In many ways, this typifies San Francisco for me...

I think everyone in New York City is in favor of recycling (except, perhaps, the rats who steal our pizza and terrorize our babies). But we don't have any illusions about saving the entire planet by picking up a few scraps of recyclable junk.

And we don't have trucks like this one. We do have graffiti, but most of it is on our subways and building walls ...

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

This is a panorama shot, taken with my iPhone6s+ camera, on the corner of Larkin St. and Alice B. Toklas Place - about a block off of Geary Street where I was staying ...

It was the first such exhibit of "street art" or "building graffiti" that I had seen on this visit, and I was quite taken with it. But over the next few days, I saw dozens more like this -- not only in the Tenderloin District where I was staying, but also in the Mission District where I spent most of Saturday photographing. Some of those paintings, murals, and graffiti will show up in the days to come ...

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Nov 24, 2015.

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

This was taken on Leavenworth Street, between Geary and O'Farrell, in the Tenderloin district of downtown San Francisco.

Behind me was the block-long collection of murals known as "Veteran's Alley." But I couldn't resist this painting of a giant peacock ...

These are the final four photos from this somewhat disjointed series of images shot in San Francisco while I was attending Eric Kim's street photography workshop. I've got some Thanksgiving photos to upload after this, and then back to New York City for a while before I head down to Florida to escape the worst of the winter weather ...

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Dec 12, 2015.

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

As our cruise ship proceeded along the Rhine, we stopped for a day in Heidelberg -- one of the oldest university towns in Germany, and all of Europe.

I decided to go along on the tour with the rest of the group on this particular morning -- even though it was foggy and raining, and there wasn't much opportunity to wander around. After seeing several parts of the old campus, we were taken back down to the town square and given an hour to amuse ourselves in the rain.

As usual, I wandered about and took some photos...

The man holding this umbrella turned out to be one the passengers on my cruise ship ... but whenever I saw him on the ship, he seemed so grumpy that I decided not to tell him that I had photographed him. In fairness, I saw him mostly in the dining area, and perhaps he was just hungry and concentrating on his food ... in any case, I did tell his niece, who seemed pleased but did not seem to have any interest in having the photo sent to her. C'est la vie ...

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day for Oct 14, 2015.

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

(note: more details later, as time permits)

*********************************************

I have visited Rome's Piazza del Popolo on several occasions over the past 38 years, and have taken numerous photos there. As it turns out, most of my visits have been in the afternoon, and I have simply walked around the broad, open plaza to photograph whatever interesting sights and people presented themselves. (For photos from a morning visit, see Sunday morning at Piazza del Popolo, Nov 2009).

On this most recent visit in May 2010, I arrived on a Saturday morning and looked forward to another photographic expedition to the Piazza. But it rained most of the weekend, and the sun didn't come out until late Sunday afternoon. At that point, I strolled across the river from my hotel to the Piazza, taking a couple of pictures along the way. Unexpectedly, I found myself in the middle of a celebration marking the 158th anniversary of the creation of Rome's police department -- with displays of police cars and helicopters, politicians giving speeches, and music from a marching band. Indeed, I was surprised to hear the band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" (the national march of the United States), along with a couple of other John Philip Sousa marches; it seemed out of place in the Eternal City.

In any case, I found lots of interesting photographs of people in the crowd that was wandering around. And I came back to Piazza del Popolo several days later, on a late Friday afternoon, after I had finished the computer lectures that brought me to Rome on this trip. The sun was out, the temperature was mild, and as usual, the piazza was filled with numerous tourists and students and children, older people out for an afternoon stroll, families, couples, and people coming and going to church services at nearby churches. There was even a soccer game underway on one side of the piazza, with hordes of young boys dashing about at full speed...

I took nearly a thousand photos during the two visits to Piazza del Popolo on this trip; these are the ones I felt were worthy of sharing ...

This is the Moulin Cafe, located down the block on Geary Street. I had breakfast there on the first morning after I arrived.

The restaurant has been reviewed on Yelp and various other food/dining websites. Here is a link to the Yelp review that I found:

www.yelp.com/biz/moulin-rouge-restaurant-san-francisco

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

(more details later, as time permits)

*****************************************

I’m not sure what I expected when I walked out of my hotel one morning during my vacation visit, jumped into a taxi, and asked the driver to take me to the Berlin Wall — but not this.

My driver patiently explained, in English that was far superior to anything I might have dreamed of attempting in German, that there was really one one section of the wall (also known as the East Side Gallery) that remained intact — on Mülenstraße, which was only a few kilometers from my hotel. So off we went, and my driver smiled as I got out of the cab, with a pleasant request to “Enjoy yourself!”

I’m not sure “enjoy” is how I would characterize this experience … but it was one that I’m certainly glad that I had. The section of the wall along which I walked was separated from the Spree River by a grassy knoll about 50 yards wide (though I subsequently learned that the border itself, back in those days, was the river) … so I could get some distance and perspective as I looked at some of the vivid artwork. And that was on the “back side” of the wall; there was more street art on the “front side” that ran along Mühlenstraße. I walked both sides, several times, and did my best to photograph everything…

I don’t think there’s much point in my translating, explaining, or even commenting on the photos you can see here; there are 105 altogether, and they speak for themselves, with messages that are pretty self-explanatory. There may be a few phrases in German that you don’t understand; but Google will help you out.

One of the signs commemorated the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Germany—which, of course, was an almost immediate consequence of the collapse of East Germany, and the dismantling of the wall. But it made me wonder: how long will any of this last? It’s obviously meaningful to me and my generation; and if my parents were alive, I’m sure it would take their breath away. As for my children’s generation, and their children’s generation … well, who knows?

And a hundred years from now, will any part of this one small stretch of the old wall, which runs for only 1.3 kilometers, still be standing?

As our cruise ship proceeded along the Rhine, we stopped for a day in Heidelberg -- one of the oldest university towns in Germany, and all of Europe.

I decided to go along on the tour with the rest of the group on this particular morning -- even though it was foggy and raining, and there wasn't much opportunity to wander around. After seeing several parts of the old campus, we were taken back down to the town square and given an hour to amuse ourselves in the rain.

As usual, I wandered about and took some photos...

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Oct 13, 2015.

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

I passed this collection of stone tables and seats every day on my walk over to Berlitz ... and every day, there was a different combination of tourists and miscellaneous other people ...

**********************************

I spent the first two weeks of September 2015 on a river cruise down the Rhine River, with daily visits to ancient (German) castles and small (German) villages along the way. Our trip culminated in Berlin (pictures forthcoming over the next week or so), where we stayed in a terrific hotel in what was once East Berlin … but was no longer distinguishable from any other part of Berlin …

Anyway, I thought it might be helpful to know a few German words and phrases besides what little I remembered from four years of high-school German, taken a lifetime ago… so I signed up for a one-week intensive one-on-one German class at the Berlitz school in mid-town Manhattan. I’m not sure how much I really learned, and I doubt that I’ll remember very much at all in a month or two … but I do think it was a worthwhile exercise.

The “exercise” involved daily trips, via subway, from Manhattan's Upper West Side to the IRT station at 50th Street and Seventh Avenue — from which I walked a couple blocks east to the Berlitz location near Rockefeller Center. When the class was over each day, I retraced my steps to get back home.

Naturally, I had my camera with me while I made this daily journey; and I couldn’t help snapping a few photos along the way. Most of the people that I saw were tourists … but there were a few “native” New Yorkers, and a few others of dubious origin.

Not the greatest photos in the world, I’m sure … but it shows you another “slice of life” in the Big Apple.

This is one of several photos during the weekend class where I was supposed to be practicing the various techniques we were learning in our street-photography class.

It was taken in the Mission District of San Francisco, on a crisp, dazzling-bright autumn afternoon...

I didn't bother showing this photo to my street-photography group, and I suppose I can't really defend it as a good photo. I just liked the lines and angles, as well as the placement of the people...

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

Behind the garish steel frame that you see here, there is an art gallery with wild, colorful pop-art paintings and objects that look very much like the frame itself. I had seen all of it the previous afternoon, when I first arrived; but the main reason I took the photo was the Edward Hopper kind of lighting on the upper floor of the building, which didn't come through very well.

A couple days later, though, a group of us from the photo workshop were walking down this street (enroute to a neighborhood coffee shop), when the owner of the gallery came bustling out (having already raised the steel grating), and hopped on the motorcycle that you see here.

