October 2016 Desktop Calendar

Wow! How can it be November already? I must admit this year has been racing by and it's been hard to keep up. Welcome to November and here's your free gift. This month's calendar is from a recent trip to New York City. I had never spent any time in Brooklyn and my wife had wanted to see something different then the sites we usually frequent in the theater district. The Brooklyn Muesum is currently hosting an excellent exhibit called "Who Shot Sports". Wonderful pictures from sporting events captured from some of the earliest photographers thru the current amazing work of current artists is on display. If you like photography in general, or sports photography specifically, this is a must see experience. Later we stopped by to take some pictures of Manhattan from the Brooklyn side and the light, the sky, and the weather were all perfect. Please enjoy and share this calendar. You can download the high resolution version of it here: November 2016

New York City

Travel Tuesday Fireworks in the New York Harbor

This Independence Day my wife and I took a brief trip to New York City for a different view of fireworks. The Fourth of July is her favorite holiday so we try to do something special. This year we took an evening dinner cruise into New York Harbor to watch the festivities. For a photographer this poses a few interesting problems, the main ones being light, and speed. Taking a fireworks picture usually means putting the camera on a tripod and leaving the shutter open for a few seconds (4-20, I usually average about 7) while the explosive soars into the sky and erupts with glorious showers of light and color. Leaving the shutter open for this long captures the entire trajectory of the display. Being on a moving boat made this quite impossible. Seven seconds of picture while floating and turning would create a blurry smudge of color where the firework should have been and streaks of lines from the buildings on Manhattan and the other ships in the water.
My plan was to shoot with as quick a shutter speed as I could while letting a lot of light in quickly with a not too high ISO. The Nikon D4 is a great camera for speed and produces clean images at very high ISO settings, but noise in a black sky would be easily perceptible so decided to go with the fastest glass I had with me. My final setup was using the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 and the D4. Depth of field wasn’t much of a concern since the action was taking place quite a ways away, and was reasonably centered around one focus point. I’m pretty happy with the result.

Nikon D4 Sigma 35mm f/1.4 @ 35mm f/1.8 ISO 2000 1/160 sec

 

Nikon D4 Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 @ 25mm f/2.8 ISO 2000 1/50 sec

 

A Different Kind of Landscape

When I think of landscape photography, I think of beautiful mountains, cloudy skies, sunsets, lakes, leaves, and many other aspects of nature. I was reminded during our recent trip to New York City that there are other types of landscapes. The repeating pattern of the bicycles is what drew my eye towards this picture. It was a crisp and somewhat chilly Sunday morning, and I assume that New Yorkers partake of many events on weekend mornings, but none that requires renting a bike. I think it’s a great way to get around the city, if your skills are up to the tasks of avoiding the motorists, suicidal pedestrians and random wandering pets. (At least I thought it was a pet I saw; how big can a rat get?). So New York, here’s an eco-friendly solution to at least some of your transportation needs. They’re waiting...

Nikon D800 Nikkor 28-300 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 28mm f/6.3 ISO 100 1/15 sec

#TravelTuesday NYC Skyline

As we departed New York City a few weeks ago the bright blue skies had vanished and clouds of gloom replaced them. We left the city by crossing the George Washington Bridge and headed down the New Jersey side of the river to try and get a few pictures of the New York City skyline. The dreary atmosphere that had invaded made the proud city look like a drab blue brown smear. Fortunately, that’s somewhat advantageous for black and white photography.

Nikon D800 (2 images stitched in Photoshop) Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 92mm f/5.6 ISO 400 1/1250 sec

#TravelTuesday LOVE

West 55th Street and 6th Avenue.
It’s not the original, but maybe the most well known. Robert Indiana’s LOVE image came to life in poems in 1958; Soon after it appeared in paintings as “Love is God”. In 1964 a red, blue and green version was created for the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card, and in 1973 the United States Post Office issued a stamp using the iconic image. The sculpture in New York City was completed in 1971. Crowds gathered to watch as the tilted “O” was lowered into place. It’s a nice reminder to us all.

Nikon D800 Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 28mm f/3.5 ISO 100 1/40 sec