Completed in 2007, the New York Times building in the Times Square area of New York is 52 floors tall and 1,142 feet tall including the antenna…

The building is shrouded in distinctive horizontal ceramic rods on all sides except for the North side, which help to keep the building cool during the summer months but also let as much natural light in as possible.

It was also these rods that made it easier for Alain Robert to climb up to the roof of the building on the outside, during the summer of 2008 (June 5th).

For this photo (also included in the ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘ series), I started out at street level, looking for a decent angle. After a while I realised that I’d prefer to be more level with the wording on the building. Handily, there’s the gigantic Port Authority bus station opposite, with some handy outdoor car parks to shoot from (via some trial-and-error elevators). With the elevated position across the road, I snagged the shot above, again using the tilt function on the tilt-shift lens to narrow down the area of focus – this time it had the added effect of making the rods look further apart in this particular part of focus – sharper rods meant more ‘gap’ between them, while the others blurred into almost solid white.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/640 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

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And back to the regular programming…

The Puck Building in the NoLIta neighbourhood in New York City. The building housed the printing for Puck Magazine – named after Shakespeare’s ‘The Midsummer Night’s Dream’ character and which gave the building its now famous moniker…

The shutters were originally for fire protection – to stop fire jumping from building to building. However everyone seems to agree that they would have been useless at the task – they buckled and warped at relatively low temperatures.

The building in question for the fire-jumping is now a library just across a tiny street (more like an alleyway). There was also scaffolding all over the place, making it hard to get a decent angle on the wall of shutters on the Puck Building.

I spent a good chunk of an hour looking at different angles and the different combinations of open/shut/partially-open shutters, before settling on the image above. As part of the ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘ series, this image was taken with a tilt shift lens (the ts-e 45mm Canon lens) and the shallow band of focus was centred on the middle row of shutters.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/320 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

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Another one of these off-topic posts… Again if you’re here for the travel photography stuff, then please pick a category from the right hand side!

For this year’s Halloween Parade in New York City, we decided to do a few of the characters from ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. I was Alexander (the Goat), and my better half was KW…

There’s a load of in-the-making photos that I posted up on flickr, which show the making of the ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ Costumes. They took us about 2 weeks of evenings to complete, but we’re pretty happy with the result!

To the left is a picture of the ‘dress rehearsal’ test for KW. We made the mistake a couple of years ago with the Lego Costumes, of not trying everything on together (just testing the head, then the bodies etc). So we were in for a huge shock when we finally put everything on down at the start of the parade route.

This time we were better prepared. And a little bit more confident.

I’ll leave the detailed description of how the costumes were made, as there’s a running commentary over on the flickr photos step-by-step as we were making them.

One thing that I was kinda shocked about was that one group came with a live Llama. Yep, a live llama. So here I am, standing around dressed as a giant white goat, and this Llama has to be in the group immediately in front of us. Apparently it was eying me suspiciously the whole time, and even came over to sniff me and check me out at one point – hopefully someone got a photo of that. Goodness knows what the llama made of it.

Everything went well with the parade – apart from the rain making the costumes (basically 90% fur and foam) soak up gallons of water. Landed up making them massively heavy compared to the dry version, but we made it through to the end.

I also massively underestimated the ability to see out of the head – my vision point was through the gap under the top lip , through the teeth of the goat. However, with a mixture of having to look down to see through the gap, and also having to keep my head level to keep the head on, things got uncomfortable pretty quickly. I also didn’t have time to put fans in the heads this year (like I did with the Legos) so it was like a sauna in there!

Luckily we had a fantastic group of minders, who guided us through the whole parade, generally taking care of when we should go/stop, which direction we should walk in, and other fundamental parade-necessities. You guys are awesome, and thanks for helping us out!

It was also pretty encouraging to be passing people as we were on the way back from the parade, saying that they’d seen us on TV, and that they loved the costumes! Makes it all worth it. We were all interviewed at one point by NY1 with the whole group – there were also 3 other friends who went as the dragon (from the book), Carol and their little ‘un who played a perfect Max!

Here’s a few images from the in-the-making series over at flickr:

Update: There are a few links on the internet turning up, including a Gallery from the Examiner, with pictures of Carol, KW and Alexander in the featured gallery. Also a really (really) short snippet of the longer interview that the TV station ‘NY1′ did with us. You can see a short clip over at the NY1 Village Halloween Parade Clip:

And also spotted in the ‘Village Voice’ Halloween slide show 2009…

Al has also put up a detailed description of the making of his ‘Carol’ costume, over at the instructables site.

