not begin until 1974. But that means last night’s parade was the 40th such event … and for some reason, I missed them all.
But I was there last night … a little unsure of myself, for the parade did not actually begin until 7 PM, an hour after sunset. Even at 5 PM, the sun has usually dropped so low (in the fall and winter months) that the light is pretty mediocre for photography — and it was a cold, gray, overcast day as well. So I brought my flash along, even though I’ve rarely used it, and wandered through the crowd to see what I could find.
And it was a crowd: as early as 1985, it was estimated that some 250,000 people were participating in the event; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a million people there last night. But at first, I couldn’t find any of them: the newspaper had announced that people could arrive at a pre-parade “staging” area on Canal Street and Sixth Avenue … but when I got there (early, as usual), there was not a soul to be seen. But I eventually noticed some costumed people who seemed to know where they were going … and I could hear music in the distance … so so I began heading north, and found the beginning of the crowd scene about three blocks further north, on Broome Street.
After that, it was sheer bedlam for the next couple of hours — until the parade officially began moving north on Sixth Avenue, right at 7 PM. The costumes were overwhelming — everything from witches and goblins, monsters, the GhostBusters, kings and queens and pirates and aliens. There were a few topless women with thick psychedelic body-paint to provide a small amount of modesty, and there were several groups of dancers who had obviously practiced dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which blared loudly from several sound systems. Meanwhile, there were drummers and samba bands, steel bands, and informal groups doing their best to provide the crowd with Italian, Chinese, Irish, Dixieland, and African music…
After I left the parade, I took the subway from Canal Street up to 14th Street to meet my wife for a quiet dinner at a small Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. But everywhere I went — streets, sidewalks, subway stations — it seemed that all of Greenwich Village had been caught up in the revelry.
Beyond that, it’s impossible for me to describe the noise, the music, the costumes, and the overall revelry. For an overall summary, you might want to look at this Wikipedia article
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York's_Village_Halloween_Parade
But I think the only way to really understand what the NYC Halloween Parade is all about is to be there. Words don’t really suffice ...
(more details later, as time permits)
*************************
I’ve been to Venice once or twice for brief business trips during my life, which had the same characteristics as the business trips I described in a separate Flickr album about Paris — i.e., they basically involve flying into a busy airport at night, taking a taxi to a generic business-traveler’s hotel (a Hilton in Venice looks just like a Hilton in Cairo,except perhaps for the canal outside the main entrance), and then spending several days working in the hotel (if the purpose of the trip was a seminar or computer conference), or at a client’s office (also “generic” in most cases — you can’t even tell what floor you’re on when you get off the elevator, because every floor of “open office” layouts is the same). The trip usually ends in the late afternoon or evening of the final day, with a mad dash back to the airport to catch the last plane home to NYC. Thus, a business trip to Venice is almost indistinguishable from a business trip to Omaha. Or Albany. Or Tokyo.
But Venice is different from almost any other place in the world, and I’ve had a couple of vacation trips to experience that side of the city. But it’s been a long, long time: the first such visit was back in 1976 (which you can see here on Flickr), and the second visit was in 1983 (pictures of which do exist on Flickr, but have been restricted to family-only access, since they consist mostly of boring pictures of drooling babies and kids sticking their collective tongues out at me).
Thirty years is a long time between visits … but for a city like Venice, I doubt that very much has changed. Well, perhaps there wasn’t a McDonald’s outlet in Venice when I first came here (and I did photograph one such outlet on this current visit, which you’ll find in this album), and you can certainly guarantee that people weren’t walking around with cellphones and smartphones the way they are today. And while the tourists typically did have cameras back in the good-old-days, they were typically modest little “Instamatic” film-based gadgets, rather than the big, garish, DSLR cameras that everyone now seems to carry around with them, complete with advertising logos all over the camera-straps and bodies to remind you that they, too, can afford to buy an expensive Canon or Nikon gadget that they really don’t know how to use properly. (Sorry, I got carried away there …)
But the buildings, and the people, and the canals, and the gondolas … all of that is the same. And that’s what I’ve tried to capture in this set of photos. The tourist crowds are now so thick (even in May!) that I didn’t even bother going to the square at San Marco, and I didn’t bother taking any photos from the Rialto bridge over the Grand Canal; but you will see some photos of tourists in this album, along with photos of the local people who are still here …
I don’t expect to come back to Venice again in the next year or two … but if it turns out to be 20 or 30 years before my next return, I suspect it will all look pretty much exactly the same as it did on this trip, and in 1983, and when I first saw it in 1976.
(more details later, as time permits)
***************
This set of photos is based on a very simple concept: walk every block of Manhattan with a camera, and see what happens. To avoid missing anything, walk both sides of the street.
That's all there is to it …
Of course, if you wanted to be more ambitious, you could also walk the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. But that's more than I'm willing to commit to at this point, and I'll leave the remaining boroughs of New York City to other, more adventurous photographers.
