orange. blob. blog. » Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall

Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall

Tim — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:15:10 +0000

One from the archives to tide me over the vast swathes of tumbleweed that have been rolling through the blog recently… I’m sorting and indexing all the photos from my last trip to Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and Laos, and came across some of these oldies that have never seen the light of day!…

These are taken back in 2008, and the whole art project was part of Olafur Eliasson’s ‘New York City Waterfalls’ art installation. There were 4 of these waterfalls built, and immediately everyone was reminded of the orange ‘Gates’ project in Central Park. The waterfalls were all built with scaffolding and looked pretty utilitarian in the daylight – I dare say that was part of the point – but I have to admit I preferred the slower shutter speeds that blurred the water to cover most of the scaffolding.

The picture above was taken from across the river on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, just as it was beginning to get dark. A very small aperture brings out the ‘star like’ lights on the bridge. The one below was taken before the one above, from the same spot with a slightly wider angle, pointed up so that the large pink sky gets most of the attention.

Top: Canon EOS-1D Mark III
30 secs at f/22
ISO 100
38mm (using the 24-70mm lens)

Lower: Canon EOS-1D Mark III
3.2 secs at f/22
ISO 100
25mm (using the 24-70mm lens)

Wall Street

Tim — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:41:36 +0000

One from the archives – taken a couple of years ago, this one is a photo that was part of the “Manhattan – A Closer Look” series of images…

The image didn’t make it into the final cut of images for the series – all of the images were going to be black and white, and the one above didn’t really jump out as much in black and white as it does in colour. With all the talk of Wall Street… money… ratings… and the economy, I thought it was a suitable subject for a blog post!

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/800 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

Popular Photography Magazine Runner Up

Tim — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:12:54 +0000

First up – Happy New Year!

Had some good news the other day – a couple of photographs that I took were recognised as runner ups in the Popular Photography 17th Annual Readers’ Photo Contest…

You can view all of the winners and runners up over at the Popular Photography Photo Contest page. There are some great images in the gallery!

The two photographs are Park Avenue in the Rain (taken in New York City, with a tilt shift lens) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York (also taken with a tilt shift lens). Park Avenue was a runner up in the Travel/Places category, and the Guggenheim was a runner up in the Architecture category.

Both photos were originally part of a series of photographs of New York that I took, called ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘. The series looked at famous buildings and views in Manhattan, and were all taken with a tilt shift lens. You can take a look through the related blog posts to see more info about each of the photos, including the other photos in the series.

Photography Masters Cup – Nominee

Tim — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:49:45 +0000

Happy to say that two of my images were positioned as ‘Nominees’ for the 4th Annual Photography Masters Cup. Entered this collection quite a long time ago (they’ve just opened the 5th Annual entry) so it was a pleasant surprise to receive the email…

The two images chosen were both in the ‘Architecture’ nominees, found at this link on the Color Awards Site (click ‘Nominees’ to the right if it shows the Winners view). There’s quite a few nominees listed overall, so you have to scroll down to the ‘T’s… next year I’ll remember to adopt my photographic name. Anyone know any names beginning with multiple A’s?

One was the ‘Flatiron’ Building in New York City, shown above. This was taken as part of a series of photographs, called ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘. All the photos were taken with a tilt shift lens, and in this case I intentionally overexposed the background / sky, to make it pure white… almost as if the Flatiron wandered into a studio for a photo-shoot.

The other image nominated in the Masters Cup (again in the Architecture category) was the Reflection of St Paul’s Cathedral, shown above. This one is quite an old image (taken in 2008) on a walk around London in a search for a new angle!

There’s also more info about each photo (and their subjects) on the links above… Also well worth having a look through the rest of the Color Awards website – a lot of great work listed in the different categories, and congratulations to all the winners!

New York Times – A Moment in Time

Tim — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:33 +0000

The New York Times’ Lens blog built and launched the interactive gallery for all of the different pictures collected for the ‘A Moment in Time’ project…

They launched the interactive gallery over at their ‘The Moment You’ve Waited For’ blog post. Clicking on the graphic launches the gallery where you can click on piles of photos, stashed around the world. It’s an intriguing way of presenting all the photos… and hard to ‘hunt’ for something specific, but it seems like a great way to make sure that people spend time browsing all the different photos and countries that took part.

The image that I blogged about at ‘A Moment in Time – Grand Central Clock’ appears in the gallery at the link here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/blogs/a-moment-in-time.html/#/4bdf87450bca253c3600046e

Also noticed a couple of other photos of the clock – this one included. Out of curiosity, I checked through the photos that I took, and saw one from a couple of frames earlier where the person has his hands up ‘holding’ the clock. It looks like they switch places a couple of frames later, and in the picture above, the photographer is leaning up against the Information booth on the right hand side of the photo.