One of my fellow photography students struck up a conversation with the owner, and learned a couple of interesting facts: (a) if you don't have a solid steel grate like this, your shop (or business establishment) will almost certainly be vandalized and burglarized, and (b) the neighborhood is really wild during the first four days of the month, because that's when all of the unemployed people in the neighborhood get some kind of monthly welfare check -- apparently in the range of $1,000 -- that they can spend on booze, drugs, sex, or some combination of the above. Which they do. In large quantities, and with wild abandon, according to the gallery owner.

We were being told all of this on the 8th day of November, by which time everyone had spent their money, and the neighborhood was quiet once again. Indeed, this photo was taken a few minutes after 8 AM in the morning, so there was hardly anyone out on the street ...

So if you're a street photographer, and you want some really dramatic shots of wild and crazy people in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, you would be well advised to bring your camera with you (but be prepared to have it stolen) on the first three or four days of any month.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Nov 22, 2015.

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

After Heidelberg, we continued cruising down the Rhine ... and on our last full day, we passed castle after castle along the river.

Most of them were sitting above a small village, and some were flanked by a local church. Most have now been turned into hotels or historical sites; but once upon a time (typically 500-1,000 years ago) they were occupied by barons, princes, pirates, rogues, ruffians, warlords, and various other people doing their best to control the traffic going up and down the river.

Our guide told us the names and history of all these places as we cruised past of them. After a while, they all became a blur ...

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

Toward the end of the afternoon, our photography group walked down the street to a local playground. Several people were playing basketball, and I got a few shots of the action...v

***********************************

In August 2015, I had the great pleasure of taking a week-long photography workshop in Rockport, Maine under the tutelage of Peter Turnley. Its main theme was street photography, and we made several visits to working-class neighborhoods in several Maine towns where (unbeknownst to me) there are large populations of working-class immigrants from Somalia, Sierra Leone, and various other countries around the world.

Most of our “field” exercises were carried out in pairs, threesomes, or foursomes; and in many cases, we were lucky enough to follow along behind Peter Turnley and watch his amazing style and techniques. The photos in this set were taken on such a field-exercise, in a working-class neighborhood of Portland, Maine.

Note: this photo was published in an undated (May 2010) EveryBlock NYC Neighborhoods blog titled "Upper West Side."

****************

This is a continuation of a Flickr set that I started in the summer of 2009. As I noted in that earlier collection of photos, I still have many parts of New York City left to explore -- but I've also realized that I don't always have to go looking elsewhere for interesting photographs. Some of it is available just outside my front door.

I live on a street corner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where there's an express stop on the IRT subway line (with a new space-age subway station scheduled to be completed by fall 2010), as well as a crosstown bus stop, an entrance to the West Side Highway, and the usual range of banks, delis, grocery stores, fast-food shops, mobile-phone stores, drug-stores, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, and other commercial enterprises. As a result, there are lots of interesting people moving past my apartment building, all day and all night long.

It's easy to find an unobtrusive spot on the edge of the median strip separating the east side of Broadway from the west side; nobody pays any attention to me as they cross the street from east to west, and nobody even looks in my direction as they cross from north to south (or vice versa). In rainy weather, sometimes I huddle under an awning of the T-Mobile phone store on the corner, so I can take pictures of people under their umbrellas, without getting my camera and myself soaking wet...

So, these are some of the people I thought were photo-worthy during the past few weeks and month; I'll add more to the collection as the year progresses ... unless, of course, other parts of New York City turn out to be more compelling from time to time.

As our cruise ship proceeded along the Rhine, we stopped for a day in Heidelberg -- one of the oldest university towns in Germany, and all of Europe.

I decided to go along on the tour with the rest of the group on this particular morning -- even though it was foggy and raining, and there wasn't much opportunity to wander around. After seeing several parts of the old campus, we were taken back down to the town square and given an hour to amuse ourselves in the rain.

As usual, I wandered about and took some photos...

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

Note: this photo was published in an May 27, 2011 issue of Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10025."

Note: I chose this photo, among the 10 that I uploaded to Flickr on the evening of May 27th, as my "photo of the day." I think it's a good picture, though not outstanding, because it emphasizes the simple, innocent beauty of a young woman. But mostly, it's a reminder to me that it really does make a difference if you can get (physically) close to someone when you photograph them. In this case, it was relatively easy because (a) she wasn't paying any attention to me at all, and (b) my intentions were disguised by the reticulating/swivel monitor on my Sony DSLR camera, which allowed me to give the appearance of looking down at the ground, while aiming the camera directly at her and letting her approach as closely as possible before pushing the shutter button.

Note: this photo was picked up by Flickr Explore list, as #404 on their list for May 28, 2011

www.flickr.com/explore/2011/05/28.

************************

This is a continuation of a Flickr set that I started in the summer of 2009, and continued in 2010 (in this Flickr set) . As I noted in that earlier collection of photos, I still have many parts of New York City left to explore -- but I've also realized that I don't always have to go looking elsewhere for interesting photographs. Some of it is available just outside my front door.

I live on a street corner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where there's an express stop on the IRT subway line (with a new space-age subway station), as well as a crosstown bus stop, an entrance to the West Side Highway, and the usual range of banks, delis, grocery stores, fast-food shops, mobile-phone stores, drug-stores, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, and other commercial enterprises. As a result, there are lots of interesting people moving past my apartment building, all day and all night long.

It's easy to find an unobtrusive spot on the edge of the median strip separating the east side of Broadway from the west side; nobody pays any attention to me as they cross the street from east to west, and nobody even looks in my direction as they cross from north to south (or vice versa). In rainy weather, sometimes I huddle under an awning of the T-Mobile phone store on the corner, so I can take pictures of people under their umbrellas, without getting my camera and myself soaking wet...

So, these are some of the people I thought were photo-worthy during the past few weeks and month; I'll add more to the collection as the year progresses ... unless, of course, other parts of New York City turn out to be more compelling from time to time.

This was taken on the north side of 50th Street, between 7th Ave and 6th Avenue, when I was walking from the subway stop over to the Berlitz language center where I had decided to take a week of intensive German classes before heading off to Berlin ...

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Oct 4, 2015.

**********************************

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 2009-2014 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, 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...

Note: this photo was published in a Oct 1, 2011 issue of Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10023."

Note: I chose this photo, among the ten that I uploaded to Flickr on the morning of Oct 1, 2011, as my "photo of the day." It won't win any prizes or awards, but it serves as a good reminder to me that the focus, perspective, and "angle" of a photo can make a significant difference. Normally I would take a photo like this while standing upright, with the camera at my eye, and facing directly toward the woman. But this was taken with my Sony SLT-A55V camera, which has a "swivel" LCD that made it easy for me to bend over a little, lower the camera to roughly the height of my knees, and take a slightly upward-pointing picture. It puts more attention on the pigeons -- not that they really need it, but the point is that it provides a different perspective and focus than what I would normally be doing...

*******************************************

This is a continuation of Flickr sets that I created in 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, but mostly entering or exiting the subway station.

You see all kinds of people here: students, bums, tourists, 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.

If I focus on the people entering the park at 73rd Street, and walking 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 vast 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.

Only about 5% of the photos I've taken get uploaded to Flickr -- e.g., about 10 photos from a one-hour session in which a thousand, or more, people have walked past me. So 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...

This was taken on the eastern side of the "Great Lawn" of Central Park. I took another photo of this young woman to provide more of a wide-angle perspective; click here to see it. Note: this photo was published in a Jun 15, 2010 Technologeek blog, with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page. It was also published in an undated (early Dec 2010) Best Teen Bikini blog, with the same title and detailed notes as what I had written on this Flickr page.

Moving into 2011, the photo was published in an undated (late Jan 2011) Nice Cheap Computer Parts photos blog, as well as a Feb 4, 2011 posting in the same blog -- each with the same title and detailed notes as what I had written here on this Flickr page. It was also published in a May 23, 2011 blog titled "Which Gadgets Should I Bring With Me on Vacation?"

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in an "Everything Coach Store" blog, in a posting titled "Unravel the Benefits of Designer Eyeglasses." It was also published in a Mar 23, 2012 blog titled "Wie normal ist die Rolle des Smartphones in deinem Sexleben? [Studie]" And it was published in a May 2,2012 blog titled "スマホ症候群チェック." It was also published in a Jun 8, 2012 blog titled "Do you work on vacation? " It was also published in a Jul 8, 2012 blog titled "Teens Texting Nude Photos of Themselves Are Getting Out of Hand." And it was published in a Jul 13, 2012 blog titled "E-Mail am Wochenende, zwischen Kind und Kegel." And it was published in an Aug 2, 2012 blog titled "Paris kämpft gegen Freizügigkeit."

