Tag: New York

Guggenheim Museum – Fisheye

Posted under New York

One of my favorite places to visit and subjects to shoot in New York City is the Guggenheim Museum. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and opened in 1959, it is a unique structure and makes for some interesting photography. This shot was taken across the street using the Sigma 15mm fisheye lens. What I find interesting about shooting with a fisheye in a ‘street’ situation is the way it can incorporate elements that you weren’t expecting. I composed the shot for the museum. I thought the cars moving through the shot added another level of interest. I didn’t expect the cyclist, but I’m glad he popped into the frame as I took the shot.


Helmsley Building Clock

Posted under New York

This is a shot of the clock which sits above the Park Avenue entrance to the Grand Central Terminal area. The clock belongs to the old New York Central Building, now called the Helmsley Building. The final image was created by blending a sepia toned layer with a color layer in Photoshop, using about 75% of the sepia layer. I wanted to have just a hint of color, especially in the hands of the clock.


Cabs in Midtown Manhattan

Posted under New York

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.

Guggenheim Museum – New York City

Posted under New York

Guggenheim Museum

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 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.


Atlas – Rockefeller Center

Posted under New York

Atlas - Rockefeller Center

Whenever I visit New York City I like to spend some time around Rockefeller Center. I love the Art Deco styling of the buildings and the sculptures. An impressive example of this is the statue of Atlas, which stands directly across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The statue shows Atlas holding up the world and was created by sculptor Lee Lawrie with help from Rene Paul Chambellan. The statue was installed in 1937. I’ve always admired this statue for it’s strong Art Deco style. When I was in New York this time, I wanted to make sure I got a close up of the statue. In close you can really appreciate the detail work that makes the statue so stunning.


Maserati in Grand Central

Posted under Automobiles

Maserati in Grand Central

This shot was taken a couple of years ago when my wife and I were in New York City celebrating our anniversary. My wife had never been to Grand Central so we decided to check it out. On display in the main concourse was this Maserati Quattroporte automobile. I like shooting cars and architecture, so this seemed like a perfect find! It was cloudy outside and there wasn’t a lot of bright light flooding Grand Central so the lighting wasn’t the greatest. I was using my Olympus E-3 which tends to be grainy at higher ISO’s so I stuck with ISO 100. The car was isolated from the unwashed masses with heavy velvet rope held up by a series of metal poles. I was able to set my camera on top of one of the poles to get this shot. The image is rather sharp even though the exposure was just 1/6th of a second.


Rainbow Room – Rockefeller Center

Posted under New York

Rainbow Room - Rockefeller Center

I’ve been rummaging though my archives looking for interesting images to post to Google+ and I came across this shot that I took in 2008. I was in New York on business and I was staying in Midtown. I had some free time so I took the opportunity to walk over to Rockefeller Center and take some pictures in that part of town. The GE Building, also known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza or just 30 Rock has a restaurant and club on the 65th floor called the ‘Rainbow Room’. On either side of the building there are entrances which are marked by these neon signs. I was feeling experimental so I took a few shots of the sign using a slower shutter speed and zooming my lens while the shutter was open. Of the ones that I took, this was my favorite.


On my last trip to New York (too long ago), my wife and I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a rainy Sunday and the museum was quite crowded. This was my first time visiting the museum and I really enjoyed shooting some interior shots. Unfortunately the camera I had at the time wasn’t great at higher ISO values. I took several shots of the main entry area, but many of them ended up being blurry because the exposures were too long. My camera had image stabilization which did help me hand hold some shots at slower speeds, but too many shots still ended up being useless. The one you see below was a borderline image. I liked the composition with the arches and the skylights and for the most part the image was fairly sharp. I finally spent a little time with it to see what I might be able to come up with.


Most people viewing this blog probably recognize this building as the Flatiron Building in New York City. In fact, the real name of the building is the Fuller Building. The building was constructed in 1902 as the headquarters for the Fuller Company, a prominent construction company. The building has a fascinating history as detailed in the book The Flatiron by Alice Sparberg Alexiou. The book describes the interesting backstory to the construction of the building and of the development of New York City in general.