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Around this time of year, I still get a load of questions from various sources about the costumes we made for the NYC Halloween Parade in 2007. The costumes were two ‘minifigs’ – bride and groom…

So here we are two years later, and I thought I’d do a post about the making of the Lego costumes – to tie together some of the photos, videos and a few more details about how we made them.

If you’re here for the travel photography related stuff… then skip to a different category on the right hand side – this is a random off-topic post about oversize Lego Halloween Costumes!

First off, credit where credit’s due – we checked out different sites thoroughly before starting, and as such we came across this site, where the person did exactly what we were trying to do… but back in 2003. This gives a lot more detail about how to make the heads.

Naturally we picked the windiest day of the year to start the project, which started with hauling a LOT of Styrofoam sheets from the hardware store back home. 8 foot by 2 foot and they act like sails on the 20-block walk home!

Once we got them home, it was a matter of selecting the right size of circles, and then cutting out about 28 circles (14 per head), excluding the ones that we needed for the gigantic top hat. Once the pieces were cut, I then stacked up the circles, and cut out head-shaped holes in the middle so that they sat on our heads snugly.

Lots of in-place testing to ensure a snug fit and then it’s a case of gluing them all together, (there was a layer of plastic on the outside of the Styrofoam which seemed to successfully stop the foam melting when I applied the glue). Next is sanding them and cutting them with the correct ‘curves’ in the top and bottom layers:

Cutting the holes for the eyes and the mouth were a tad scary – this after all was the crucial bit which gives the minifigs their characteristic ‘look’.

Another thing I discovered when testing out the heads for so long was that this thick insulating polar styrofoam really does insulate. Well. Hotly. So well that it was like being in a claustrophobic muffled cave next to the sun. Luckily it was at this point that I was able to make a small vent hole through the rest of the top of the head to the top.

I made the vent hole appear in the ‘bit’ / ‘pip’ / ‘plug’… whatever you call that thing that is on the top of lego heads that allows you to clip on hats etc. To keep it covered up I used a mesh in the top. A trip to radio shack then provided the fan (actually a low power computer fan), a switch, a block battery and some wiring. A bit of soldering-time later, and the fan ensemble was embedded in the top layer of foam in the head, and installed so that air blew ‘up’ out of the head. The ‘bit’ with the mesh covering was then installed on top of that level.

So when painted, it looked like:

One slight downside was that the vibration from the fan in this hollow-echo-chamber was a little annoying. The upside was we didn’t pass out from the heat. The battery was slipped into a little chamber carved out of the head further down, on the inside of the head between the human head and the outer layer of the lego head. There was also a switch embedded on the inside of the neck, so that we could switch the fan on and off easily when wearing it. Repeat for head number 2.

The bodies were then made from vinyl (black for the groom, white for the bride). This was then strengthened on the inside with a layer of poster-board glued to it. My better half took care of all the body-making with me standing around awkwardly to model them when needed. To make the bodies / trousers / dress more ‘square’ looking, we also glued in Styrofoam triangles into the 4 corners of them, to make sure that they kept their corner look and to give it strength.

To make the patterns on the outside of the groom, we then used the remaining white poster-board to create the shirt and bow-tie. The whole front was a single cut, apart from the two white buttons. It basically looked like a wierd white wine-glass shape of poster-board, with the bow-tie and two black buttons cut out, showing the black vinyl underneath.

My better half then also made the hands and flowers, which loads of people commented on because it was one of those ‘finishing touches’ that make all the difference, and were exact replicas of the 3-pronged Lego flowers that you get. Again these were foam for the base, rolled up paper for the stalks and foam for the flowers… painted suitably! Though the chewing-gum glue halfway through the parade to stop the flowers from slipping down the stalks is optional! The hands were made from the curved sides of Quaker Oats tins… I think we still have the contents of all 4 tins in our cupboard somewhere, in zip-lock bags.

Oh and last but not least, the top hat and ‘veil’ was again made from Styrofoam. And also fitted with vents for the air being pushed out of the head, to allow it to escape out of the top of the hat / veil.

I should also probably mention here that our biggest mistake (or our best decision, depending on how you look at it) was that for one reason or another, we didn’t try on the whole costume until we actually got down to the parade. We tried the heads. OK. We tried the heads with veil / hat. OK. We tried the feet and the trousers. OK. We tried the trousers and the bodies. OK. It was a totally different situation when we put on the entire outfit. Imagine looking out of two toilet roll tubes, which are both about 2-3 inches away from your eyes. That’s all you can see. Luckily we had a bunch of people who were able to help negotiate us around sidewalk ups and downs / scaffolding / other people / cars / bits of other people’s costumes etc. And to those people… thank you! (You know who you are!).

