very simple

First, I have clearly given up the ghost on yet another 365 project. I’ve just missed too many individual days to keep up the pretense of running it out through the end of the year. Things have been a little crazy in the real world, and I just got distracted. As far as life craziness, there was the whole thing with my dad and my stepmom both ending up in the hospital at the same time (different hospitals, of course), getting a permanent job offer from my current engagement, and (as a consequence) planning a big trip to the galapagos during my transition from fancy temp to permanent employee next month. Oh, and have I mentioned that my brother lives in Afghanistan, and is NOT in the military? He’s coming home for vacation next Friday too. So…a bit crazy.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to get out there for a few weeks, ever since I read about the Fete Paradiso, a collection of (working) french carnival attractions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that they had imported and put up for the summer. So, given that today was gorgeous, and tomorrow is supposed to rain, I hopped on down there and wandered around for a few hours. Governor’s island isn’t quite the “hidden” gem it was the first time I went a few years ago, but now they have places to eat and, well, bathrooms, so I’m viewing development there as a net positive.

All photos run through various vintage-y filters for the right mood.

Haven’t posted a book review in quite some time…

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal

I’m always fascinated by true crime stories, and I remember watching some of the events of this case unfold in the news a few years ago. Perhaps something to be more fascinated by is how gullible people can be when the possibility of getting to be adjacent to fame and fortune is flashed in front of their faces. But each trusting person became another point of proof for this ultimate grifter, another brick in the wall that created the multiple fictions of his personality.

It’s also a true testament to how the wealthy (or those who appear to be wealthy) can get away with so much more than the rest of us (at least until they make a mistake so monumental and hubristic that it can’t be ignored).

View all my reviews

Picked up a new wide angle lens yesterday, to supplement my mid-range 35-70 lens and my 70-300 telephoto. today I took it out to play around a little bit. These are actually pretty cropped from the originals, meaning I get a nice amount of range in the images, something I’ve been lacking with my otherwise awesome mid-range. Did some shopping and wandering around the union square/flatiron area in what was completely ridiculous heat and humidity, and then had to trek over to 8th to catch the bus home (thanks to a street fair on 6th).

In anticipation of my trip to the Galapagos in August, I went to B&H today and picked up a new wide angle (11-16) camera lens. Anyone who knows photography knows B&H, as it’s pretty much the biggest photography supply retailer in the country. It’s always an experience to go there, with the controlled chaos, and the tourists, and the crowds, and the fact that it’s in kind of a no-man’s-land on 9th avenue in Manhattan. As a bonus, it’s owned and almost entirely operated by members of the Orthodox/Hasidic Jewish community, so they’re closed on Saturdays and all major and minor jewish holidays, making it incredibly convenient for anyone who has a Monday thru Friday job. But I totally love it and pretty much won’t shop anywhere else for photo equipment (bonus tip – if you actually need to know when some obscure jewish holiday is, the calendar on their website is very handy!).

In any event, one of the upsides of visiting a store in the somewhat dodgy neighborhood near madison square garden is the plethora of older buildings and signs. Nothing glossy to see here!

For the 4th of July, a closeup of the flag that draped my WWII-veteran grandfather’s coffin in 2002.

I missed a bunch of days in here. Had a bit of family craziness, with my dad needing an angiogram and some stenting after a bad stress test a few weeks ago. He’s recuperating at home now (and thankfully they caught it before the problem was worse), but there’s nothing like spending the day at the emergency room at one hospital with your dad, while your stepmom is recovering from back surgery in another hospital across town, to make a week really stressful.

Anyway, here’s a smattering of the pictures I remembered to take during the last few weeks. got 6/14 days.

missed a few days, but trying to catch up. a lot going on in real life.

The twin towers were never considered an aesthetic gem, and it was primarily the means of their absence that caused most people to miss the architecture of their isolating, monolithic frames that sat in a windswept (wind tunnel) plaza that cut off that section of the city from what would otherwise be actual street life. The new one world trade center is, in many ways, an architectural mess as well, a bastardization of what was, at one point, a beautiful form by Daniel Liebskind that was morphed by corporate interests into another generic facade.

Before 9/11, you could always orient yourself in the maze that was “below 34th street” Manhattan by looking up and seeing the towers and knowing they were at the end of the island. I always loved seeing them when driving back from school through New Jersey, because it meant I could know precisely where the vast wasteland of the New Jersey Turnpike ended and the island of Manhattan began. I have a visceral memory of the first trip I took through Jersey (to visit a client in PA) after 9/11, and on the way back just not being able to tell where New York, my home, began, and being so immensely sad at the thought. But I was moved today, sitting in the union square barnes & noble, when i realized that we once again had a signpost to southern manhattan. And it made me extremely grateful that they did build again.

This is a little cheat-sheet I made when I was re-taking photo classes a few years ago. It’s how the various stops work on the camera. It’s helpful for a few reasons. First, my camera has 1/3 stops, so it’s good to remember which are the “real” stops and which are the parts of a stop. Second, it’s good for comparison’s sake. if you take a photo at a particular aperture and shutter speed, and then you move one full stop “up” for the aperture and one full stop “down” on the shutter speed, you’ll actually have the exact same light exposure (but things like depth of field will change). Film speed/ISO also works the same way (and is much more adjustable on a digital camera for obvious reasons). So if you’ve got your aperture wide open at 1.4, and your shutter really slow, and you’re still not getting enough light, you can increase the ISO. Or buy a good flash.

Had to take a little work trip to Atlanta Wednesday and Thursday. No actual photos of Atlanta proper, given that I was in windowless conference rooms in a suburban office park, but this should give you a sense of the excitement of my trip.

This photo was actually taken on Tuesday night. It was me setting my alarm clock for 3:30am so that I could catch a car to the airport for my 7am flight. Yes, I hit snooze when it went off.

My hotel room at the end of the day. The hotel had clearly been recently renovated, and they did a pretty nice job. It was an all-suite Hyatt, and I had a living room and a bedroom (bigger than many NYC apartments!). Too bad I didn’t get to really enjoy it with just crashing for one night.

And finally, this was what the jetway looked like about 5 minutes before we were supposed to board the plane to head back to New York. Not promising. The plane actually showed up a few minutes later. The most fun part (meaning not fun) was that it was a completely full flight, so even though I had packed a completely compliant carry-on, by the time my group got called for boarding, it had to be gate-checked together with the bags of a bunch of other passengers. And unlike every other time I’ve ever had to gate-check a bag, they actually sent them all to baggage claim, where they were the very last bags off the plane. Annoying.