Moving into 2013, the photo was published in an undated (mid-Sep 2013) blog titled "6 Tips for Flirting Over Text With Guys." And it was published in a Nov 18, 2013 blog titled "The Majority of American Travelers Stay Plugged in on Vacation." It was also published in a Nov 13, 2013 blog titled "5 Things Marketers Can Learn From High School Students," as well as a Dec 1, 2013 blog titled "Snapchat and Selfi IM - What You Need to Know Now."

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Looking back on some old photos from 40-50 years ago, I was struck by how visible the differences were between the culture of then, versus the culture of now. In some cases, it was evident from the things people wore, or carried, or did, back then which they no longer do today. But sometimes it was the opposite: things that didn't exist back in the 1960s and 1970s have become a pervasive part of today's culture.

A good example is the cellphone: 20 years ago, it simply didn't exist. Even ten years ago, it was a relatively uncommon sight, and usually only on major streets of big cities. Today, of course, cell phones are everywhere, and everyone is using them in a variety of culture contexts.

However, I don't think this is a permanent phenomenon; after all, if you think back to the early 1980s, you probably would have seen a lot of people carrying Sony Walkmans, or "boom-box" portable radios -- all of which have disappeared...

If Moore's Law (which basically says that computers double in power every 18 months) holds up for another decade, then we'll have computerized gadgets approximately 100 times smaller, faster, cheaper, and better -- which means far better integration of music, camera, messaging, and phone, but also the possibility of the devices being so tiny that they're embedded into our eyeglasses, our earrings, or a tattoo on our forehead.

So the point of this album is to provide a frame of reference -- so that we can (hopefully) look back 10-20 years from now, and say, "Wasn't it really weird that we behaved in such bizarre ways while we interacted with those primitive devices?"

Note: this photo was published in an undated (May 2010) EveryBlock NYC Zipcodes blog, with the title 10025. It was also published in an undated (May 2010) EveryBlock NYC Neighborhoods blog titled "Upper West Side."

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This is a continuation of a Flickr set that I started in the summer of 2009. As I noted in that earlier collection of photos, I still have many parts of New York City left to explore -- but I've also realized that I don't always have to go looking elsewhere for interesting photographs. Some of it is available just outside my front door.

I live on a street corner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where there's an express stop on the IRT subway line (with a new space-age subway station scheduled to be completed by fall 2010), as well as a crosstown bus stop, an entrance to the West Side Highway, and the usual range of banks, delis, grocery stores, fast-food shops, mobile-phone stores, drug-stores, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, and other commercial enterprises. As a result, there are lots of interesting people moving past my apartment building, all day and all night long.

It's easy to find an unobtrusive spot on the edge of the median strip separating the east side of Broadway from the west side; nobody pays any attention to me as they cross the street from east to west, and nobody even looks in my direction as they cross from north to south (or vice versa). In rainy weather, sometimes I huddle under an awning of the T-Mobile phone store on the corner, so I can take pictures of people under their umbrellas, without getting my camera and myself soaking wet...

So, these are some of the people I thought were photo-worthy during the past few weeks and month; I'll add more to the collection as the year progresses ... unless, of course, other parts of New York City turn out to be more compelling from time to time.

This photo was taken of the piano located at the top of Doug Sahm Hill, looking out toward the river and the skyline of downtown Austin in the background.

When I reached the piano, I found another photographer, and two gymnasts who were somehow involved in the weekend reggae festival that had been held in the large park at the bottom of the hill. There was also a large map of Texas inlaid in the stone at the top of the hill, so that you could see how far it was from Austin to other Texas cities like Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston. But nobody was playing the poor, lonely piano; it just sat there, atop Doug Sahm Hill.

I know what you're going to ask: who the heck is Doug Sahm, and why should we care? Well, for what it's worth, this Wikipedia article tells us that Mr. Sahm (who died in 1999) was a San Antonio-born musician who became a significant figure in blues, rock and other genres. He is considered one of the most important figures in Tejano music, and was the founder and leader of the 1960s rock and roll band the Sir Douglas Quintet. He played later with Augie Meyers, Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez in The Texas Tornados, and also in Los Super Seven supergroup.

So now you know.

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A few years ago, a British artist by the name of Luke Jerram came up with the intriguing idea of spreading pianos around the city, with an open invitation for anyone nearby to wander up and begin playing something. Anything. He started in London, and has subsequently brought his festival -- known as "Play Me, I'm Yours" -- to some 19 cities around the world, including such varied cities as Moscow, Sydney, São Paulo, Barcelona, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Cincinnati, San Jose, and Pécs.

And then New York City -- which is where I heard about it, in June 2010. Sixty pianos were donated, painted, and "installed" throughout the five boroughs of New York; you can see the locations here. Over a period of two weeks, I managed to visit every single one of the pianos -- except for two in Queens, which had been vandalized and removed before I could get to them -- and photographed them all in this Flickr set

I had such a good time with the New York pianos that I checked Luke's website periodically to see what plans he had for 2011. I learned that he was planning a festival in Adelaide, but that was too far away; and he was planning a festival in Geneva, but the date conflicted with some other plans I had made. I heard that he was considering Salt Lake City, but then it turned out that he actually scheduled a festival in Austin, TX for the month of April -- so that's where I decided to go.

You can see the details of the Austin festival at this Internet site, but the first thing I noticed was that it would be much smaller than the one in New York: only 14 pianos, most within walking distance of one another, and several of them located along the river that runs through the center of the city. As with New York, one of them had been vandalized and removed before I got to it; I heard that a replacement piano was being brought in, but I had only four days in Austin before I had to return home, and I never had a chance to see if it actually arrived. There was also one piano that I simply could not locate: it was supposed to be located on a hiking path in the midst of a wooded area in a rather strange area of on-ramps and off-ramps of the MoPac Expressway, but despite repeated references to two different Google maps on my iPhone (one showing exactly where I was standing, and another allegedly showing me where the mysterious piano was located), I never did track it down.

As for the pianos that I did find: like New York, it turned out that roughly 2/3 of them were sitting empty and alone when I got to them. In several cases, I sat there for half an hour or an hour, waiting for someone to show up and start playing something ... but nobody did. So there were only five pianos where I could actually listen to people playing music; and for each of them I made video recordings with my Sony Alpha 55 camera, and used Apple's iMovie program to clean up the videos and make them more presentable. In order to make them accessible on Flickr, I kept them all very short: Flickr only allows 90 seconds of video for an individual clip. I was also hoping to get some good HDR shots of the pianos at sunrise and sunset ... but nobody else gets up at sunset to play the pianos on public display, as I discovered on my first dawn excursion in Austin.

While I was there, I couldn't help taking some additional photos of the people in Austin as they enjoyed themselves in their canoes and rafts and paddle-boats out in the river. Those photos have nothing to do with pianos or the "Play Me, I'm Yours" festival, so I'll be placing them in a separate Flickr set.

So now I've done two cities ... and I think I'm done. It's been great fun, but it's time-consuming and expensive to venture off to a strange city for the single purpose of photographing a bunch of pianos ... which, alas, turn out to be unoccupied most of the time. Indeed, even if the "Play Me, I'm Yours" festival comes back to New York City at some point in the future, I think I'll skip the pianos located in Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Bronx -- most of the action is in Manhattan, and that's a lot easier to deal with, logistically.

But if you haven't seen this festival, I urge you to check Luke Jerram's website periodically, and see whether he might be bringing his festival to your town. If so, take a look at the map, and you can probably figure out which pianos are likely to visited by lots of people -- e.g., in New York, it doesn't take a genius to guess that Times Square is going to get a lot more visitors than a piano in a remote corner of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Once you've got this figured out, go spend some time watching the action; chances are you'll be amazed and delighted by the variety of people who wander by, do a double-take when they see a piano that they had not expected to see, and then sit down to start playing ...

If there's a "Play Me, I'm Yours" festival coming to your city, and you think there might some interesting opportunities for photos or videos, drop me a note and let me know. I might drop in and say hello...

Well, for whatever it's worth, it did sound like a Russian accent when I overheard these two young women chattering to each other. And they did seem unusually excited about the prospect of eating a hot dog (which they may well have purchased at the tourist-famous Nathan's Hot Dog stand on Broadway and 72nd Street.