The reason I mentioned that it might have been the best decision was that because it was so claustrophobic and impossible to move in them, we might have chickened out if we knew about the issues beforehand! I’m glad we didn’t…

Anyway, if you’ve come across this post because you’re doing something similar, then good luck and have fun! If you’re just browsing then thanks for reading!

Also a couple of videos – Me walking on the way to the parade:

And my other half and me, dancing!

And… more videos of the New York Halloween Parade Lego Couple over on youtube!

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Photography Portfolios – Travel Photography

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The Port Hole styled windows in the Maritime Hotel in New York City. Located in Chelsea, this was once the headquarters for the National Maritime union. Each window is 5 ft, and there is one per room…

… the building was designed by Albert C. Ledner, a New Orleans architect. Each room’s large circular window instills the feeling of a ship’s state rooms.

This picture was taken from the pavement on the other side of the road to the hotel. Gave the lens ‘shift’ a go – trying to get the holes in exact formation and getting rid of the perspective which results from looking up at a tall structure. In the end though, I went with the tilted (picture wise, not lens wise) look of the picture above. The edges of the building at the top right and bottom left corners break up the pattern, and the tilt-shift lens narrow band of focus is focused on one of the few open windows in the hotel.

Looking at it from a distance, it’s kinda hard to tell what it is at all.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/8000 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

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I realised the other day that I’d missed my blog’s birthday. It probably wasn’t upset or anything, but made me think that it might be time for a fresh coat of paint…

And so it began. I didn’t think it would take this long, but it’s finally finished, and I’m happy with the result. Here’s a list of things that I did, which broadly cover:

a. Setting up a test blog
b. Customizing the blog
c. Creating the ‘other pages’, like the home page etc.
d. Integrating the website and WordPress with PhotoShelter*

I’ll run through the full process that I followed below. Feel free to tune out if this puts you to sleep! Hopefully it will be useful for someone out there…

a. Setting up the test blog…

I thought this customization thing would probably take a decent chunk of time. I’m not a programmer by heart, so taking a theme which includes php, css and js, and knowing that I was wanting to customize it reasonably heavily made me slightly nervous.

Enter the test blog. By setting up a brand new WordPress test database, a new WordPress installation on my web server, and an entirely separate directory structure, I was able to create a safe ‘sandpit’ where I could work on the design without any time-pressure. I followed the detailed instructions on the WordPress Codex (Famous 5 minute install) to get things working.

I also then used the WP Admin section to export all the posts from the ‘live’ blog, and import them into the ‘test’ blog, so that I had lots of posts / pages / comments etc to test with.

b. Customizing the blog…

Customizing the blog took the largest chunk of time. Stripping out everything that I didn’t need, and hard coding as much as possible into the php files so that it meant less database calls and (hopefully) better performance. Also stripping as much as possible out of the style-sheets without unintentionally killing anything, as well as combining multiple style-sheets into as few as possible.

My main aim with the new design was complete integration between all areas of the site, and simplicity. So I had some ideas in mind when I started the process. I completed things like swapping out image files, creating fresh title images etc, re-coding headers and general page layout, and generally getting things to a point where I like the look of them.

SEO was also taken care of at this point, using a number of resources from my last post on SEO for WordPress. Things like making sure <h1> tags had page titles in them, and making sure there weren’t duplicate <h1> tags etc.

Structuring the single navigation bar was important to me, as this was going to span the entire site. It landed up becoming a balance between creating WordPress pages that the theme navigation could use, and also adding in navigation menu items manually to ensure the order and placing that I wanted, especially for non-WordPress page links, as these needed to show up on every page’s navigation, regardless of whether they were housed in WordPress or not.

I then brought a few items over from the old blog, things like the RSS subscribe links, the PhotoBlog Awards ‘VOTE!’ link, and the search boxes. Also created the ‘Contact’ group of pages, where people can email me directly, or use an online contact form, or join the mailing list.

Another thing I brought across from the old blog was the social site sharing links – basically adding a filter into the functions of WordPress to make sure that the links for sharing on facebook, digg, stumbleupon and twitter are visible on the bottom of each post, complete with the specific url for the post.

Once I had reached this point, I was happy with the design, and made the blog section of the main site ‘live’ by copying over the modified theme directory from the test blog, to the live blog. I then made sure all the hard-coded items** were pointing to the correct blog.