Oh, actually, there's one more small detail: leave the photos alone for a month -- unedited, untouched, and unviewed. By the time I actually focus on the first of these "every-block" photos, I will have taken more than 8,000 images on the nearby streets of the Upper West Side -- plus another several thousand in Rome, Coney Island, and the various spots in NYC where I traditionally take photos. So I don't expect to be emotionally attached to any of the "every-block" photos, and hope that I'll be able to make an objective selection of the ones worth looking at.
As for the criteria that I've used to select the small subset of every-block photos that get uploaded to Flickr: there are three. First, I'll upload any photo that I think is "great," and where I hope the reaction of my Flickr-friends will be, "I have no idea when or where that photo was taken, but it's really a terrific picture!"
A second criterion has to do with place, and the third involves time. I'm hoping that I'll take some photos that clearly say, "This is New York!" to anyone who looks at it. Obviously, certain landscape icons like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty would satisfy that criterion; but I'm hoping that I'll find other, more unexpected examples. I hope that I'll be able to take some shots that will make a "local" viewer say, "Well, even if that's not recognizable to someone from another part of the country, or another part of the world, I know that that's New York!" And there might be some photos where a "non-local" viewer might say, "I had no idea that there was anyplace in New York City that was so interesting/beautiful/ugly/spectacular."
As for the sense of time: I remember wandering around my neighborhood in 2005, photographing various shops, stores, restaurants, and business establishments -- and then casually looking at the photos about five years later, and being stunned by how much had changed. Little by little, store by store, day by day, things change … and when you've been around as long as I have, it's even more amazing to go back and look at the photos you took thirty or forty years ago, and ask yourself, "Was it really like that back then? Seriously, did people really wear bell-bottom jeans?"
So, with the expectation that I'll be looking at these every-block photos five or ten years from now (and maybe you will be, too), I'm going to be doing my best to capture scenes that convey the sense that they were taken in the year 2013 … or at least sometime in the decade of the 2010's (I have no idea what we're calling this decade yet). Or maybe they'll just say to us, "This is what it was like a dozen years after 9-11".
Movie posters are a trivial example of such a time-specific image; I've already taken a bunch, and I don't know if I'll ultimately decide that they're worth uploading. Women's fashion/styles are another obvious example of a time-specific phenomenon; and even though I'm definitely not a fashion expert, I suspected that I'll be able to look at some images ten years from now and mutter to myself, "Did we really wear shirts like that? Did women really wear those weird skirts that are short in the front, and long in the back? Did everyone in New York have a tattoo?"
Another example: I'm fascinated by the interactions that people have with their cellphones out on the street. It seems that everyone has one, which certainly wasn't true a decade ago; and it seems that everyone walks down the street with their eyes and their entire conscious attention riveted on this little box-like gadget, utterly oblivious about anything else that might be going on (among other things, that makes it very easy for me to photograph them without their even noticing, particularly if they've also got earphones so they can listen to music or carry on a phone conversation). But I can't help wondering whether this kind of social behavior will seem bizarre a decade from now … especially if our cellphones have become so miniaturized that they're incorporated into the glasses we wear, or implanted directly into our eyeballs.
Oh, one last thing: I've created a customized Google Map to show the precise details of each day's photo-walk. I'll be updating it each day, and the most recent part of my every-block journey will be marked in red, to differentiate it from all of the older segments of the journey, which will be shown in blue. You can see the map, and peek at it each day to see where I've been, by clicking on this link
URL link to Ed's every-block progress through Manhattan
If you have any suggestions about places that I should definitely visit to get some good photos, or if you'd like me to photograph you in your little corner of New York City, please let me know. You can send me a Flickr-mail message, or you can email me directly at ed-at-yourdon-dot-com
Stay tuned as the photo-walk continues, block by block ...
(more details later, as time permits)
***************************
About a year ago, I created Flickr album for photos that I had started taking with my iPhone5s; and now I’m creating a new Flickr album for photos that I’ve begun taking with myiPhone6, which just arrived from T-Mobile this morning.
In last year’s album, I wrote, "Whether you’re an amateur or professional photographer, it’s hard to walk around with a modern smartphone in your pocket, and not be tempted to use the built-in camera from time-to-time. Veteran photographers typically sneer at such behavior, and most will tell you that they can instantly recognize an iPhone photo, which they mentally reject as being unworthy of any serious attention.
"After using many earlier models of smartphones over the past several years, I was inclined to agree; after all, I always (well, almost always) had a “real” camera in my pocket (or backpack or camera-bag), and it was always capable of taking a much better photographic image than the mediocre, grainy images shot with a camera-phone.
