very simple

hudson river sunset

As part of both the 365 project and the photo classes I’ve been taking, I’m pretty much obligated to go out and take pictures every day. I also have a decent amount of free time at the moment, so I’ve challenged myself to go outside of my neighborhood/comfort zone of the upper west side. I realized that this would be made easier by the fact that, sitting on my shelf gathering dust, was City Walks: New York, which I bought ages ago and then promptly put on a shelf. I’m not promising to do all 50 or anything (in large part because at least some of them are part of my “regular” route, so they don’t interest me as “new” places to go), but I am going to try to use the box as a resource when I’m at a loss on a beautiful day like today.

So this afternoon, I picked two walks that backed onto each other, the “wall street” and “city hall” walks. Aside from the sad panda below, here are the rest of the pics that turned out OK (click to enlarge).

(not so) sad panda

some of the blogs around nyc are a bit obsessed with sad panda. But when I put some change in his bucket, he got up and did a little dance for me, making him appear to be a lot less sad.

invasion

I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but for some reason this is when my street gets simply overrun by tourists, or as I like to call them, “John Lennon Death Junkies”, since I live down the street from the Dakota and Strawberry Fields. There were at least 15 tour buses parked along 72nd street this morning.

and yep, I just looked it up, and yesterday was Lennon’s birthday. that explains soooo much.

architecture

It’s kind of amazing how many different architectural styles you can have on one block in NYC

Yesterday, I went to see the Robert Frank exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I highly recommend. Of course, no photos were allowed in that exhibit, but on the way over, I took some pics in Central Park, and I took a few in other parts of the museum, like the Temple of Dendur. I’ve started playing around in Photoshop as well, since I’m now taking a class for that, so the color on all of these has been boosted a bit, in line with the stuff I learned in the first class on Tuesday about Hue/Saturation and Levels. (click to enlarge)

empire state building

I always love it best when the ESB is dressed in white.

bike ms ride

left my camera at home, and didn’t feel like stopping, so this ended up being the only pic I took today on the ride. Although it is pretty cool to stand in the middle of the FDR drive.

finally…hopefully:

At a lengthy meeting Wednesday night, the transportation committee of Community Board 7 passed a resolution in support of the “concept” of protected bike lanes on Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues from 59th to 110th Streets. The 6-2 committee vote came after testimony from area residents, business people, and community board members from Hell’s Kitchen and midtown, who noted the safety benefits and other improvements separated lanes have brought to their districts.

tempting fate

stopped to take pictures of the storm clouds gathering, thereby increasing my chances of getting caught in the inevitable downpour, with my camera.