One of the most common sights to see in New York City are the ubiquitous yellow cabs, they can convert the streets of Manhattan into a river of yellow. On a recent visit to New York I had to opportunity to wander around. I had a 28-300mm lens on my camera and with the lens racked out to 300mm I snapped this shot of group of cabs in the Midtown area. I like the compression you get out of a telephoto lens as well as the shallow depth of field and I like the look of the cabs and the repetition of their roof top signage.

For those who don’t know, the High Line in New York City is a wonderful linear park created out of an abandoned rail line. The elevated tracks that used to service the various warehouses and industries in the Meatpacking and West Chelsea neighborhoods now offer a wonderful view of New York for pedestrians. If you ever get to New York, I highly recommend spending some time visiting this park. The shot above was taken during my visit to New York this past April.

This image is a followup to my previous blog post which showed the windshield of a 1937 Delahaye M-135 Cabriolet. A couple of people commented that they would have liked to see the whole car. I took a look through my catalog and found this shot that I took shortly after the windshield shot. I hope it gives you some idea of the interesting design of the automobile.

One of my favorite activities to do in the summer is to attend some of the wonderful classic car shows held in Michigan. The image above comes from the 2012 Concours d’Elegance of America held at St. John’s, near Northville, Michigan. This Concours is one of the best in the country and they always have a great collection of classic automobiles. It’s always nice to see cars from other countries or manufacturers that you don’t encounter every day. One of my favorite time periods are cars from the 30’s. I think car design was really taking off during this period. At this year’s Concours, there was a group of cars produced by Delahaye.

This summer I participated in the Google+ 1 year anniversary photo walk in Chicago, Illinois. I hadn’t been to Chicago in quite a while and it was a good chance to see the city and meet some talented Chicago area photographers. At the end of the day, while walking back to my car, I spotted this shot of Miller’s Pub on Wabash St. I liked the way the sun was shining on the taller buildings in the background combined with the ground level details such as the fire escapes and the supports for the ‘L’ train.

I’ve been viewing an online photography course called Photoshop for Photographers, taught by Ben Willmore and presented on creativeLIVE.com. I’ve been using Photoshop for years and have view many tutorials and read various books and articles. Still, watching this course gave me some deeper understanding of how to make the most of Photoshop along with learning some new techniques that I hadn’t tried before. One of the areas that I found interesting dealt with retouching images, especially how to best make use of the Clone Stamp, Spot Healing Brush and the Healing Brush. I decided to look for some images in my catalog that I could practice on and I came across this image of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that I had taken a few months ago.

The High Line is a linear park in New York City. It was created from an old elevated train line which was used to service the warehouse and meatpacking areas of Manhattan. A couple of years ago a major effort was undertaken to convert the blighted rail line into something nicer. The result is a long, narrow stretch of parkway which gives the visitor a great view of the lower West Side of Manhattan. More details can be found on the park’s web site: www.thehighline.org. My favorite part of the High Line was being able to walk amongst some great old buildings with great character. I also enjoyed the slightly elevated view of the city which is available from the park. If you get a chance to go to New York, I definitely recommend a visit.

The image above shows the Apple Store located on 5th Avenue in New York City. The store is somewhat iconic in that the actual store is underground and only this glass cube projects above the surface to entice shoppers to enter. I was in the area just after sunset and decided to get my own shot of this piece of architecture. When I was reviewing this shot later, it didn’t really thrill me, just sort of looked like a snapshot and so I passed it by. However, as I often do, I made another pass over some of my images and decided the image was worth experimenting with.

On a recent trip to New York City I had the opportunity to spend a little time outside the Guggenheim Museum. It was late in the day and I didn’t have the time to actually go inside so I decided to get some exterior shots. I’ve always been fond of the design of this museum and I wanted to capture some of its details. For me the two things that stand out about this museum is the unique inverted ziggurat he used as the main display area, and the typography used on the exterior lettering. The plain white concrete shapes with the simple black lettering really appeal to me. I was trying to capture something a bit more abstract than just a regular architectural shot so I played with different angles. I liked the angle on this shot, but the image was rather flat coming out of the camera. I used a few different tools in Lightroom 4 to help bring out the texture of the surface and to increase the contrast. Probably the change that had the most effect was bumping the clarity up to 100 while reducing the highlights and blacks.

I personally cannot get enough of the Chrysler Building in New York City. I’ve always loved this building and thought that it was far more attractive than the Empire State Building. I’m currently reading a book called “Height – A Race to the Sky and the Making of a City” by Neal Bascomb and it details the history of the building of the Chrysler Building along with 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building. At the time there was enormous pressure to build the tallest building in the world and its fascinating to read about what went in to making this buildings. I’ve learned several things about the Chrysler Building, one of the more interesting tidbits is that Walter Chrysler funding the building personally, it wasn’t funded by Chrysler Corporation. Clearly the man had plenty of money. I think the things that I love about the Chrysler Building are all the wonderful Art Deco details. The metal work of the Eagles and the replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps are quite unique and I really like how they architect created the metal crown on top. It’s just a fabulous building.