"But still … there were a few occasions when I desperately wanted to capture some photo-worthy event taking place right in front of me, and inevitably it turned out to be the times when I did not have the “real” camera with me. Or I did have it, but it was buried somewhere in a bag, and I knew that the “event” would have disappeared by the time I found the “real" camera and turned it on. By contrast, the smart-phone was always in my pocket (along with my keys and my wallet, it’s one of the three things I consciously grab every time I walk out the door). And I often found that I could turn it on, point it at the photographic scene, and take the picture much faster than I could do the same thing with a “traditional” camera.
"Meanwhile, smartphone cameras have gotten substantially better in the past few years, from a mechanical/hardware perspective; and the software “intelligence” controlling the camera has become amazingly sophisticated. It’s still not on the same level as a “professional” DSLR camera, but for a large majority of the “average” photographic situations we’re likely to encounter in the unplanned moments of our lives, it’s more and more likely to be “good enough.” The old adage of “the best camera is the one you have with you” is more and more relevant these days. For me, 90% of the success in taking a good photo is simply being in the right place at the right time, being aware that the “photo opportunity” is there, and having a camera — any camera — to take advantage of that opportunity. Only 10% of the time does it matter which camera I’m using, or what technical features I’ve managed to use.
"And now, with the recent advent of the iPhone5s, there is one more improvement — which, as far as I can tell, simply does not exist in any of the “professional” cameras. You can take an unlimited number of “burst-mode” shots with the new iPhone, simply by keeping your finger on the shutter button; instead of being limited to just six (as a few of the DSLR cameras currently offer), you can take 10, 20, or even a hundred shots. And then — almost magically — the iPhone will show you which one or two of the large burst of photos was optimally sharp and clear. With a couple of clicks, you can then delete everything else, and retain only the very best one or two from the entire burst.
"With that in mind, I’ve begun using my iPhone5s for more and more “everyday” photo situations out on the street. Since I’m typically photographing ordinary, mundane events, even the one or two “optimal” shots that the camera-phone retains might not be worth showing anyone else … so there is still a lot of pruning and editing to be done, and I’m lucky if 10% of those “optimal” shots are good enough to justify uploading to Flickr and sharing with the rest of the world. Still, it’s an enormous benefit to know that my editing work can begin with photos that are more-or-less “technically” adequate, and that I don’t have to waste even a second reviewing dozens of technically-mediocre shots that are fuzzy, or blurred.
"Oh, yeah, one other minor benefit of the iPhone5s (and presumably most other current brands of smartphone): it automatically geotags every photo and video, without any special effort on the photographer’s part. Only one of my other big, fat cameras (the Sony Alpha SLT A65) has that feature, and I’ve noticed that almost none of the “new” mirrorless cameras have got a built-in GPS thingy that will perform the geotagging...
"I’ve had my iPhone5s for a couple of months now, but I’ve only been using the “burst-mode” photography feature aggressively for the past couple of weeks. As a result, the initial batch of photos that I’m uploading are all taken in the greater-NYC area. But as time goes on, and as my normal travel routine takes me to other parts of the world, I hope to add more and more “everyday” scenes in cities that I might not have the opportunity to photograph in a “serious” way.
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Okay, so now it’s September of 2014, and I’ve got the iPhone 6. They say that the camera is better, and that the internal camera-related hardware/firmware/software is better, too. Obviously, I’ve got the newer iOS, too, and even on the “old” phones, it now supports time-lapse videos along with everything else.
I’ve still got my pocket camera (an amazing little Sony ERX-100 Mark III), and two larger cameras (Sony RX-10, and Sony A7), but I have a feeling that I won’t even be taking them out of the camera bag when I’m out on the street for ordinary day-to-day walking around.
That will depend, obviously, on what kind of photos and videos the iPhone6 is actually capable of taking … so I’m going to try to use it every day, and see what the results look like …
Like I said last year, “stay tuned…"
(more details later, as time permits)
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Among the many things that become apparent as you get older: events that are seared into your brain as a child (e.g., 9-11, the Challenger explosion, the first manned landing on the moon, JFK’s assassination) are utterly meaningless to the next generation. Also, countries that we were raised to think of as “enemies” morph into this generation’s “friends”.
In that vein, I planned my various recent visits to Russia, Cuba, and Vietnam with a certain amount of trepidation; I assume the current generation of university students feels the same way about visiting Iran and North Korea … but if my just-finished trip to Hanoi is any indication, things will almost certainly be different for the generation just now being born.
My visit to Vietnam was relatively brief and localized, so I make no pretense of having seen the entire city of Hanoi. let alone the country. I was attending a computer conference that was held in the Hanoi Hilton (an irony that was utterly lost on my fellow attendees), and during my brief periods of free time, I wandered around the vicinity of my hotel, right next to the Hanoi Opera House, in what used to be known as the “French Quarter.”
