Start Spreading the News: Pictures from Fall Break - New York City

Thought that I would get the blog off to a good start with some of my favorite black and white images from New York City. I edited them to give them a diffused feeling to them, reminiscent of my old Holga camera, a 120 medium format camera with a plastic lens, which gives distortions that are unique to each camera. It's an acquired taste, but one that when done right really gives a great effect to photos. It can turn ordinary photos into extraordinary ones, as I hope you'll agree too.
These fountains at Rockefeller Plaza really caught my eye. With them lined up one after another, they really made for an interesting depth-of-field shot.

Watching the couples skating at the ice rink there really gave this photograph a romantic feel with the diffuse technique.

I really love this photo of the statue at the ice rink, one which you can only get while skating. Try balancing on ice skates and framing a shot!

Visiting Ground Zero and the church across the street was perhaps the most memorable portion of the trip. The debris was mostly cleaned up, with damaged facades of a few buildings left as a reminder of that fateful day. The missing person bulletins were moved into the church to serve as a makeshift memorial to all those lost in the 9/11 attacks.

A card of encouragement written by a child for firefighters and police on the scene rests on the pew at the church, and is an image that has stuck vividly in my memory.

"The Globe," a statue that once rested at the World Trade Center now sits, battered, as a memorial in Battery Park, along with a newly installed eternal flame. I photoshopped an image of the Twin Towers, in a ghostly outline, in the location they would be standing, with the battered globe in the foreground.

A quick visit to Central Park provided a peaceful escape from the hustle and bustle of the city just beyond the park's edges.

I really liked this photo from Central Park for some reason. I think it's the reflection in the water that is so reminiscent of the water scenes that Bob Ross used to paint on Saturday mornings on PBS.

No trip to New York City would be complete without visiting Broadway, pictured here. Later in the day I went and saw Wicked in the Gershwin Theater - I highly recommend it if you haven't already seen it.

Since we're on the topic of Broadway and entertainment, here's the famed "30 Rock," the NBC Studios, along with the Rainbow Room and Observation Deck.

Here's the view from that Observation Deck - not too shabby. The large grassy area is of course Central Park. You can walk for hours and never reach the other side, lengthwise.

With this being my first time visiting the Big Apple, I had to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and even found relatives that immigrated through the island, nearly 100 years ago.

I loved photographing Times Square. There is so much going on that catches the eye. You could spend hours photographing details, people going to work, seeing the sights, and just taking it all in. Despite the large advertisement, I don't believe that Legally Blonde ran for more than a few months.I'm going to end this post with two of my favorite photos from the trip, both of which were diffused like the rest of the photos in this post, but diffusing a night photo yields incredibly striking photographs, as the light cast from a single spotlight becomes a soft diffuse pool of light. The headlights from the taxis really draw into the image well.

With a little editing, a photo of an ordinary Target advertisement becomes frame worthy.

I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them and touching them up back in my studio. I'll close this post with a few lines from a fitting song, and one of my favorites, sung by the "Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra:
If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.
It's up to you, New York, New York.