Note: this photo was published as an illustration in a Sep 2009 Squidoo blog titled "The Tastiest Hot Dogs Ever: Nathan's Famous." It was also published in a Jul 14, 2010 blog titled "Hot Hot Russian Women Photos." And it was published in an Aug 15, 2010 Adsense Labs blog, with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page. It was also published in an Oct 4, 2010 blog titled "Get green at lunch!" And it was published in a Dec 9, 2010 Russian Bride blog titled "Hot Russian Athlete: Irina Kalentieva."

Moving into 2014, the photo was published in a Sep 10, 2014 blog titled "4 τα «κανόνια» των Ρώσων στον τουρισμό."

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This is a continuation of a set that I created in 2008 (shown here ) to show a variety of photos taken in Verdi Square, at 72nd Street and Broadway

(note: more details later, as time permits)

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I have visited Rome's Piazza del Popolo on several occasions over the past 38 years, and have taken numerous photos there. As it turns out, most of my visits have been in the afternoon, and I have simply walked around the broad, open plaza to photograph whatever interesting sights and people presented themselves. (For photos from a morning visit, see Sunday morning at Piazza del Popolo, Nov 2009).

On this most recent visit in May 2010, I arrived on a Saturday morning and looked forward to another photographic expedition to the Piazza. But it rained most of the weekend, and the sun didn't come out until late Sunday afternoon. At that point, I strolled across the river from my hotel to the Piazza, taking a couple of pictures along the way. Unexpectedly, I found myself in the middle of a celebration marking the 158th anniversary of the creation of Rome's police department -- with displays of police cars and helicopters, politicians giving speeches, and music from a marching band. Indeed, I was surprised to hear the band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" (the national march of the United States), along with a couple of other John Philip Sousa marches; it seemed out of place in the Eternal City.

In any case, I found lots of interesting photographs of people in the crowd that was wandering around. And I came back to Piazza del Popolo several days later, on a late Friday afternoon, after I had finished the computer lectures that brought me to Rome on this trip. The sun was out, the temperature was mild, and as usual, the piazza was filled with numerous tourists and students and children, older people out for an afternoon stroll, families, couples, and people coming and going to church services at nearby churches. There was even a soccer game underway on one side of the piazza, with hordes of young boys dashing about at full speed...

I took nearly a thousand photos during the two visits to Piazza del Popolo on this trip; these are the ones I felt were worthy of sharing ...

On November 1st, I attended my third professional football game, with a photographer's press pass that let me get down on the field to photograph players, referees, cheerleaders, other photographers, fans in the stand, and anyone else who looked interesting. (My first such game was a pre-season contest between the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles, which you can see by clicking here, and the second game was between the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills, which you can see by clicking here.)

I learned some lessons from photographing the first two games, and I showed up this time with even more equipment. I brought my Nikon D300 and D700 cameras, with an assortment of telephoto lenses; and I rented a hulking big 150-500mm zoom lens, which I mounted on my half-frame D300 camera to get the equivalent of a 300-750mm telephoto on a "standard" 35mm camera. Most of the time, I used the (full-frame) D700 with a 300mm zoom to get shots of fans in the stadium, and I used the long-lens 150-500mm zoom lens to get shots of the football players, as well as some closeups of the cheerleaders, as they waved their long hair in the air during the various "performances" with which they entertained the crowd.

Technical details aside, this game was very much like the last two: I was down on the field, surrounded by 77,000 roaring fans who made conversation virtually impossible. All I could do was try my best to follow the action, and shoot anything that looked interesting. It usually (though not always) started with a snap to the quarterback -- but it was sometimes on the other side of the field, or down at the other end of the field. Like the other photographers, I scurried back and forth from one end of the field to the other to be as close to the action as possible ... but in many cases, all I ended up with was a picture of a tangle of bodies, and no clear idea of what had just happened.

After watching the Flickr statistics associated with my previous Jets games, I was amused to see that the most popular photos -- by a huge margin were those of the cheerleaders ... so I included about two dozen closeup photos of the cheerleaders in this set. I also found the fans interesting and occasionally picturesque, so you'll find several fan-related pictures in this set.

Since I was on the field, once again, through the generosity and permission of the New York Jets, I naturally rooted for them to win. And though they played to a 3-3 tie at halftime, their special teams fell apart in the second half. Their rookie quarterback (Mark Sanchez, whose #6 jersey appears prominently in some of the photos) scored and passed well, but the Jets were down by 5 points with a minute left in the game, and while they were only about 20 yards from the goal line at that point, it was a fourth-down ... for which the traditional strategy is to attempt a field-goal. But what's the point of getting 3 points for a field goal, when you're down 5 points, and the clock has almost run out?

Well, perhaps this is all blindingly obvious to most football fans -- but football really isn't my sport at all, so I thought I was actually rather clever to anticipate what the Jets decided to do on that final play: pass for a 6-point touchdown, rather than waste their time with a field-goal kick. As it turned out, I was near the goal line myself, and when the play started, and it became obvious that Jets QB Sanchez was going to pass, I switched my attention to the end zone, and did my best to focus on wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery as he attempted to catch the "hail Mary" pass. As it turned out, the pass was a little too high, so they didn't score and the game was effectively over. But I did get a shot of that attempted pass reception; it's not perfect, but it's not too bad ... and you'll find it at the very end of this Flickr set (which will take several days to upload).

All in all, I took a little over 1,500 images and whittled it down to 150 "keepers" that I think you'll enjoy looking at -- i.e., 10% of the total, rather than the usual 5% that I uploaded from the last two games. Another 150 had to be deleted immediately because they were out of focus, or because a referee decided to run in front of my camera just as I was pushing the shutter button ... but I've still got roughly 1,200 images of jumbled piles of football players that will probably continue to sit on my computer until I run out of space on my hard disk. C'est la vie...

P.S. One little nuance about professional football, which seems obvious but was still a surprise to me on this third game: unlike high-school football, cheerleaders don't cheer. They don't sing, they don't chant, they don't utter a word while they're prancing around in front of the roaring crowd in the stadium. Of course: how could they? Who would hear a thing they said? Still, it's a little weird to spend an afternoon on the field with these skimpily-dress beauties, with smiles frozen on their faces as they dance for the fans ... and who, for all practical purposes, never make a sound.

Note: this photo was published in a Jan 1, 2011 Get A New Phone blog, with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page.

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This is a continuation of a Flickr set that I started in the summer of 2009. As I noted in that earlier collection of photos, I still have many parts of New York City left to explore -- but I've also realized that I don't always have to go looking elsewhere for interesting photographs. Some of it is available just outside my front door.

I live on a street corner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where there's an express stop on the IRT subway line (with a new space-age subway station scheduled to be completed by fall 2010), as well as a crosstown bus stop, an entrance to the West Side Highway, and the usual range of banks, delis, grocery stores, fast-food shops, mobile-phone stores, drug-stores, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, and other commercial enterprises. As a result, there are lots of interesting people moving past my apartment building, all day and all night long.

It's easy to find an unobtrusive spot on the edge of the median strip separating the east side of Broadway from the west side; nobody pays any attention to me as they cross the street from east to west, and nobody even looks in my direction as they cross from north to south (or vice versa). In rainy weather, sometimes I huddle under an awning of the T-Mobile phone store on the corner, so I can take pictures of people under their umbrellas, without getting my camera and myself soaking wet...

So, these are some of the people I thought were photo-worthy during the past few weeks and month; I'll add more to the collection as the year progresses ... unless, of course, other parts of New York City turn out to be more compelling from time to time.

Note: this photo was published as an illustration on an undated (Oct 2009) Boxxet blog titled "New York Jets." It was also published in a Jul 10, 2012 Gawker blog titled " Crazy Mixed-Up Women Hate Sports But Like Men."

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In mid-October, I attended my second professional football game, with a photographer's press pass that let me get down on the field to photograph players, referees, cheerleaders, other photographers, fans in the stand, and anyone else who looked interesting. (My first such game was a pre-season contest between the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles, which you can see by clicking here.)

I learned some lessons from photographing the Jets-Eagles game, and I showed up this time better prepared, and with some new equipment. It was great having the Nikon D700 with the capability of shooting at ISO 6400; but the 2X extender that turned my 70-300mm FX lens into a 140-600 lens seemed incapable of focusing automatically; I finally gave up and removed it. Overall, probably the best improvement came from the monopod that I dragged along on the trip; it greatly improved the stability of long shots with a telephoto. Ironically, it may also have created the illusion that I was a professional photographer, for the "real" professional photographers (who had studiously ignored me during the previous game) actually chatted with me a couple of times. I didn't have any of the bazooka-sized monster-telephoto lenses they had, but maybe they thought I wasn't a completely unprepared hobbyist...