I also went on one “guided tour” during my visit, so I’ve seen one or two of the obligatory temples, and I’ve seen the enormous, impressive Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. I took some photos of those scenes, but I really don’t think they’re any different than any of the standard tourist photos that you can find all over the Internet, so I haven’t bothered to upload any of them. Instead, I’ve focused on what can best be described as “street scenes” in the neighborhood of my hotel …
… and if you’ve ever been to Hanoi, you probably have a good idea of what I mean by that: as soon as you walk out on the street — any street — you’re overwhelmed by the massive number of motor scooters zooming along in all directions. I was told that the cheapest (Chinese) motor scooters cost only $300-400, but most of the ones you’ll see are sturdier machines made by Honda and Vespa etc. Some carry a solitary rider, but most of them have two … or three, or four, or more … people crammed together. Some of them (including the driver) are carrying on a cell-phone conversation, others are laughing at some private joke. And many of the passengers are young children, sandwiched between two protective parents, or sometimes standing in the front “well” of the scooter, grasping the handlebars and looking bravely into the onrushing crowd.
Someone told me that a law was passed a few years ago, mandating that all scooter drivers and passengers must wear helmets; and from what I could see, the majority of the rider/passengers respected the law. But there were quite a few without any helmets, and this seemed particularly common for the children — arguably the most vulnerable of all the riders. But what almost everyone did have was a bandana/kerchief of some kind, presumably to diminish the effect of the pollution and noxious fumes surrounding everyone on the street.
Of course, not everyone is riding a motor-scooter; there are bicycles, too, as well as the usual collection of cars, taxis, buses, and even a few rickshaws. And there are pedestrians, too, all of whom seem remarkably fearless when it comes to walking across the street in the midst of traffic zooming at them from every conceivable direction. To a visitor, it seems like a giant exercise in Brownian motion — utterly random movements, with few (if any) collisions. I guess visitors to New York City feel the same way about our traffic and our pedestrians …
In any case, what you’ll see in this Flickr set is a collection of such “street scenes.” I did my best to “freeze” the action by taking multiple photos, shooting at a fairly fast shutter speed whenever possible, and “panning” my camera along with the motion of the scooters … but at best, they provide only a silent glimpse of what really exists as noisy bedlam. If you truly want to understand what it’s like, you’ll have to get on an airplane, and visit Hanoi yourself...
(more details later, as time permits)
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For much of my life, I’ve had the bad habit of visiting a new city for a week of intense activity — and, on occasion, even living in a new city for as long as a year — without ever getting to know it. It’s easier than you might think, if you have a set routine: you get up in the morning, you take the same route to school or work, you come home at the end of the day, and that’s that. I think I may have also been slightly warped by the childhood experience of moving every year (17 schools before college), and concluding (perhaps subconsciously) that there was no point really getting to know anything about (or anyone in) the current town, since we’d be moving within a year …
Anyway, I resolved to try harder during a recent weeklong Thanksgiving trip to visit the west coast contingent of my family, which involved our driving from Portland to a rented house in Bend, Oregon — located roughly in the center of Oregon. I had never been in Bend before, and I probably never will be again … but even so, I wanted to get a sense of what the town was all about.
Bend turns out to be the largest town in central Oregon, but its estimated population in 2013 was only 81,236. If you include the surrounding area of “metropolitan Bend,” that number increases to 165,954 — but that still makes it only the fifth largest metropolitan area in Oregon, and probably about the same as an individual neighborhood in New York City.
Compared to NYC, Bend’s recorded history is also much shorter — though that ignores the fact that Native Americans lived in the area for some 12,000 years before fur trading parties arrived in 1824, and succeeding generations of pioneers, intent on pushing further west to the Pacific Coast, forded the Deschutes River at a shallow point known as the “Farewell Bend” — which ultimately gave the town its name (you can blame the U.S. Postal Service for shortening the original name to “Bend”).
Not much happened until 1901, when the Pilot Butte Development Company built a commercial sawmill in Bend; a city was incorporated there in 1904 by a general vote of the community’s 300 residents. From what I can tell, the town then continued to grow, thrive, and prosper for another 30 or 40 years … after which it seems to have stagnated. Walking along Bond Street and Wall Street — the two busiest downtown streets — I saw a number of plaques on the side of buildings indicating that they had all been built in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s …
As for today, tourism is probably the most significant economic activities — focused around skiing at Mount Bachelor, and recreational activities around the nearby Cascade Lakes. Bend is also home to the Deschutes Brewery, which is the 6th largest craft brewery in the nation. And the town has hosted on of the top indie film festivals in the nation (the BendFilm Festival) each year since 2004. For whatever it’s worth, much of the town’s growth in recent years is due to its attraction as a retirement destination (I guess there must be a rational explanation for the decision to retire here, perhaps including a low crime rate or a low cost-of-living — but I found the concept quite mind-boggling) …
But none of this explains the look and feel of the houses in the “historical district” a few blocks away from the center of town. This is where my family members and I spent Thanksgiving week, and I walked through several quiet, empty blocks during the few days that it wasn’t raining … and while the photos in this Flickr album will give you some idea of what the houses and people look like, I’m at a loss for words to characterize what’s going on around here.
