Posts Tagged ‘New York’
I couldn’t have had a better vacation. It was an easy, low-traffic drive to New Jersey for the Christmas Eve party. That was followed by a party Christmas day in Staten Island. We left Staten Island for Manhattan and got there just in time to see the tree in Rockafeller Center before they shut it off until next year.
As if everything hadn’t already been nearly perfect, a fog dropped over NYC Christmas night, making for some of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever taken. The photos can’t compare to real life, though… NYC in the fog is breathtaking.
From NYC (America’s first capitol) we headed for Philadelphia (the second capitol) in hopes of seeing some American history, and we got to see some, but Philadelphia is a serious fucking slum and we decided to haul ass.
From one slum to another, we headed for Washington DC after a short stay overnight in Delaware. Our nation’s third capitol is certainly beautiful — that is, if you’re downtown… in the day time… and standing in the right place. Everything that’s not downtown is more slum. But all the landmarks are nice to look at. And from there, it was a relatively pleasant drive home.
The photographic value of water can not be overstated. Photography is all about light, and moisture (rain, fog, puddles, etc) affects light in endless interesting ways.
This is a wonderful example of cropping a boring photo, to find an interesting shot contained within it.
When I shot this, I knew I wanted the Broadway sign, but I couldn’t get a shot from up close without skewing the perspective. With only a 24-70mm zoom lens with me, anything far enough away to be straight would also make the sign too small for a good sized print.
Nevertheless, I took the shot. Always take the shot – you can worry about the rest later.
The scene I captured was mostly cluttered with people and cars and irrelevant elements that confused the composition. However, as I started to crop out those distractions I began to notice the beautiful color patterns in the reflections on the store window. I decided to keep them in, and make the Broadway sign a smaller focal point within this interesting image.