You can’t capture a smell on film, but I wish I could have today. In the aftermath of the ‘splosion, the air conditioning in the Graybar building was turned off. Middle of summer in New York, which, as I said, resembles Ghana is temperature, and we have no air conditioning.

And you know what? I LOVED IT. Yeah, the office smelled like fried onions for most of the day, more so where it was hotter in the office, but we got to open the windows and I got to do something I have wanted to do since I’ve been living in New York — basically, swing out of a window and take photos.

I’m afraid of everything in life. Whenever I fly, I have to tell myself “you have more of a chance of hitting the lotto than dying in a plane crash,” but then I am white knuckled when I hear any sound the plane makes. “Turbulence is normal, Turbulence is normal.”

Don’t even get me started on my whole fear of snakes.

But for some reason, heights do not scare me. I saw these open windows, braced myself as well as possible and took the following photos. Again, NOT ARTISTIC AND NOT INTENDED TO BE. But this was a lot of fun.

Here goes:

Remember, this is what the Chrysler Building looks like from the street:

Here’s what it looks like out the window of my office, with almost no zooming required. The CEO of our company has the corner office with the window and the amazing view, of course. Me, I gotta swing out of a 25th floor window to see this. Whatever. Here are the pictures:

Yeah, I know, I’ve taken the sun bursts on the top before, so I know this is kind of boring. But it was amazing to be so close to the building.

Here are the ones that I’d probably never again get to photograph:

In these next two, the brown brick is actually the brick of the building I work in. I didn’t notice it until I took another look at the photos. I don’t know why I am mentioning this. I just liked it.

Here’s more stuff:

Here are some more views:

YES, not the most artistic work in the world, but the best I could do with about 7-10 minutes to shoot, my boss and I trying to finish our afternoon work and of course, the higher ups probably wondering why in god’s name I was doing. All in a day’s work in the greatest city in the world.