There’s also a load of design information on the Photo Buyer Website Survey 2009, from PhotoShelter, which has a load of survey results showing things like ‘yes, you need a search section’, and ‘yes you need to put an email address on every page, in an obvious place’… and other useful information!

c. Creating the ‘other’ pages…

I wanted the home page to be completely different to a ‘blog’ look and feel, but to keep the same navigation and key elements to keep the uniformity. I also made the decision to keep the homepage outside of the WordPress installation, so that if anything happened to the database or the WordPress install at least some parts of the site would still work.

I used the exact same headers and footers, and then stripped out all the blog related content from the main content area, to be replaced with a single (no slideshow) picture. This is easy to rotate whenever I have the urge, and I kinda like the simplicity of the single stark image that I have up there currently. It’s also linked straight to the blog post about that particular image.

The other pages which needed some manual intervention were the portfolio pages. These individual galleries are the only pages on the site where the usual navigation gets dropped, in favour of 2 simple grey links in the top left corner – one leading back to the portfolios page, and one leading to the ‘contact’ page. Leaving the rest of the page simple enough so that people can enjoy the photos without navigation distractions, but also giving people the important options if they land on the page from a search engine or other external source.

At this point, I copied all the ‘other’ pages, from test file names, to the real file names so that they became live all at once. Now everything has the same look and feel throughout the site – apart from the PhotoShelter Archive.

d. Integrating the website and WordPress with PhotoShelter…

This is where the css and js got slightly intimate. I had a few choices here, and decided to go with probably the hardest one. Personally I think it’s the most resilient, and should hopefully hold up well!

Option 1. Use an <iframe> to embed the PhotoShelter archive into the ‘Image Archive’ tab on my website. This seemed pretty straightforward, and I actually built it and tested it like that initially. The thing that held me back was that if someone arrives at the PhotoShelter site directly, then it would look pretty bare, because it would be missing all the navigation that is housed on my website (which would be outside of the <iframe>. So the user would probably get totally confused. Well ok, not totally confused, but it would really bug me.

Option 2. Throw in the headers and footers from my website / the WordPress installation, to the manual customization section of the PhotoShelter admin pages.

So I went with option 2. This is where I found that a lot of the PhotoShelter styles overlapped with the WordPress theme styles. Styles like ‘nav’ and ‘header’ and a number of others were giving me overlap-grief.

The way forward was to copy a set of the style-sheets and the necessary java-script files over from the WordPress install, to a separate directory on my web-server. I could then edit those to change all the calls to the shared styles, to something different. e.g. from nav to differentnav. Or header to differentheader.

Luckily PhotoShelter makes this process pretty easy to test things, with a handy preview feature so that you can quickly take a note of where you’re at, without leaving the editing section. Headers and Footers were soon copied over to PhotoShelter and were no longer clashing with the WordPress / website install.

Next up, was to check through the different pages within the PhotoShelter site. Luckily all the PhotoShelter pages use the same headers and footers, so once I’d resolved all the css and js issues, the entire site worked almost right away with the new branding. Best of all, if someone went to archive.orangeblob.com directly, they see an exact match of all the navigation and branding from the main site. The ‘Image Archive’ tab is even highlighted, so you would only realise you’re not in the main site by looking at the url.

That’s it!! At that point, all the different components were up and running. I took a backup of the WordPress database, the installation directories and the entire home directory off-site, just for good measure. I also took the opportunity to further secure my WordPress installation as per the Smashing Magazine ‘securing WordPress’ link below.

Tools or resources that really helped:

1. Firebug – ‘helped’ isn’t the right word here. It would be like Bond with no Q. Or Holmes without a Watson. Totally essential for anyone wanting to hack html and css to pieces.

2. Smashing Magazine – for providing awesome design related articles. And they always send out some WordPress love from time to time, like this useful article on Securing your wordpress install / protecting the wordpress admin area.

3. VMWare – meant that I could test out the website (nothing too hairy, just checking the navigation works, and that the different pages and components display properly with the different style-sheets. I normally test with Mac OS-X (Firefox and Safari) and Windows (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, IE8, IE7, and the dreaded IE6).
Browsershots is an alternate method. It lets you supply a url, and then it shows you lots (and lots) of screen-shots of what that site looks like using a whole host of different browsers. You can’t really test the actual use of things like navigation menu drop downs though.

4. Website Grader or a similar tool. Once you’re done with everything, run this and let it check out your site… it’ll give you some useful pointers if you forget alt tags, 301 redirects, etc. A similar custom-grader for PhotoShelter is the SEO Grader which specifically looks through and checks your PhotoShelter archive setup, and gives you tips on where you need more attention.

thanks for reading!

tim

Edit: With exquisite timing, (the day after I completed my own WordPress and PhotoShelter integration) I got an email saying that PhotoShelter have actually developed a partnership with Graph Paper Press. Head over to the PhotoShelter info page to see more on integrating your PhotoShelter archive with Graph Paper Press WordPress themes.