Anyway, I shot the first half of the game with the D700 and the 70-300mm zoom lens by itself; and I shot the second half of the game with my older D300, whose half-frame body turned the 70-300mm zoom into a 105-450mm zoom. The stadium was sufficiently well lit that I could shoot at a reasonably high speed (typically 1/640 second) without having to go above ISO 3200 most of the time.

But technical details aside, this game was very much like the last one: I was down on the field, surrounded by 76,000 roaring fans who made conversation virtually impossible. I'm accustomed to watching most sports on television these days, with magical close-up shots provided by TV cameras like the very ones I saw strategically placed around tonight's football game; and when I'm befuddled by something complex or unexpected in whatever I'm watching, I know I can always depend on multiple instant replays (from various angles) and the incisive commentary from a TV sports anchor who knows far more about the players, the rules, and the details than I ever will.

Down on the field, all I could do was try my best to follow the action, and shoot anything that looked interesting. It usually (though not always) started with a snap to the quarterback -- but it was sometimes on the other side of the field, or down at the other end of the field. Like the other photographers, I scurried back and forth from one end of the field to the other to be as close to the action as possible ... but in many cases, all I ended up with was a picture of a tangle of bodies, and no clear idea of what had just happened.

After watching the Flickr statistics associated with my previous Jets-Eagles set, I was amused to see that the most popular photos were those of the cheerleaders ... so I included about 5 photos of the cheerleaders in this set. (And for whatever it's worth, I certainly did not envy them in their skimpy uniforms, while they did their best to cope with the 45-degree weather, and the chilly wind that whipped across the field.) I also found the fans interesting and occasionally picturesque, so you'll find about 10 fan-related pictures in this set.

Since I was on the field through the generosity and permission of the New York Jets, I naturally rooted for them to win. But they played pretty sloppily, and their rookie quarterback (Mark Sanchez, whose #6 jersey appears prominently in some of the photos) was intercepted five times. The regulation game finished in a 13-13 tie, so the game went into overtime ... and I'm such a dummy about football that I didn't even realize that it was a sudden death overtime. But when the Buffalo Bills kicked a three point field goal with 2:44 remaining in the overtime period, and all of the players immediately walked off the field, I quickly figured out what was happening...

Anyway, I took a little over 1,200 images and whittled it down to 60 "keepers" that I think you'll enjoy looking at. Another 200 had to be deleted immediately because they were out of focus, or because a referee decided to run in front of my camera just as I was pushing the shutter button ... but I've still got roughly 940 images of jumbled piles of football players that will probably continue to sit on my computer until I run out of space on my hard disk. C'est la vie...

This photo was taken of the piano located at the half-way point on the Pfluger Bridge across the bridge, about a half-mile west of the First Street bridge that I photographed on my first day in Austin.

It was a bright, sunny day, and it was also pretty windy. There were lots of people passing by, and several stopped to play for for a while. I recorded two of them, and also recorded the sound of the Texas state flag as it flapped in the wind.

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A few years ago, a British artist by the name of Luke Jerram came up with the intriguing idea of spreading pianos around the city, with an open invitation for anyone nearby to wander up and begin playing something. Anything. He started in London, and has subsequently brought his festival -- known as "Play Me, I'm Yours" -- to some 19 cities around the world, including such varied cities as Moscow, Sydney, São Paulo, Barcelona, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Cincinnati, San Jose, and Pécs.

And then New York City -- which is where I heard about it, in June 2010. Sixty pianos were donated, painted, and "installed" throughout the five boroughs of New York; you can see the locations here. Over a period of two weeks, I managed to visit every single one of the pianos -- except for two in Queens, which had been vandalized and removed before I could get to them -- and photographed them all in this Flickr set

I had such a good time with the New York pianos that I checked Luke's website periodically to see what plans he had for 2011. I learned that he was planning a festival in Adelaide, but that was too far away; and he was planning a festival in Geneva, but the date conflicted with some other plans I had made. I heard that he was considering Salt Lake City, but then it turned out that he actually scheduled a festival in Austin, TX for the month of April -- so that's where I decided to go.

You can see the details of the Austin festival at this Internet site, but the first thing I noticed was that it would be much smaller than the one in New York: only 14 pianos, most within walking distance of one another, and several of them located along the river that runs through the center of the city. As with New York, one of them had been vandalized and removed before I got to it; I heard that a replacement piano was being brought in, but I had only four days in Austin before I had to return home, and I never had a chance to see if it actually arrived. There was also one piano that I simply could not locate: it was supposed to be located on a hiking path in the midst of a wooded area in a rather strange area of on-ramps and off-ramps of the MoPac Expressway, but despite repeated references to two different Google maps on my iPhone (one showing exactly where I was standing, and another allegedly showing me where the mysterious piano was located), I never did track it down.

As for the pianos that I did find: like New York, it turned out that roughly 2/3 of them were sitting empty and alone when I got to them. In several cases, I sat there for half an hour or an hour, waiting for someone to show up and start playing something ... but nobody did. So there were only five pianos where I could actually listen to people playing music; and for each of them I made video recordings with my Sony Alpha 55 camera, and used Apple's iMovie program to clean up the videos and make them more presentable. In order to make them accessible on Flickr, I kept them all very short: Flickr only allows 90 seconds of video for an individual clip. I was also hoping to get some good HDR shots of the pianos at sunrise and sunset ... but nobody else gets up at sunset to play the pianos on public display, as I discovered on my first dawn excursion in Austin.

While I was there, I couldn't help taking some additional photos of the people in Austin as they enjoyed themselves in their canoes and rafts and paddle-boats out in the river. Those photos have nothing to do with pianos or the "Play Me, I'm Yours" festival, so I'll be placing them in a separate Flickr set.

So now I've done two cities ... and I think I'm done. It's been great fun, but it's time-consuming and expensive to venture off to a strange city for the single purpose of photographing a bunch of pianos ... which, alas, turn out to be unoccupied most of the time. Indeed, even if the "Play Me, I'm Yours" festival comes back to New York City at some point in the future, I think I'll skip the pianos located in Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Bronx -- most of the action is in Manhattan, and that's a lot easier to deal with, logistically.

But if you haven't seen this festival, I urge you to check Luke Jerram's website periodically, and see whether he might be bringing his festival to your town. If so, take a look at the map, and you can probably figure out which pianos are likely to visited by lots of people -- e.g., in New York, it doesn't take a genius to guess that Times Square is going to get a lot more visitors than a piano in a remote corner of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Once you've got this figured out, go spend some time watching the action; chances are you'll be amazed and delighted by the variety of people who wander by, do a double-take when they see a piano that they had not expected to see, and then sit down to start playing ...

If there's a "Play Me, I'm Yours" festival coming to your city, and you think there might some interesting opportunities for photos or videos, drop me a note and let me know. I might drop in and say hello...

(note: more details later, as time permits)

*********************************************

I have visited Rome's Piazza del Popolo on several occasions over the past 38 years, and have taken numerous photos there. As it turns out, most of my visits have been in the afternoon, and I have simply walked around the broad, open plaza to photograph whatever interesting sights and people presented themselves. (For photos from a morning visit, see Sunday morning at Piazza del Popolo, Nov 2009).

On this most recent visit in May 2010, I arrived on a Saturday morning and looked forward to another photographic expedition to the Piazza. But it rained most of the weekend, and the sun didn't come out until late Sunday afternoon. At that point, I strolled across the river from my hotel to the Piazza, taking a couple of pictures along the way. Unexpectedly, I found myself in the middle of a celebration marking the 158th anniversary of the creation of Rome's police department -- with displays of police cars and helicopters, politicians giving speeches, and music from a marching band. Indeed, I was surprised to hear the band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" (the national march of the United States), along with a couple of other John Philip Sousa marches; it seemed out of place in the Eternal City.

In any case, I found lots of interesting photographs of people in the crowd that was wandering around. And I came back to Piazza del Popolo several days later, on a late Friday afternoon, after I had finished the computer lectures that brought me to Rome on this trip. The sun was out, the temperature was mild, and as usual, the piazza was filled with numerous tourists and students and children, older people out for an afternoon stroll, families, couples, and people coming and going to church services at nearby churches. There was even a soccer game underway on one side of the piazza, with hordes of young boys dashing about at full speed...

I took nearly a thousand photos during the two visits to Piazza del Popolo on this trip; these are the ones I felt were worthy of sharing ...

