very simple

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).

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.

The girl sitting next to me at the cafe this morning was very diligently creating her own note cards, so I asked if I could take a picture. We ended up getting into a whole discussion of 365 projects and what she was doing as well, in terms of trying to be creative.

Then, as a bonus, as I was getting up to leave, she handed me a card of my own (with a lovely note inside)! Totally made my day.

I had an original black ipad2 dodocase that I bought soon after I got my iPad. Not only did I like the moleskine-esque design, but the fact that they are attempting to move classic 19th and 20th century handcrafted “technologies” (bookbinding, tailoring) into a 21st century space appealed to me. But, alas, my old case finally bit the dust when I thought it would be brilliant idea to pile a bunch of crap (including laptop) on top of it while it was open, breaking the spine. Duct tape was an interim solution, but I finally bit the bullet and ordered up a new one – this time custom made.

The last post was of an angry sea-god, so I might as well counterbalance with one of my favorite (and most-photographed) spots in the city – Bethesda Fountain, featuring the angel of the waters, a tribute to the naval war dead after the Civil War, and one of the most beautiful, well-placed fountains around (even without water in the wintertime). According to “New York, A Documentary History” (which I have watched in its 14-hour entirety multiple times), there was controversy when she was installed, due to the fact that she looked like a peasant with wings rather than some lofty creature, but the people loved that she was, well, one of them.

A few months ago, I integrated a photo-selling service onto the site. Well, this morning, I got an email telling me that they were not only doubling and tiering their pricing structure, but that it was going to happen in less than 2 weeks, AND that we would both be forced to pre-pay for the prints before getting paid ourselves and that we would have to use PayPal or some service called stripe that I had never heard of. Oh, and the announcement email didn’t even have all the detail. It’s ‘coming soon’. Presumably some time between now and the change on October 10!

I liked fotomoto precisely because it didn’t require PayPal, which I avoid at all costs if it can be helped (sometimes it can’t, but I continue to use an “unverified” account in these circumstances because I will never, ever, give them access to my bank account information, so getting paid from PayPal would obviously turn into a giant headache).

I don’t have a problem, philosophically, with price increases or tiered pricing by themselves, but the short window is obviously a big issue, particularly for more active users who have done things like publish their price lists. It’s the timeframe (I’ll barely have enough time to get the code off my site this weekend before the deadline), and the forced use of a super-problematic service like PayPal that are forcing my hand.

Tonight, I ended up going to a work-related event at the Time Warner Center, part of which was held in the Allen Room overlooking (coincidence of coincidences) Columbus Circle. So here’s one more shot of Discovering Columbus, from the outside, at night. Pardon the reflections.

Thanks to a well-timed reminder from a friend the other day, I managed to snag a ticket for this weekend’s opening of Discovering Columbus. Artist Tatzu Nishi has done this with other monuments around the world, and here’s he’s created a living room set piece surrounding the statue of Christopher Columbus so that he becomes a really large coffee table display. Sure, it’s a little weird, but it gives people a rare opportunity to get up close to a piece of art (and views!) that is ordinarily out of reach at the top of a 70-foot pillar. It also serves as a preservation effort – once the exhibit is done, the scaffolding will remain so that the heavily worn marble statue can undergo its first restoration effort in over 20 years (why people continue to think that a soft, easily-worn stone like marble is a good medium for statues that spend all their time exposed to the elements escapes me, but the choice was made well-before the current decision-makers were born).

In any event, the photos are a bit repetitive, what with there being the one statue (and the 3 good views out the windows), but hopefully they’re enjoyable. I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance – it’s free, but you need to get a ticket to reserve a time slot for crowd-limitation purposes. The public art fund website appears to have crashed (or they forgot to pay their bill!), but tickets are also available on the third floor of the Time Warner Center.

I’m winding down my off-time in the city, with my new engagement starting after labor day and next week being spent with various iterations of the family unit in the country, so I decided to go visit the high line yesterday. I’ve been a few times before (2009, 2011), but I think this is the first time I’ve been at the height of summer. They’ve also opened up an entirely new section, from about 21st street to 30th street, so this is the first time I’ve been up this far.

click on the thumbnails for the full images and descriptions

This bust of Washington Irving sits in front of Washington Irving High School, which is at the corner of 17th street and Irving Place, across the street from the Washington Irving House and one block north of concert-venue Irving Plaza.

The irony, of course, being that Washington Irving never actually lived here (despite the plaque to the contrary). He apparently had a nephew that lived nearby that he visited a few times, and that was close enough for some civic-minded folks to lay claim to the entire neighborhood on his behalf.