Definitely worth taking a look through the link and the videos they provide if you’re looking for an easier way to do the integration (the PS page links to two videos, but if you click through to the Graph Paper Press vimeo site, they have a few more related to WordPress/PhotoShelter). They also have some sample sites which you can look at, as well as some funky looking customizations for the WordPress side of things, like embedding galleries and images on the blog without leaving the WordPress admin area. Looks really slick and probably simple to implement ‘off-the-shelf’.

However, with that said, I think even with this knowledge I would follow the same path that I did above, as I selected a very specific starting-point theme with the type of navigation and look and feel that I required, then customized it relatively heavily before applying it to the rest of my website, and integrating with the PhotoShelter archive. There’s also a number of steps above which can be applied to both methods, such as hard-coding php files for performance, streamlining css files, using a test blog setup, customizing headers and footers in the PhotoShelter admin pages etc.

Let me know about your experiences in the comments!

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Peak, plow or bow of an ocean liner. All words which have been used to describe the Flatiron building in New York City…

The picture above was taken as part of a series of photos that I was making for a project called ‘Manhattan, A Closer Look‘. The series is taken with a tilt shift lens (mostly the ts-e 45mm Canon lens). This means that the area of focus can be narrowed down to a particular part of the photo. The series features some of the famous icons and landmarks in New York City.

I also tried to time the photo so that the sky was bright enough to blow it out (make it white). I purposefully over-exposed the photo to produce the stark background, but while also trying to keep the blue colour in the window reflections.

The tilt shift lens was tilted vertically, so that the front of the building was in focus, but the rest of the building was thrown out of focus.

The picture also kinda reminds me of a book: How to Avoid Huge Ships. Clearly a well thought-of book, as evidenced by someone in the comments. ‘To this day, I have never been run over by a single huge ship’.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/1000 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

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The above image was taken one evening in New York when the evening closed in. The sun was setting, clouds were gathering, and the whole sky was a fascinating light-show…

The subject is the Time Warner Center Towers at the lower end of Central Park. Taken with a tilt-shift lens (ts-e 45mm) which I used to bring the top of the first tower into focus, and throw the rest of the image into  a blur.

Opened in 2004, the towers of the Time Warner Center in New York City were described as a ‘vertical experience’. The towers are 750 ft tall and contain offices, a Mandarin Oriental hotel, a Jazz theater and even CNN studios.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/50 sec at f/3.5
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

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A blimp passes overhead, reflected in the Hearst Tower in New York City. The tower was designed by Norman Foster and is nearly 600 ft tall…

The framing pattern (similar to the Swiss Re Tower / The Gherkin in London) saves about 20% less steel compared to a building with a conventional steel frame design.

I was watching the progress of the blimp around the skies of Manhattan as I was trekking up to the Hearst Corporation Building in New York, thinking that there was no way it would still be there when I got there. Surprisingly though, the blimp dutifully did a full circle around the lower end of the island, and came back around. I stood there for a few rounds before I got the shot that I liked. It’s amazing how slowly blimps move…

In this case, the bullet shape of the blimp / airship, whatever you want to call it, disappearing off the edge of the frame, with the reflection visible in the windows of the Hearst tower.

Again taken with my 45mm ts-e Tilt Shift lens…

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/8000 sec at f/3.5
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

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I was happy (and honored!) to find that one of my photographs had been chosen as an honorable mention in the International Photography Awards (IPA) 2009…

The list of winners is pretty comprehensive (maybe next year?…) and can be found at the Winners Gallery Page. You can also see the full list of the Honorable Mentions (non-professional). There are many many different categories, but luckily the folks at IPA have opted for a clean simple gallery design with a list of icons, so you don’t have to stumble through any kind of awkward gallery system here.

They even posted up an official looking certificate showing my entry in the ‘Architecture’ – ‘Buildings’ subcategory…

I did an original post on the County Hall in London shot back in January, after taking the shot over a couple of days in December. I had originally gone on the London Eye to get an aerial view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, but in the spirit of keeping snapping up to the very last minute, as we were descending in the pod, I saw the colours of the County Hall changing constantly below.

The picture was taken with a Canon Tilt-Shift (45mm) lens, through the glass of the pod. Luckily what turned out to be a not-too-scratched area.

The ‘County Hall, London’ photo is also available in the archive.

… and thanks to the judges for picking the image for an honorable mention!

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/40 sec at f/2.8
ISO 1000
45mm (Tilt shift)

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