very simple

mini macro moma

(say that three times fast).

I did go out today, but the gross weather prevented me from taking out my camera, so it’s another for the “random crap on my desk” file.

fall…out of this basket

somehow, the juxtaposition of this balloon-less, less than sturdy basket sitting in front of the word “fall” didn’t inspire me to go to New Jersey.

For those who don’t know what the high line is, it is an elevated rail track that runs along the west side of manhattan in the meatpacking district. Back in the days when they used to actually bring in cattle to the meatpacking plants instead of celebrities to nightclubs, it was an essential part of the industry. But over the years it fell into disrepair and disuse. So in the past few years, it was turned into a park, which opened earlier this year. The best part about the high line is, of course, the view. In addition to yesterday’s 365 pic, here are some other shots that I took while wandering around (click to enlarge)…

a train of recliners

for the 365 project for the day, “a fedora of douchebags”. Taken on the high line.

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)