For one thing, it seems that every house is different. They’re all on tiny lots — probably about 1/4 of an acre — but they’re all different sizes, painted different colors, with different designs and architectures. I’m used to towns where all of the houses in an entire neighborhood are identical, because they were all designed and constructed by the same real-estate developer. And my son pointed out that in Portland, just a few hours away by car, the houses in several neighborhoods may look different from the house next door — but they all fall into five or six basic styles. Not so in Bend: it seems that nobody talked to anyone else, and nobody looked at any other house in the neighborhood, before they came up with their own unique design.
And with one or two exceptions, none of the houses are “modern” in any sense of the word. Many of them remind me of the neighborhoods were I lived as a child in the early 1950s; and I have a strong suspicion that many of them are much older than that, perhaps having been built in the 1920s or 1930s. Like the rest of the town, it seems that everything thrived here until the beginning of the 1940s … and then stopped.
Which then raises another interesting question: who actually lives in these houses today, in late 2014? I really couldn’t tell, because the streets were generally empty. and the only thing I saw through a living room window was a football game on a large TV screen. But I noticed that the cars parked on the street were by no means as old as the houses; most of them appeared to be less than five years old, with many large, modern trucks and Jeeps. There were a few bicycles and other indications of childhood life, along with a significant number of brightly-painted lawn chairs, an occasional barbecue grills (including some big, gas-powered grills on the front porch!), and lots of American flags …
If I had had a little more time or energy, I could have gone into the Deschutes County Museum (housed in what had been a stand-alone school house built in 1914), or perhaps the Town Hall, to learn a little more … but I didn’t.
And so Bend will remain a mystery, as we pack up and drive back to Portland tomorrow morning. And while nobody here will care, or even notice, I will go on record with the following prediction: I won’t be retiring here.
Post Street, Japantown, San Francisco
12:30 PM
Trimmed and slightly rotated, but otherwise SOOC
54638732620_a3b0080da4_o_E1_e1
This is Hitchin, Cambridge Junction ("with a photo permit! " adds Mr Burton).
A regular ECML freight working in the 1960s was 4O92 return cement from Uddingston to Cliffe in Kent. Normally with a pair of Crompton BRCW Type 3s forward from York. Here the train is struggling upgrade behind D6562 on Saturday 3 October 1964 at a time when availability often meant only a single loco could be provided.
The train is infamous for being the culprit which derailed in 1967 near Thirsk resulting in a collision causing the death of several passengers on a train hauled by DP2 The prototype never worked again of course.
The Cliffe - Uddingston cement trains went over to Class 33 operation in December 1961, but are believed to have ceased in late 1969. Cement from Northfleet continued to use the ECML until the end of the 1976 Summer timetable, but by then with more orthodox power.
One might reasonably have expected the Class 33 shown here to have a half yellow panel, as these began to appear in 1962, however, the Southern were quite anti the new safety device. Having run electric trains safely without them for many years, one could see their point and it is even rumoured that one or two may never have received them before being repainted blue.
Part of the PDX Bridges 2021 project. Shot on 120 and 35mm film.
Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People is a cable-stayed bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was designed by TriMet, the Portland metropolitan area's regional transit authority, for its MAX Orange Line light rail passenger trains. The bridge also serves city buses and the Portland Streetcar, as well as bicycles, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles. Private cars and trucks are not permitted on the bridge. It is the first major bridge in the U.S. that was designed to allow access to transit vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians but not cars.
Construction began in 2011, and the bridge was officially opened on September 12, 2015. In homage to Native American civilizations, the bridge was named after the local Chinook word for people. The Tilikum Crossing was the first new bridge to be opened across the Willamette River in the Portland metropolitan area since 1973.
Although the planned MAX Orange Line was the impetus for construction of the bridge, the structure also carries TriMet buses, the Portland Streetcar Loop Service and emergency vehicles, and is open for public use by bicyclists and pedestrians. Use by private motor vehicles (except emergency vehicles) is not permitted. Rerouting of TriMet bus routes onto the new bridge from more-congested crossings will shorten the travel time for riders on those routes. Bike and pedestrian paths line both sides of the bridge and are 14 feet (4.3 m) wide.
The bridge connects a MAX station at OMSI on the east side of the river with a new OHSU/South Waterfront Campus MAX station on the west side. OHSU is the city's largest employer, while OMSI is one of the city's largest tourist and educational venues, and the new bridge facilitates the connection of both to the regional MAX light rail system. The Orange Line continues south from OMSI to Milwaukie and northern Oak Grove and north from South Waterfront into downtown Portland.