Note: this photo was published as an illustration in an Aug 2009 Squidoo blog titled "Go Basketball Pro - How to Play NBA or College Basketball." It was also published in an undated (Oct 2009) Mahalo blog titled "How to Play Basketball," at www-dot-mahalo-dot-com-slash-how-to-play-basketball. And it was published in an undated (Nov 2009) blog titled "Understanding Copyright: Using Creative Commons."

Moving into 2010, the photo was published in a June 6, 2010 blog titled "Life Lessons from Coach John Wooden."

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in an undated (late Feb 2012) somewhat incoherent blog titled "Happy Life with Family when Go to Play Basketball Game."

***********************

From time to time, I wander past a neighborhood playground officially known as the "Happy Warrior Playground," on 99th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, to watch the impromptu pickup basketball games taking place on what is officially known as the Goat Court basketball court. You can find one Flickr album of a Memorial-Day weekend basketball game here on Flickr, and a more elaborate late-June game (with details on the background of Goat Courts) here on Flickr.

More recently, I stopped at the playground again, on my way to dinner at a local restaurant, to see if there was another game going on. Indeed there was; and rather than photographing it from the mid-court sidelines, as I had on the two previous occasions, I decided to stand at one end of the court, so I could photograph the players as they ran directly toward me, or away from me. It gave me an interesting new perspective, but it was still difficult capturing the rapid motion; if nothing else, it gave me more appreciation for the difficult job that professional sports photographers have.

In any case, of the roughly 150 photos that I took, here are the ones that I thought were worth keeping...

This was taken outside one of the outdoor restaurants at the north side of Grand Central Terminal.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Nov 17, 2015.

***************

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.

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 ...

On the second day of our photography class, we met in a coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco.

A few of us spent the morning walking north, into a somewhat bleak "warehouse district" that seemed to have nobody on the street, and not much that inspired me to photograph.

But the houses and buildings were somewhat interesting and colorful, especially as compared to my familiar habitat of New York City. Even our street-signs intended for dog-walkers are a lot more mundane and boring than something like this one ...

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

A couple days after our cruise ship left Basel, we stopped overnight at Strasbourg on the Rhine. If I remember correctly, Germany was on one side of the river, and France was on the other side ...

Anyway, most of the tourists on our ship went along with the guides to see the town of Strasbourg itself -- famous for castles and whatever history it has to offer.

I didn't feel like spending the morning with a crowd of tourists, so I opted to walk back down along the river for a short while, and then up on a very modern bridge that spanned the river. A portion of the bridge turned out to be like the famous "Lock Bridge" in Paris, with many padlocks proclaiming the endless love between two people whom nobody else will ever know or care about.

I took some photos of the bridge, the locks, and a little boat cruising up the river ... and then walked back to the boat for lunch.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Oct 12, 2015.

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

My first reaction, when looking at this scene, was "Hey! How does she manage to get Internet access down here?"

But now that I look more closely, I can see that she is wearing earphones ... and is probably fiddling with her iTunes music.

But she definitely has some very cool sneakers.

From the black-and-white outfit, we can reasonably judge that she, too, is a New Yorker.

**********************************

I spent the first two weeks of September 2015 on a river cruise down the Rhine River, with daily visits to ancient (German) castles and small (German) villages along the way. Our trip culminated in Berlin (pictures forthcoming over the next week or so), where we stayed in a terrific hotel in what was once East Berlin … but was no longer distinguishable from any other part of Berlin …

Anyway, I thought it might be helpful to know a few German words and phrases besides what little I remembered from four years of high-school German, taken a lifetime ago… so I signed up for a one-week intensive one-on-one German class at the Berlitz school in mid-town Manhattan. I’m not sure how much I really learned, and I doubt that I’ll remember very much at all in a month or two … but I do think it was a worthwhile exercise.

The “exercise” involved daily trips, via subway, from Manhattan's Upper West Side to the IRT station at 50th Street and Seventh Avenue — from which I walked a couple blocks east to the Berlitz location near Rockefeller Center. When the class was over each day, I retraced my steps to get back home.

Naturally, I had my camera with me while I made this daily journey; and I couldn’t help snapping a few photos along the way. Most of the people that I saw were tourists … but there were a few “native” New Yorkers, and a few others of dubious origin.

Not the greatest photos in the world, I’m sure … but it shows you another “slice of life” in the Big Apple.

After Heidelberg, we continued cruising down the Rhine ... and on our last full day, we passed castle after castle along the river.

Most of them were sitting above a small village, and some were flanked by a local church. Most have now been turned into hotels or historical sites; but once upon a time (typically 500-1,000 years ago) they were occupied by barons, princes, pirates, rogues, ruffians, warlords, and various other people doing their best to control the traffic going up and down the river.

Our guide told us the names and history of all these places as we cruised past of them. After a while, they all became a blur ...

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

After Heidelberg, we continued cruising down the Rhine ... and on our last full day, we passed castle after castle along the river.

Most of them were sitting above a small village, and some were flanked by a local church. Most have now been turned into hotels or historical sites; but once upon a time (typically 500-1,000 years ago) they were occupied by barons, princes, pirates, rogues, ruffians, warlords, and various other people doing their best to control the traffic going up and down the river.

Our guide told us the names and history of all these places as we cruised past of them. After a while, they all became a blur ...

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Oct 15, 2015.

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

As I noted in an earlier bunch of photos that I uploaded to this Flickr album, we street photographers sometimes see things that we weren't expecting ... in this case, it was a collection of Chicano and Native American murals on a short one-block street (Balmy Alley) between 24th and 25th (Garfield Square), in the Mission District of San Francisco.

As is often the case, I was oblivious about this area before I arrived, and had no idea what it was about; but the murals certainly demanded some attention.

As for the details, it turns out that Wikipedia has a pretty good description of what it calls "the most concentrated collection of murals in the city of San Francisco," which dates back to 1972. You can read it for yourself at this URL:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmy_Alley

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

Once inside the Moulin Cafe, I ordered a typical American breakfast of OJ, fried eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. This is what I got.

I didn't ask for the hash-brown potatoes, but they came anyway; and I didn't ask for milk or cream for my coffee, but it came anyway. I got enough bacon to feed a small army, but I ate every bite.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Nov 23, 2015 -- a day that would have been my father-in-law's 106th birthday. R.I.P., Dave Nash.

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

This is apparently where Checkpoint Charlie stood during the Cold War hostilities. The people you see here are all actors (or hustlers, depending on your opinion); they speak a few words of English, and their primary objective is to get you to pose for pictures with them (in return for a generous tip)

I think it's hilarious that there should be a McDonald's outlet in the background ...

**********************************

For the final few days of our vacation, we traveled by air from Amsterdam to Berlin — and spent about four days in the “Mitte” section of the city, quite close to what was once the dividing line between East and West Berlin; indeed, our hotel was technically in East Berlin.

We spent the first afternoon wandering around the local area, partly to see the infamous “Checkpoint Charlie” (just a few blocks from our hotel), and partly to get a sense of the buildings, the people, and the overall “look and feel” of the city. Since I spend much of my time focusing on “street photography” in New York, I did the same thing here … and aside from the German language that you’ll see on a few of the signposts, the people look much the same as they do in any other big city.

I did get a few photos of the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Exhibition, and some video clips from inside the TierGarten (which I’ll upload in the next few days). I also took quite a few photos of some “street art” that was created on one of the few remaining sections of the old Berlin Wall; these two will be uploaded in the next few days.

We took a driving tour around the city one morning, including a quick circle around the old 1936 Olympic Stadium; we also had lunch in a fancy restaurant atop the old Reichstag Building, which is now (as I understand it) the home of the German legislature. But I certainly don’t feel that I saw very much of the entire city; it would be like making a whirlwind tour around a few parts of Manhattan, and then trying to claim that you’ve seen all of New York City.

As a child of the Cold War (and having been born exactly one year before the day that Hitler committed suicide), I have always been intrigued by Berlin — and would love to go back several more times to see more of the neighborhoods, the culture, and the people. I don’t think I would ever claim to “know” Berlin in any complete sense; indeed, I don’t even feel that way about New York, after living here for 45+ years. But I could certainly learn a lot more, and I found it sufficiently interesting that I would like to learn more…

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

After Heidelberg, we continued cruising down the Rhine ... and on our last full day, we passed castle after castle along the river.

Most of them were sitting above a small village, and some were flanked by a local church. Most have now been turned into hotels or historical sites; but once upon a time (typically 500-1,000 years ago) they were occupied by barons, princes, pirates, rogues, ruffians, warlords, and various other people doing their best to control the traffic going up and down the river.