Moments in Time… almost collided I guess.

There are loads of great pictures in the collection from around the world (I’m not even going to pretend to have looked at even a fraction of them) but there was one from the New York region that grabbed my attention here. Something about the V shapes, and the blown out tree, with the slight blur of the NYPD car.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
3.2 seconds at f/4.5
ISO 100
45mm (tilt shift)

PopPhoto Magazine Runner Up

Tim — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:42:46 +0000

First post of the year, so Happy New Year to everyone reading this!

Discovered by mistake the other day that one of my photos had won ‘runner up’ in the Popular Photography Magazine’s 16th Annual Readers’ Contest…

I just happened to be looking through their weekly email, and noticed that they’d announced the winners and had an online gallery – I was looking through the different photos, and then had a pleasant surprise when I was faced with my Empire State Building picture, taken during Earth Hour 2009, with a tilt shift lens.

You can see the full gallery of winners and runner-ups at the Popular Photography gallery.

I was also pretty happy to start the new year with my first photo that’s made it into print in a magazine. You can see the image second down on the left, in the grid of runner-up images. They always say to start small… so I guess that image fits the bill – I actually missed it the first time I was looking through the magazine to see if they printed the runner-up images!

Anyway, it’s a good start to the new year, and the image was then also featured on their Photo of the day – Photo of the Day, Jan 8th 2009, which you can see in the screenshot below.

Statue of Liberty

Tim — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:25:54 +0000

The inside of the Statue of Liberty, showing the pure copper sheathing, which hangs on the steel framework. Back in September of 2009, I managed to get a pair of tickets to visit the Statue of Liberty with Crown access…

The tour basically allowed me to do the same as the regular tours – boat over to Liberty Island and then into the pedestal of the statue – but then to go up the more restricted staircase leading up through the body of Lady Liberty, to the Crown itself.

One thing I never realised about the Statue’s torch was that originally it was a full copper torch – then in 1916 (the Statue was dedicated in 1886) they cut away large portions of the copper in the torch flame and installed glass windows, with an internal light inside. Because the windows leaked, moisture got into the arm, and eventually sped up the corrosion of the inside of the statue. In 1986 they replaced the torch with a solid version which you see now, with gold plating covering the flame which is lit by external flood lighting. You can see the original torch with the glass windows in the museum in the pedestal.

The photo above shows the inside of part of the ‘body’ of the statue, with what used to be Iron skeletal supports (they’re now steel) holding up the outside covering of copper panels. The copper panelling is just less than the thickness of two pennies. Built into the pedestal’s massive masonry are two sets of four girders, which connect up to part of Eiffel’s framework for the statue itself.

The picture above was taken from one of the stairways on the way up to the crown, looking directly at one of the sides of the statue from the inside of the Statue of Liberty. The whole area inside was a mixture of shadows and highlights due to the lighting – the lack of light also forced me to use a high ISO / very low aperture to get the picture – the light highlight you see is actually from one of the internal lights in the statue.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II
1/40 sec at f/1.2
ISO 1250
85mm

Guggenheim Museum

Tim — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:03:32 +0000

Opening its doors in October 1959, it’s full name is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright – the museum is instantly recognisable on the Upper East Side in New York City…

Wright made sure that every little detail was taken care of, from the location of the building (opposite Central Park), to the spiral design which imitates a nautilus shell. Another detail sometimes overlooked is the idea that you don’t have to retrace your steps when viewing the art – you take the elevator to the top of the museum, then wind your way gradually down the 1/4 mile long ramp, viewing art on the way.

Queues to rival the Apple Store’s new-product-day lines occurred at the opening in 1959, with 3,000 people queuing on the first Wednesday for the 2pm opening, and over 10,000 queuing the following Sunday in order to see the museum.

The picture above focuses on the South side of the museum, and using a Canon tilt-shift 45mm lens, narrows the area of focus to a specific area on the spiral.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/800 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

* Information about the museum taken from the museum visitor guide

PDN Photo of the Day – Nov 16th

Tim — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:30:19 +0000

A great way to start the week! PDN’s blog ‘PDN Photo of the Day‘, featured some of the photos from my recent ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘ series…

A big Thank-you to Daryl Lang for featuring them!

All the pictures in the full series were taken with a tilt-shift lens (mostly the 45mm version) and converted to black and white. Mostly. There is one which has some colour left in it. There are a number of blog posts throughout my blog describing the different photos, where they were taken, and how.

The series took about a year from start to finish.

Please feel free to take a look at the full series here!

New York Times Building

Tim — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:25:13 +0000

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)