T.Y. Lin International (TYLI), Engineer of Record on the Tilikum Crossing project, designed the distinctive, 180-foot-tall, pentagonal shaped stay-cable towers as the bridge’s focal point. The 1,720-foot-long bridge also features two landside piers and two in-water piers. The 780-foot-long main span deck is separated into a 31-foot-wide transitway between the tower legs to accommodate two lanes of track and two flanking multi-use paths for pedestrians and cyclists.
Cable saddles were incorporated in TYLI’s bridge design to allow for more slender, solid towers and a cleaner bridge profile. Tilikum Crossing is the first bridge in the U.S. to use the Freyssinet multi-tube saddle design, which allows each cable to run continuously from the deck, through the top of the tower and back down to the other side. Approximately 3.5 miles of cables run continuously through the tower saddle, instead of terminating in each tower.
A light art aesthetic lighting system, designed by installation artists Anna Valentina Murch and Doug Hollis, alters the bridge’s lighting effects based on the Willamette’s speed, depth, and water temperature. It uses 178 LED modules to illuminate the cables, towers, and underside of the deck. The USGS environmental data is translated by specialized software to a processor that issues cues programmed for each of the changing conditions. The base color is determined by the water's temperature. The timing and intensity of the base color's changes, moving the light across the bridge, are determined by the river's speed. A secondary color pattern is determined by the river's depth, that changes on the two towers and the suspension cables.
The crossing opened for general use on September 12, 2015, becoming the first new bridge built across the river in the Portland metropolitan area since 1973. The first public access to the bridge was given on August 9, 2015, in the morning for the 20th annual Providence Bridge Pedal and in the afternoon with a three-hour period in which the bridge was open to everyone.
arteBA . 2016 . 25!
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arteBA Fundación permite la utilización en los medios de las imágenes subidas a su espacio en Flickr.
Agradeceremos que a modo de epígrafe de las mismas, se mencione: Gentileza arteBA Fundación.
June 19, 2013: Cabbagetown - Toronto, Canada
Another warm, sunny afternoon stroll through the largest intact Victorian-era neighbourhood in North America reveals yet another renovation underway.
June 28th 2009 | The Encampment. 5th day of the evacuation of the Trade Union Centre.
From 2 May 2008 to 7 August 2010, during 828 days, claiming residence permits, the “Sans Papiers” isolated workers of the group CSP75 occupied successively two buildings in Paris: first a Trades Hall at rue Charlot, then a disused public building, at rue Baudelique.
After fourteen months spent at the Trade Hall, on 24 June 2009 they got violently evicted by the Trade Union CGT's internal police. They stayed during three weeks sleeping outside, along the Trades Hall before they led the new occupation at rue Baudelique, on 17 July 2009.
One year later, under pressure of authorities, the CSP75 accepted to voluntary put an end to this more than two years long occupation, after being promised each occupier's case be examined and every one get a chance to receive a residence permit. This is how the CSP75 got out of Baudelique on 7 August 2010, 828th and last day of the occupation.
Struggle goes on...
Pour obtenir leur régularisation, du 2 mai 2008 au 7 août 2010, pendant 828 jours, les Sans Papiers travailleurs isolés de la Coordination Sans Papiers 75 sont en occupation à Paris, d'abord à la Bourse du travail rue Charlot, puis dans des locaux désaffectés de la CPAM rue Baudelique.
Après quatorze mois d'occupation à la Bourse du travail, le 24 juin 2009 les Sans Papiers de la CSP75 en sont violemment expulsés par le SO de la CGT, à coups de matraques et de gaz lacrymogène. Ils s'installent sur le trottoir du boulevard du Temple, le long de la Bourse, dans des conditions très difficiles avant de lancer, le 17 juillet 2009, la nouvelle occupation de la rue Baudelique.
Un an plus tard, sous la pression des autorités, la CSP75 accepte de mettre volontairement fin à cette occupation longue de plus de deux ans contre la promesse que chaque occupant voie son dossier examiné et aie une chance d'être régularisé. C’est ainsi que la CS75 quitte Baudelique le 7 août 2010, 828e et dernier jour de l’occupation.
La lutte continue...
(more details later, as time permits)
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n 1996 and 1997, I spent two full summers in the tiny little town of Polson, on the southern shore of Flathead Lake (the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River), and grew quite attached to the town and its surrounding mountains, rivers, and lake -- photos of which you can see here and here. You might also be interested in some of my observations about life in Polson and Montana, which I wrote about in blogs titled The Polson Parade, and Leaving Montana. But then life changed, other things intervened, and I drifted away from Montana altogether.