Our guide told us the names and history of all these places as we cruised past of them. After a while, they all became a blur ...

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

This was taken during the morning, when I was wandering around Portland on my own ...

This couple was enjoying a cup of coffee (which they had somehow gotten rid of already) outside a small deli/cafe in downtown Portland.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Sep 19, 2015.

***********************************

In August 2015, I had the great pleasure of taking a week-long photography workshop in Rockport, Maine under the tutelage of Peter Turnley. Its main theme was street photography, and we made several visits to working-class neighborhoods in several Maine towns where (unbeknownst to me) there are large populations of working-class immigrants from Somalia, Sierra Leone, and various other countries around the world.

Most of our “field” exercises were carried out in pairs, threesomes, or foursomes; and in many cases, we were lucky enough to follow along behind Peter Turnley and watch his amazing style and techniques. The photos in this set were taken on such a field-exercise, in a working-class neighborhood of Portland, Maine.

I have no idea when or where this photo was taken, nor do I know who the four people are.

I put in an arbitrary date of 1935, but I have no idea if that is correct...

*********************************

To the best of my knowledge, most of the photos in this Flickr album were taken by my grandmother, Mabel Yourdon, during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Most of them depict scenes of everyday life in mining camps and small towns near the Utah-Colorado border. Some of them show hunting, fishing, and camping trips in unspecified parts of the American west. It appears that a few of them were taken in southern California, when Mabel and her husband Ike traveled out there to visit relatives.

I have no idea what kind of camera Mabel used for these photos, nor what kind of film. There probably wasn’t that much variety available in the 1920s, and she was not a “professional” photographer. So it may have been a Brownie and whatever B/W film Kodak was selling at the time.

My stepfather, Ray Yourdon, was born in 1922; and his older brother, Marvin, was born two years before that. You’ll see photos of Ray and Marvin when they were young boys, when they were in high school, and when they went off to join the Navy and the Marines to fight in World War II.

Somewhere around 2005, I asked Ray if he could tell me the details of some of the photos; where possible, I have included those details in the notes for the photos. Some of the photos obviously evoked pleasant memories, and I heard stories about minor day-to-day events in his life that I had never heard before. But we rarely got through more than a few pictures before he ran out of energy; and so many of the photos have no explanation at all.

At this point, my parents and grandparents are all gone. I have cousins who grew up in the same area where these photos were taken, and one or two of them are still in that area. They may be able to fill in a few of the details; otherwise, you’ll just have to accept these photos as a glimpse of what life was like nearly a hundred years ago ...

As I noted in an earlier bunch of photos that I uploaded to this Flickr album, we street photographers sometimes see things that we weren't expecting ... in this case, it was a collection of Chicano and Native American murals on a short one-block street (Balmy Alley) between 24th and 25th (Garfield Square), in the Mission District of San Francisco.

As is often the case, I was oblivious about this area before I arrived, and had no idea what it was about; but the murals certainly demanded some attention.

As for the details, it turns out that Wikipedia has a pretty good description of what it calls "the most concentrated collection of murals in the city of San Francisco," which dates back to 1972. You can read it for yourself at this URL:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmy_Alley

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Dec 9, 2015.

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

This is one of several photos during the weekend class where I was supposed to be practicing the various techniques we were learning in our street-photography class.

It was taken in the Mission District of San Francisco, on a crisp, dazzling-bright autumn afternoon...

I don't think I showed this photo to anyone in my class ... but for me, it was a good example of the vibrant, joyous colors that I saw in this section of San Francisco, made all the more lively by the bright sunlight and the shadows of the afternoon sun.

This is a section of Folsom Street, near the intersection of 24th St.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day"

************************

In early November 2015, I flew from New York to San Francisco to take a weekend street-photography workshop under the tutelage of Eric Kim. As you might expect, I took gazillions of photos; but not all of them were specifically associated with the workshop itself. On the way out to San Francisco, I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone; and during the weekend, I took a number of photos that had little or nothing to do with street-photography per se.

I’ll upload the photos in dribs and drabs during the next several days, and let you decide which ones are sufficiently interesting to warrant a second look…

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Sep 24, 2015.

***********************************

In August 2015, I had the great pleasure of taking a week-long photography workshop in Rockport, Maine under the tutelage of Peter Turnley. Its main theme was street photography, and we made several visits to working-class neighborhoods in several Maine towns where (unbeknownst to me) there are large populations of working-class immigrants from Somalia, Sierra Leone, and various other countries around the world.

Most of our “field” exercises were carried out in pairs, threesomes, or foursomes; and in many cases, we were lucky enough to follow along behind Peter Turnley and watch his amazing style and techniques. The photos in this set were taken on such a field-exercise, in a working-class neighborhood of Portland, Maine.

This is what the Earth Cafe typically looked like when I first arrived in the morning: dark and empty and closed. Inside the cafe, the chairs are turned upside-down on their respective tables.

During the second week that I visited the cafe, it was so cold that the staff had actually placed all of the outside tables and chairs inside the cafe -- so the outer area was completely bare when I arrived.

This photo was taken at 47 seconds past the hour of 7 AM,so the cafe should have been open for business. But it clearly was not ...and I found that it was usually a good idea to wait until at least 7:15 before walking inside. Even then, the croissants and pastries were typically not ready; so I had to satisfy myself with an initial cappuccino and then come back 15 minutes later in hopes of getting a warm, tasty croissant.

**********************

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of recent Tumblr blog postings, I’m working on an exercise for a new class that I’ve started taking at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in the fall of 2015.( You can see the earlier Tumblr postings here. and here.).

In addition to taking a bunch of photos (see the other Tumblr postings for details and descriptions of what the photos are supposed to illustrate), we also have the task of editing our images down to a maximum of 10 “presentation images” that we will share with the ICP class next week. When our instructor, Joanne Dugan, asked me last week if I anticipated having any problems with this aspect of the assignment, I shrugged and said, “No, I do this all the time …”

Well, yes and no: I do do a lot of editing/winnowing of my photos before deciding which ones should be shared with anyone else. But I had forgotten that I also do a lot of cropping, color-adjustment, tweaking, and general post-processing before I upload my photos to Flickr, Facebook, or even Instagram. For this particular ICP exercise, we were also told not to crop the photos, and not to do any post-processing. That makes things a lot more difficult …

On the other hand, part of the exercise is to assemble and share a maximum of ten photos that collectively tell a “story” of some kind – and to “tell” that story with anywhere from a word, to a sentence, to a paragraph for each of the photos. That makes things a lot easier … after all, if a photo has to be presented in isolation, then it truly stands alone. And it is intended to be viewed without any accompanying text, then it really stands alone. There’s nothing wrong with that; indeed, one might argue that that’s the whole point of photography: a picture should “tell” a story all by itself, without any extraneous verbiage to “explain” what might not be obvious to the viewer.

But not very many things exist in complete isolation of the rest of the universe, especially in today’s interconnected world. I suppose some people would debate that point quite vigorously; and some people might argue that a photograph of a person, place, or thing should be able to “stand alone” without anything else. I certainly have seen photos that fall into this category, and I suppose I’ve taken a few like that, too. Or, maybe if I never intended my photos to be considered in complete isolation from one another, perhaps that’s how some people prefer to look at them …

But for me, that’s a pretty rare phenomenon. Almost always, I find myself telling a story. The photographs obviously present one “dimension” of the story, in a visual form; and I’ve been trying to remind myself lately that videos can present can present one, and sometimes two, additional dimensions (motion and sound) that can add enormously to the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of the underlying story.

But even if one uses only traditional photos, I find that it’s almost impossible for me to crate (or make, or take) one photo by itself; invariably, I take dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, which collectively tell a story. It may be a story about someplace I’ve been, or some event in which I’ve participated, or some individual (or group of individuals) that I want the viewer to know and appreciate in more detail than would be possible to communicate in a single photo.

And then there are the words … maybe it’s because I spend part of my time as a writer and teacher that I find it almost impossible not to augment my photos with words. Lots of words. Indeed, sometimes far too many words; and sometimes clumsy words, or the wrong words. And I do realize that there are times when the situation would be improved if I would just shut up, and let the photograph do all of the communication. But for better or worse, I guess I’m a photojournalist.

With that in mind, I began the process of editing the photos for my recent ICP assignment. Here’s what I found:

1. It’s not as easy as one might think, when you start with a large number. I began winnowing the original images when I had 2,700 (after 9 days of shooting), and I still had 5 days of shooting left).

