very simple

This week’s homework involved learning more about depth of field, and how the aperture works to create different depths of field, which can have a certain artistic value. The assignments were:

1. recreate an in-class exercise (the “marker” exercise, whereby objects of a similar size were lined up behind each other) where (a) all of the objects are in focus and (b) only one object is in focus

2. creative assignment with depth of field – pick a scene and shoot it with shallow depth of field and deep depth of field.

Moving out. 10 years of my professional life, reduced to 5 boxes and some art.

I was originally going to use this time and temperature photo as my 365 shot, but I liked the marrochino a bit more. Today was absolutely gorgeous. perfect temperature, low humidity, bright blue sky. It’s the kind of day we only get a few times a year in New York, but it’s days like this that make me love walking around the city.

My morning marocchino.

Today I joined the brooklyn by bike crew again and we rode from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to the Velodrome in Kissena Park, Queens, where they were holding the New York State track cycling championships. We were originally supposed to go yesterday, but the rain pushed us back a day, and it was definitely the right decision, as today was absolutely gorgeous out. Some photos below. Video to follow at a later date, after I’ve gotten some sleep and edited the video of the races in a way that makes them not nonsensical.

On the way back to brooklyn, we took a little detour off of our path to also visit Flushing Meadow, running into lots of police for the US Open (all of whom were very friendly and helpful in directing us out of their traffic “calming” maze), and the Unisphere. Which I realized I had never seen up close before, despite the fact that I grew up near new york and have lived here for over ten years. It’s stuff like this that makes me love these rides.

I just realized that I forgot to post my homework due for yesterday’s photo class. It might have something to do with the fact that I had such trouble printing my photos that, after a day and a half of e-mailing canon, I had to resort to going to a local photo lab to get prints and I just got distracted. Or maybe it was because I saw Inglorious Basterds on Wednesday night and just plum forgot.

Anyway, here they are in all of their lateness:

1. Create a picture where you are deliberately trying to create motion blur (either object blur or panning to blur the background)

2. Good picture which freezes motion of a high-speed object.

3. Use understanding of long exposure to do something interesting.

Last week’s episode of Mad Men focused, in part, on the planned destruction of the beaux-arts masterpiece that was Penn Station in favor of the horrendously ugly madison square garden. Considered one of the greatest architectural travesties in the history of New York City, not even an adman as great as Don Draper could sell the “futuristic” MSG believably. I wasn’t even alive when they tore down Penn Station, but I feel the loss every time I see a photo, or have to take Amtrak. And they’re still trying to fix the error by reshaping the companion post office across the street as a “new-old” railway terminal (one which faces endless delays in its own right).

But the one good thing that the travesty gave us was new rules regarding historic preservation in New York City. Which is the only reason that the New York Central Railroad wasn’t able to do the same thing to Grand Central Terminal (and yes, there were plans on the books to tear that one down as well). Instead, the station was renovated and renewed, and is now considered one of the crown jewels of New York City architecture, one of the most beautiful train stations in the world, and one of my personal favorite places to go. Sometimes I just stop by when I’m in the neighborhood to stare at the ceiling. One of my favorite birthday dinners ever was a spur of the moment decision to eat at MJ’s steakhouse, sitting under the great ceiling. The food was fine, but the atmosphere was what couldn’t be beat. The Summer Streets events that just concluded here in NYC afford pedestrians and cyclists a unique opportunity to stop and take a lingering look at portions of the great station that otherwise go by as a blur in a taxi window.

Now, if only something could be done about the monstrosity of the MetLife building in the background.

In an ongoing effort to find things to do to take up the time during my day that isn’t the hour in the morning I spend looking at job listings, I’ve decided to participate in Glark’s 365 photo project, which officially starts on September 1. I figure this will be a good way to force myself to take pictures outside of photo class, and also to extend my knowledge once class ends. As a consequence of this development, I have finally signed up for a flickr account. I tested it by uploading my last class photo project, which is what you can currently see in the sidebar (but which will obviously change going forward). I’ll be posting the photos here as well, because I like extra work (!), but it’s also a way to force me to blog more often as well.

I have always been wary of services like flickr, because I like to keep control over my photos, so other than the photo project I probably won’t be uploading all of my photos there. It’s just become (for obvious reasons) a good way to participate in photo groups.

In other technical update news, I’ve re-instituted comment registration here. I don’t get a lot of comments, but I seem to be getting tons of spam these days, and even though I use Akismet to filter the junk, I need to cut down on the remaining administrative hassle of cleaning out the spam log. So…get ready for lots of posts!

As I mentioned earlier, we had last week off from photography class because of another event scheduled for the photo studio, so we had two weeks to do our homework. of course, I did mine the first weekend. Two assignments this week. The first was technical, and had to do with light metering correctly.

1. Find a scene that has dramatically different light values (like a light source). Shoot the same composition for the following exposure methods: (a) highlight, (b) shadow, (c) average (manual calculation).

2. Pick a general theme to run for the length of the class. Take six pictures representing that theme.

I went to photography class last night and generally got good feedback on my photos (which, given the technical nature of the assignment amounted to “yay, you were able to follow instructions!”), and we learned more about exposure control, metering and other similar things that will help shoot photos when there is inconsistent lighting (or too consistent lighting) in your scene. But, aside from the technical homework assignment on exposure control which I’ll do later this week, we got a more general assignment that extends for the entire class. We have to start thinking about a subject we’d like to shoot for the duration of the class, and take pictures each week in connection with that assignment. These pictures will be exhibited at the end of the class.

So, of course, I froze. I had no idea what I wanted to shoot. I like taking pictures of flowers, but those don’t really translate well when shooting in black and white. I like people, but I don’t necessarily want to be rude and shove my camera in people’s faces, and I don’t want to stress out too much about asking permission (plus, that always screws up the candid-ness of the photos). Theoretically I like architecture, but I find (for me) it’s more luck than talent when I get a good architecture shot, just because of the “bigness” of all the buildings around here. Other people were coming up with some ideas, and while I thought about, maybe, subway stations, someone else mentioned it and I didn’t want to be a copycat. Our instructor mentioned that it should be something fairly ubiquitous, so that it would be easy to shoot something week in and week out. But not so abstract so that no one would know what the theme was when they looked at your series.

So last night I decided that I wanted to shoot people who make their living on the street. People like street vendors and flea market folks and street fair booth operators. Maybe those folks who are always soliciting donations for charities and handing out flyers for manicure places. But this morning, when I took my camera out to get some shots of the food cart on my corner, I wasn’t feeling it. The photos weren’t very good, and I just wasn’t liking it. And then…

Someone rode by my on a bicycle. And it clicked. Of course! I love bicycles, I love cycling, I spend lots of time around cycling and cyclists, Heck, I’ve got two bicycles of my own. And when I started walking up the street looking at all the different types of bikes locked up, I realized it was perfect. Abandoned, damaged bikes, shiny new bikes, cruisers, racers, mountain bikes, bike parts, close ups of handlebars and gears, spokes and seats, people riding bikes, bike accessories, tandems, unicycles…the list goes on…and, they’re in every part of the city.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it last night, but of course the best thing for me to do would be to combine one of my favorites hobbies with the other. Now I just need to figure out how to pack my SLR with me when I go on the next Brooklyn by Bike ride, since, yep, we’re biking to the velodrome to watch the bike races!! perfect!!