In the summer of 2010, I had a chance to re-visit Polson, and spend three short days driving around to re-acquaint myself with the area. It had been over a dozen years since I was last there (not counting a brief drive-through with my younger son in 2006), so I was expecting some changes ... but in general, the town of about 5,000 people was pretty much the same. My favorite restaurant had closed down, a Mailboxes Etc outlet had been replaced by a video-rental outlet, and the local McDonald's outlet was no longer posting all of the bounced checks from desperate customers on its wall. It looked like some of the local ranchers and farmers had sold off some of their acreage, for there were a few new "vacation communities" filling up what had been open meadows and pasture just outside of town.
But the lake had not changed at all, and the Mission Mountains along the eastern shore of the lake were as pretty as ever. Just for the heck of it, I got up at 5 AM one morning, and photographed the pre-dawn stillness on the lake, and then the changing colors of clouds above the lake as the sun slowly rose up to peek over the top of the mountains. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to drive down to the Kerr Dam, and I didn't drive all the way around the north end of the lake: I only made it up to Big Fork on the eastern side, and LakeSide on the western side of the lake. I was going to take the half-day white-water rafting trip down the Flathead River, south of the dam, but there wasn't time for that, either ... Nor was there any time for fishing, or even to rent a jet-ski and zoom around on the broad expanse of water in Polson Bay, at the south end of the lake.
I took a bunch of photos throughout the visit, and you can view them here) on Flickr. And after my return from that 2010 trip, I happened to chat with a business colleague about Polson and heard some great things from him about a “dude ranch” located just outside Big Fork, right on the shore of the lake. It was the Flathead Lake Lodge, and after a few more years of distractions and delays, I managed to get most (but not all) of my family together for a weeklong vacation at the lodge. The weather was great, the food was delicious, the horses were cooperative, the lake was beautiful … and that’s pretty much what you’ll see in the photos that I’ve put into this album.
Enjoy … and, if you get the chance, gather your own family together and take them out to the Flathead Lake Lodge for a week. You won’t regret it!
A igreja de Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres, de Aldeia Galega de Merceana, revela, hoje, na sua estrutura, as muitas campanhas de obras de que foi alvo, desde o século XVI até aos nossos dias. Esta capacidade da arquitectura de acumular as marcas de diferentes épocas, permite-nos reconstruir, ainda que de forma genérica, a evolução deste templo.
Assim, o actual portal principal, manuelino, a par da abóbada da capela lateral ou da inscrição renascentista da pia baptismal, fazem recuar o templo primitivo ao século XVI, e a uma data anterior à de 1556, que se encontra na lápide funerária da referida capela. É muito provável que, no século XVII, tenha havido nova intervenção, a que se sucedeu uma outra, na primeira metade do século XVIII, pois os azulejos da capela-mor foram executados nesta época, tal como outros elementos joaninos que se conservam. O terramoto deverá deixado marcas profundas, que obrigaram a nova remodelação, esta já no período pombalino: os azulejos da nave, ou a talha dos púlpitos e retábulos assim o indicam.
Como acontece com boa parte das igrejas ditas rurais, a arquitectura é bastante simplificada, acentuando-se determinadas linhas através da sua pintura. A fachada principal é antecedida por uma galilé, mais baixa e que se destaca do corpo da igreja. Apresenta planta quadrada, e é aberta nos seus três lados por arcos de volta perfeita. No pano do alçado, e junto ao telhado da galilé, rasga-se a janela do coro. Neste mesmo plano encontramos duas torres, mas apenas uma delas tem sineiras e é rematada por cúpula. A outra, do lado do Evangelho, não se eleva mais do que o nível do templo. Tal facto poderá indicar que nunca foi terminada ou, em alternativa, que ruiu com o terramoto sem que fosse reerguida, o que se revela algo estranho se considerarmos que toda a igreja foi alvo de uma campanha de obras a seguir a 1755. O portal principal, em arco canopial ladeado por colunas torsas, é um dos poucos vestígios da igreja quinhentista.
No prolongamento da fachada Norte, desenvolve-se uma alpendrada de colunas toscanas (com porta lateral), que termina no volume saliente da capela funerária já referida.
Se o exterior apresenta um conjunto de linhas sóbrias e depuradas, o interior é pródigo em elementos decorativos, que visam enobrecer o espaço, ao mesmo tempo que transmitem uma imagem iconográfica precisa. Na nave, o revestimento azulejar (azul e branco com cercaduras polícromas) ilustra episódios do Antigo e Novo Testamento. Sobre estes, dispõem-se várias telas setecentistas. O tecto é de madeira pintada, com a representação central da Assunção da Virgem. Por sua vez, a talha polícroma extravasa os retábulos, encontrando-se no coro, nos dois púlpitos situados a meio da nave, nas sanefas sobre portas, janelas e arco triunfal e nos próprios altares colaterais. Na capela-mor, o retábulo é também de talha polícroma, e o tecto pintado com figurações dos Evangelistas e, ao centro, Cristo e a Virgem.