2. It’s much more difficult than I had imagined, given the constraints of my ICP class: no cropping, no post-processing, and a maximum of only 10 images. I’ve worked within those constraints for the final images that I’m submitting to the ICP class; but for these Flickr uploads, I’ve ended up with 40-45 images – and they have been heavily cropped, tilted, color-corrected, noise-dusted, and tweaked in various other ways. C’est la vie…

3. Using the collection of photos to “tell a story” is both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I’m including these background notes in all of the photos that get uploaded to Flickr … because I’ve learned (form past experience) that some visitor will zoom in on just one particular photo, without necessarily looking at all of them, and/or without seeing the overall notes for the entire album. And I don’t think I’ll find it difficult to write a few sentences to provide the background details for each photo … but whether they “flow” and create one overall, coherent “story” remains to be seen.

4. Aside from a narrative “story,” there are some “themes” that I noticed throughout this entire two-week exercise. The most significant one was exactly what I had anticipated: patterns. If you are lucky enough to sit in the same spot at the same time, day after day, you see the same rhythms, the same people, the same repetitions of life’s little actions and emotions. Many people have the opportunity to see these patterns, because they do follow the same schedule, day after day, on their way to their job or their school. But some of us have irregular routines, and any, most of us don’t pay any attention. If you slow down, and pay attention, you’ll see the patterns.

But sometimes the pattern involves uniqueness – i.e. strange and unusual people or events that seem to happen only once. But I have to keep reminding myself that my visits have lasted only two weeks; if I was here for a month, or a full season, or perhaps an entire year – then perhaps I would see these strange incidents repeating themselves

5. Another theme – which I did not anticipate, but was delighted to see – was the pervasive sense of affection and caring between and among everyone on the street. Mostly it was apparent in the interactions between parents and children; but sometimes it was between dog-owners and the dogs they were walking; sometimes it was between friends who happened to be walking along together; and sometimes it was between complete strangers and me, as the strangers would smile and nod and say “hello” if they noticed I was watching them. It was a great experience.

On the first day after our cruise ship left Basel, we stopped at the small village of Breisach on the Rhine. There was a famous old castle up on a hill, which I did not visit; and there were interesting streets to explore down in the village itself.

People enjoyed a morning pastry and cup of coffee, and there was a farmer's market in the small town square ... and that's where I took my photographs.

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During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

This was taken in Gansevoort Square, which is located in Greenwich Village in NYC.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the da" for Dec 14, 2015.

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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...

On the first day after our cruise ship left Basel, we stopped at the small village of Breisach on the Rhine. There was a famous old castle up on a hill, which I did not visit; and there were interesting streets to explore down in the village itself.

I went back in the afternoon, for a second stroll through town. The streets were mostly empty, and I spent much of my time sitting at an intersection of two streets -- watching people at an outside restaurant consuming vast quantities of ice cream, while also watching cyclists, pedestrians, tourists, and others who passed through the area...

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During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.

No notes or inscriptions on this photo -- but it looks somewhat like other pictures I've seen of the Pentagon.

I think this was taken on V-J day, which (according to Google) was celebrated on Aug 15, 1945.

My mother had lots of stories about the time she worked here; she was amazed to learn, for example, that without any training or expertise, she still had the authority to pick up a phone and halt an entire fleet of merchant marine ships heading out of New York harbor enrollee to England.

But perhaps the most amazing story was the one she told about the famous WW II photographer who was brought through the Pentagon for some kind of award ceremony to commemorate a famous photograph he had taken in the Pacific (you probably know the one I mean, but I won't make it any more specific than that).

The man was introduced to my mother (and everyone else in her office), and Mom stammered that she was proud and humbled to meet such a famous man.

Mom says that the man shrugged and smiled at her. "Don't be impressed," he said. "It was all a fake. The photograph was staged."

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All of the photos in this album are “originals” from the period when I was an infant in the mid-1940s — i.e., the period before I lived in Omaha, Riverside, Roswell, New York, Ft. Worth, and Denver (photos of which you may have seen already in my Flickr archives).

Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 70+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.

My own story changes dramatically at this point: the man I’ve presented as my Dad in previous Flickr albums, Ray Yourdon, was actually my stepfather. My birth parents grew up in Washington DC, married, and moved to Florida in the early days of World War II. My birth father worked as a flight instructor for the Air Force, and I was born on an Air Force base near Ft. Walton Beach, in the panhandle section of Florida (which you can read about here, if you’re interested: www.eglin.af.mil )

Some time after that, my parents divorced and my mother moved back to Washington with me, to live with her mother. After a bitter custody battle over me (so I’ve been told), I didn’t see my birth-father again until I was 30—at which point I was surprised to learn that I had three more half-sisters, in addition to the two I had grown up with (i.e., both my mother and my birth-father had remarried after they got divorced from each other). But that’s another story, with another set of photos ...

Meanwhile, my mother worked as a secretary in the Pentagon as the war wound down, and when my stepfather ended up in Washington toward the end of his tour of duty in the Navy, they met, and married, and moved to Denver to begin a new life … chapters of which you’ve been seeing in these Flickr albums during the last several weeks.

So the photos in this album are from my birth in Florida through the first year or so of my childhood in Washington — uploaded in reverse chronological order, starting in 1945. I haven’t written any details, because I have no conscious memory of what was happening at the time; and at this point, all of my parents, step-parents, and grandparents are gone. Yes, I do have five wonderful sisters, all of whom share various memories with me; but I’m the oldest of the brood, so I have no siblings with first-hand information about what I was doing for the first year or two of my life.

All I have are the photos that you see here. But they do tell a story, and that’s why I think it’s so important that you track down all of your own photos and preserve them somewhere for the generations who will follow after you.

I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly, but I think it's a chocolate store -- located on one of the main shopping streets in the middle of Berlin.

But that's not why I took the photo; I was simply intrigued by the brightly-colored stools and tables.

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For the final few days of our vacation, we traveled by air from Amsterdam to Berlin — and spent about four days in the “Mitte” section of the city, quite close to what was once the dividing line between East and West Berlin; indeed, our hotel was technically in East Berlin.

We spent the first afternoon wandering around the local area, partly to see the infamous “Checkpoint Charlie” (just a few blocks from our hotel), and partly to get a sense of the buildings, the people, and the overall “look and feel” of the city. Since I spend much of my time focusing on “street photography” in New York, I did the same thing here … and aside from the German language that you’ll see on a few of the signposts, the people look much the same as they do in any other big city.

I did get a few photos of the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Exhibition, and some video clips from inside the TierGarten (which I’ll upload in the next few days). I also took quite a few photos of some “street art” that was created on one of the few remaining sections of the old Berlin Wall; these two will be uploaded in the next few days.

We took a driving tour around the city one morning, including a quick circle around the old 1936 Olympic Stadium; we also had lunch in a fancy restaurant atop the old Reichstag Building, which is now (as I understand it) the home of the German legislature. But I certainly don’t feel that I saw very much of the entire city; it would be like making a whirlwind tour around a few parts of Manhattan, and then trying to claim that you’ve seen all of New York City.

As a child of the Cold War (and having been born exactly one year befor the day that Hitler committed suicide), I have always been intrigued by Berlin — and would love to go back several more times to see more of the neighborhoods, the culture, and the people. I don’t think I would ever claim to “know” Berlin in any complete sense; indeed, I don’t even feel that way about New York, after living here for 45+ years. But I could certainly learn a lot more, and I found it sufficiently interesting that I would like to learn more…

**********************************

During the first two weeks of September 2015, we took a river cruise down the Rhine River, and wrapped up the trip with a few days in Berlin. This Flickr album contains various photos from that trip …

We spent the first couple days recovering from jet-lag in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the site of the Jungfrau and various other spectacular peaks in the Alps range — but it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything. I’ve included a couple of videos of a tram ride down the mountain, as well as some paraglider who floated down into the town park.

We then traveled to Bern, where we got on-board a Viking Cruise ship that headed north for the next several days — eventually arriving in Amsterdam, after making stops nearly every day to see ancient castles and fortresses, as well as various villages and small towns that have survived various wars, tyrants, and regimes for well over a thousand years.

From our final cruise destination in Amsterdam, we flew to Berlin — where we spent a few days at a very nice hotel that turned out to be in what was once East Berlin. Indeed, the separation between East and West Berlin, once so obvious and important, is now almost impossible for a visitor to spot. Except for some rubble, and a few small mementoes (like Checkpoint Charlie, a few blocks from our hotel), there is no obvious difference between East and West from pre-1989 days.