le 13 juillet 2005
It's another image of the Manhattan Bridge lunging across the East River. I already posted a very dramatic image of this towering bridge, but I felt this one was worth sharing as well.
My lense gave me just barely enough room at 28mm to fit both towers of the bridge into one shot. I just love the dramatic figure of this bridge - slight arc in its posture as it reaches between the two riverbanks. It's beautiful, but rigid and angular. A perspective like this makes it so easy to forget the immense size of this structure.
The way the bridge is framed by the clouds (or even vice versa) is lovely to behold. It almost seems surreal, like the other image of the bridge I posted (but in a different way). The sky and bridge are both so dramatic in this image that I have to remind myself that I did not photoshop this image together like the Edge of Forever. This is the way I found the scene and present it to you now.
le 12 juillet 2005
Sitting there like a bunch of little tomatoes, I pass these petite widgets everyday on my way to work. They're growing right across the street from my apartment in front of one of the university buildings.
Ahh, it's just now been pointed out to me by my friend Barbara that these are in fact green, not red and, in fact look more like petite limes than tomatoes.
I was on my way back from work one summer evening after the rain had just let up. The sun was out drying up all the rain, and I passed these little widgets and noticed the water was stuck to them and their leaves - refracting the sunlight very clearly. Prime photo opp, and here you have it! These little guys are a little smaller than your pinky fingernail.
le 11 juillet 2005
Like a gothic cathedral of Paris, this Manhattan structure broke through the cityscape with its ornate spires and extreme hight. It immediately caught my attention. I found it right across the street from New York's City Hall on my way to the Brooklyn Bridge. Built nearly a century ago, the Woolworth Building strongly reminds me of the Chatelets built in Paris during the renaissance.
I love skyscrapers and unique architecture like the Woolworth Building. When I return from trips to cities and foreign lands, I invariably end up with a disproportionate number of pictures of buildings. I don't realize how many pictures I take of just building and structures until it's too late. I try not to exhibit too many of them, because I have found that many people do not enjoy architectural photography like I do.
I do feel that this photo was worth submitting here. This structure is so mamouth among its surroundings that I easily isolated its silhouette strikingly against the vivid sky of wispy clouds. Definitely click here to see its ornate details.
le 10 juillet 2005
A surreal view of the Manhattan Bridge standing in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Look a little to the left from this photo, and you'd see the Brooklyn Bridge bearing down on Manhattan.
I love the juxtaposition of this formidable bridge against the untroubled park below. Make no mistake, this bridge is quite imposing in its graceful lunge into Manhattan from Brooklyn. I was instantly reminded of the Mackinac Bridge from that commercial spectacle called I, Robot.
I was excited to land in this park after traversing the imposing Brooklyn Bridge (a little over a mile long). The bridge next to it, shown in this image is the Manhattan Bridge - the last of New York's great suspension bridges. It is considered to be one of New York's most aesthetic and heavily traversed bridges. I've always wanted to experiment with photographing an impressive bridge.
le 8 juillet 2005
In between getting home from Penn State and leaving for New York City, I went out for a night on the town with my Pittsburgh friends. We took something like a quarter million photos that night, and this is one of the shots I snapped from atop Mount Washington. You're looking at the city of Pittsburgh right there, and it's kind of funny that I'm posting this right now because at the moment I'm sitting in a hotel room in New York.
All that aside, click for a more expansive view and check out the light reflections in the river and the streaks of cars along the glowing roadways. Pittsburgh packs a lot of beauty into such a small metropolitan area. Especially at night. Enjoy!
I used a pretty fast shutter speed to capture the city aglow, but used a high ISO which makes the sky appear more luminous and reveals more of the darker details in the city's structures. Definitely used a tripod to make this work.
le 7 juillet 2005
Sometimes you get so used to seeing the same things that they're no longer interesting to you anymore. You don't pay any attention to them, you just take for granted that you pass certain structures, neighborhoods, bridges, etc. I've been trying to pay more attention to things that I've known my whole life and have become immune to.
For example, for as long as I can remember I have known this garage. I've never been to it, but I've passed it in a moving car about 22 million times since I was born. It stands halfway between my family's current home and the house my family lived in until I was three. But this week, on my way to Pittsburgh from Penn State I finally decided to pull over and snap some shots of this cool, old garage. Call it a new appreciation for something that has gone unnoticed for 21 years.
If you threw a 1930 Model A Ford or an old Chevy in front of the garage, it would fit right in. I believe this looks like a garage taken right out of the 30's or 40's.
le 5 juillet 2005
So just minutes after getting back from Kentucky, the fireworks at Penn State began. I rounded up my buddies and we had a picnic under the fireworks. Of course, I brought along my camera and tripod and tried to capture the beautiful display in the sky. I discovered that to really capture some glorious fireworks it's necessary to slow down the shutter speed to anything from 1 - 5 seconds for the best results. Exposure was difficult to set because the light levels changed so dramatically so quickly. Some shots ended up incredibly overexposed, especially on exposures of 10 seconds or more.
I was especially lucky to capture this second shot here. If you look closely, you can see several starbursts from multiple fireworks going off. That's what gives it such a great combonation of colors, but I easily could have lost this shot because of the extra light introduced with each subsequent burst. Look closely at this photo and notice how the streaks in the sky are actually squiggles. The rays of light aren't just streaks, they actually undulate. It looks so pretty up close. Get even closer.
It's pretty cool to see the variation in bursts found in this shot. You can see the oldest burst, faintest of all in the bottom left which actually burst before I began this exposure; to the brightest, most recent ones in the center of the shot. They all layer over each other making for a very intricate tapestry of light.
le 3 juillet 2005
There's a lot to be said for this picture. This is my cousin Hilary (sister of Ryan the Dancing Machine). Clearly she has the biggest, prettiest, bluest eyes in the history of the world. This photo was taken at a gathering to celebrate my twenty-first birthday.
This photo is alive. You see little Hilary pulling away from my Mom who's in the corner holding her while my Nonnie is in the background enjoying herself probably talking about how cute the baby is. I love the way Hilary's craning and cooing into the image. The perspective is unusual, making her body seem pretty small compared to her face. It looks like her face is emerging from the photo, and her mouth is wide open with wonderment. What a cute little tongue. Everyone who sees this photo invaribly asks to what in the world is she reacting? This photo surely makes you wonder.
This photo is one of the first I took with my Canon Digital Rebel XT SLR, and the first from it to be posted on La Galerie. Enjoy the classic 3x2 ratio.