(Rosário Carvalho) www.patrimoniocultural.gov.pt/pt/patrimonio/patrimonio-im...
(more details later, as time permits)
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About a year ago, I created Flickr album for photos that I had started taking with my iPhone5s; and now I’m creating a new Flickr album for photos that I’ve begun taking with myiPhone6, which just arrived from T-Mobile this morning.
In last year’s album, I wrote, "Whether you’re an amateur or professional photographer, it’s hard to walk around with a modern smartphone in your pocket, and not be tempted to use the built-in camera from time-to-time. Veteran photographers typically sneer at such behavior, and most will tell you that they can instantly recognize an iPhone photo, which they mentally reject as being unworthy of any serious attention.
"After using many earlier models of smartphones over the past several years, I was inclined to agree; after all, I always (well, almost always) had a “real” camera in my pocket (or backpack or camera-bag), and it was always capable of taking a much better photographic image than the mediocre, grainy images shot with a camera-phone.
"But still … there were a few occasions when I desperately wanted to capture some photo-worthy event taking place right in front of me, and inevitably it turned out to be the times when I did not have the “real” camera with me. Or I did have it, but it was buried somewhere in a bag, and I knew that the “event” would have disappeared by the time I found the “real" camera and turned it on. By contrast, the smart-phone was always in my pocket (along with my keys and my wallet, it’s one of the three things I consciously grab every time I walk out the door). And I often found that I could turn it on, point it at the photographic scene, and take the picture much faster than I could do the same thing with a “traditional” camera.
"Meanwhile, smartphone cameras have gotten substantially better in the past few years, from a mechanical/hardware perspective; and the software “intelligence” controlling the camera has become amazingly sophisticated. It’s still not on the same level as a “professional” DSLR camera, but for a large majority of the “average” photographic situations we’re likely to encounter in the unplanned moments of our lives, it’s more and more likely to be “good enough.” The old adage of “the best camera is the one you have with you” is more and more relevant these days. For me, 90% of the success in taking a good photo is simply being in the right place at the right time, being aware that the “photo opportunity” is there, and having a camera — any camera — to take advantage of that opportunity. Only 10% of the time does it matter which camera I’m using, or what technical features I’ve managed to use.
"And now, with the recent advent of the iPhone5s, there is one more improvement — which, as far as I can tell, simply does not exist in any of the “professional” cameras. You can take an unlimited number of “burst-mode” shots with the new iPhone, simply by keeping your finger on the shutter button; instead of being limited to just six (as a few of the DSLR cameras currently offer), you can take 10, 20, or even a hundred shots. And then — almost magically — the iPhone will show you which one or two of the large burst of photos was optimally sharp and clear. With a couple of clicks, you can then delete everything else, and retain only the very best one or two from the entire burst.
"With that in mind, I’ve begun using my iPhone5s for more and more “everyday” photo situations out on the street. Since I’m typically photographing ordinary, mundane events, even the one or two “optimal” shots that the camera-phone retains might not be worth showing anyone else … so there is still a lot of pruning and editing to be done, and I’m lucky if 10% of those “optimal” shots are good enough to justify uploading to Flickr and sharing with the rest of the world. Still, it’s an enormous benefit to know that my editing work can begin with photos that are more-or-less “technically” adequate, and that I don’t have to waste even a second reviewing dozens of technically-mediocre shots that are fuzzy, or blurred.
"Oh, yeah, one other minor benefit of the iPhone5s (and presumably most other current brands of smartphone): it automatically geotags every photo and video, without any special effort on the photographer’s part. Only one of my other big, fat cameras (the Sony Alpha SLT A65) has that feature, and I’ve noticed that almost none of the “new” mirrorless cameras have got a built-in GPS thingy that will perform the geotagging...
"I’ve had my iPhone5s for a couple of months now, but I’ve only been using the “burst-mode” photography feature aggressively for the past couple of weeks. As a result, the initial batch of photos that I’m uploading are all taken in the greater-NYC area. But as time goes on, and as my normal travel routine takes me to other parts of the world, I hope to add more and more “everyday” scenes in cities that I might not have the opportunity to photograph in a “serious” way.
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Okay, so now it’s September of 2014, and I’ve got the iPhone 6. They say that the camera is better, and that the internal camera-related hardware/firmware/software is better, too. Obviously, I’ve got the newer iOS, too, and even on the “old” phones, it now supports time-lapse videos along with everything else.
I’ve still got my pocket camera (an amazing little Sony ERX-100 Mark III), and two larger cameras (Sony RX-10, and Sony A7), but I have a feeling that I won’t even be taking them out of the camera bag when I’m out on the street for ordinary day-to-day walking around.
That will depend, obviously, on what kind of photos and videos the iPhone6 is actually capable of taking … so I’m going to try to use it every day, and see what the results look like …
Like I said last year, “stay tuned…"