new york photos

White Clouds Drifting in the Sky

/ nataliar77 / 2 Comments

I have this cd called “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Upbeat all the way. Anyway, it is all of these old songs on this disk, including one called “Clouds.”

The singer sounds like he is at some dark night club in Paris, in the 1920s. The lyrics, to me, are very evocative:

Clouds floating through the night while the silver stars above lend their tender light.

Clouds drifting through the sky while I wonder why my love ever said goodbye.

Clouds floating through the night speaking of a love that was heavenly, a love that could never be mine.

Ok, this is only a snippet of the lyrics, the one including the cloud parts, but you get the picture. Clouds, love, etc.

He’s obviously singing about lost love, something I know nothing at all about.

All right, all these lines about the clouds and you, my minuscule readership were expecting some photos, eh?

Well, there is going to be a little more writing before that. Clouds, other than drifting through the night, are hard to photograph. I don’t mean “point camera upward, click shutter.” I mean properly. I’ve seen some of the greats take photos of the clouds and those pictures transcend the “camera upward, click shutter” thing.

I’ve been trying since I starting pointing camera forwards to properly photograph clouds. Usually, the results were my parents yelling at me for making them pay for an entire roll of film with just clouds on them.

But the wonders of modern technology have made my long held ambition of taking better photos of clouds possible. These pictures are not those, yet, but hopefully, the start towards my genius photos of clouds and eventual world domination. Well, ok, let’s stick to the clouds first:

And, some more cloud pictures. George Emerson in A Room With a View, says the the most perfect view is the sky above our heads. George Emerson is played by my fantasy husband, Julian Sands, so to me the most perfect view in the world is Mr. Julian Sands. But, until he comes striding in here to take me off to my life of complete and utter bliss, more clouds:

Some fun with the contrast and black and white settings on the old iPhoto:

Black and blue blurry fun:

And this last one, totally unrelated:

I took this last one because it reminded me of being in gym class in high school. Usually, we would be playing some awful sport, like softball and I would be so out in left field that I was practically no longer on the field and I would look up at the sky and see planes above and think to my self “Gee, look at thing. Its probably going to London or Paris or Hong Kong. So many other places I could be right now, rather than here, praying for that damn ball to come no where near me.” Jesus Chris, if the plane were going to Poughkeepsie, it would be more interesting than that gym class.

More to cloud photos are sure to follow, until George Emerson takes me into “A Room With a View” and kisses me with Florence in the background. In other words, we’ll probably be here. For a while.

Chuck Close or Roy Lichtenstein?

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It just hit me when I took these pictures. I could be left anywhere doing anything and if I have my camera in my hand, it will turn into some kind of picture take exercise. I went to Walmart and photographed the place for a little while and if I had been left alone, I would have probably done up the whole place.

These things here. Well, I was on the train (huge surprise) and I was sitting next to this ad for some tv show. I have no interest in this tv show, but the light was hitting the ad in a way that I found interesting. Of course, with my handy-dandy camera, I started shooting away.

The ads are half-tone, which is the printing method used for newspapers. I used to be fascinated by it, all the dots and how the dots kind of come together for an image from far away. Anyway, I took these, downloaded them and sort of realized that they look kind of like Chuck Close or Roy Lichtenstein. That was completely not my intent. All I wanted was to photograph the little dot things.

You have to click on the photos to get the full effect. Otherwise, they are a bit flat, I know, I realize that.

Anyway, three paragraphs of explanation for these things:

This reminded me of one of those old ads from the 1950s. The thing to the right by the way is a man in a collared shirt.

The eye, singular:

The lesson is that I cannot be left alone with a camera anywhere ever. But I feel creative again and that was the point of this exercise.

Governor’s Island

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Ok, so I’m editing this entry to reflect some commentary on it. These pictures weren’t meant to be art. I’m was throwing them out there because I was afraid of picking up my camera again for fear the results would be below my standards. But, as it turns out, I found out that I can still take pictures with a real camera.

So, the one who put the haterade out there and you know who you are, well, I turned the haterade into gatorade. Man, that was terrible rhyme, but the point is the haterade made me realize that I can take real photos again.

So, bring on the haterade. Go ahead. I can take it.

And away with the original entry:

There are places in New York that you go many times that are just blah. Times Square. Disney-fied.

We always had to take Circle Line when people would come to our house. Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty and the many bridges. Ok, that’s nice. But, we would always pass by this place with these college campus looking buildings and I would wonder about the place. It seemed abandoned. I am a bit of a cheeseball, and I liked imaging who lived there and what life was like on this uninhabited island off the coast of Manhattan.

I am sitting at work on Friday and my co-worker tells me that the island is open and there is a ferry that runs there. It meant taking the subway, my well documented enemy, but I endured it.

And, I am glad I did because going there was really worth it.

Governor’s Island is an old military base that was occupied by the Army and Coast Guard over the years. It closed in 1996.

Check out this place:

This is the old governor’s house on the island.

Some more views:

And yet more:

Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore. Case in point:

Love the accent canons. Gives it a special something you just don’t find everywhere.

Here are some of the old barracks:

An entry way to one of them:

Thank god for that manual setting on the camera.

These just made me happy. I loved how the girl’s dresses contrasted against the gray of the city. I couldn’t pick one, so I just took all three:

And one altered, cropped, you know, whatever, but something to make the photos “less touristy” and most “arty.”

This was just super sweet.

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No, this is not a girl in a costume. She’s a Mennonite, a religious sect that is similar to the Amish, except they seem to be a little more liberal. The Amish avoid technology, but I’ve seen Mennonites at the Air and Space museum in Washington. My guess is that they take a little bit of a liberal view on things.

But this has to be super liberal if this is where this girl is performing:

And handing out literature here:

and here:

Here are some more photos of the girls:

Here’s them in a group:

Here are some views of them with the jaded New Yorkers walking by:

I could have thought “oh, look at their dresses, they are so unflattering” or “ah, globalization, look at it here,” but that would be stupid. I just looked at this and thought — this is super sweet. These people are trying to spread the word of god in Times Square and you have to admire that.
They are putting themselves out there for what they believe and I think that is something a lot of people could or would do.

Now for the sarcastic part of the entry. They have to endure being in the Times Square subway station, place of unbelievable array of smells, all of them terrible. Not to mention people who are kind of agitated because the bastard subway system didn’t get them where they needed to go. By this I mean delivering them to 14th street when they wanted to go 125. Ok, rant over.

There was a bearded man, dressed very simply also, who was kind of the leader of this group. He said he’d lived in New York in the 1960s for two years. Because Mennonites are pacifists, they do not go to war, so he came to live in New York to work at NYU Medical Center. Just as an aside, I’ve met people all over the place who say they lived in New York for a time. If I ever go to Mongolia, I bet I’ll find a goat herder who will say he lived in New York for a year.

Monoliths or immitating the greats?

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Another altered photo from my post work motor drivin’. Yes, the little square on the photo is the light from the inside of the train. Well, I can’t say I am not immitating someone again. This time its Margaret Bourke-White. You have to click on it because the thumb nail doesn’t really give you the full effect.

taking an kind of ok photo and kind of making it…

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Better? I love this bridge. Ok, I say that about every bridge I see, but this one I really love. This is this bridge that takes you to 125th street. When you sit in the train and it is going by and you are listening to music, its like the beginning or the end of a movie. I’ve been trying to figure out how to photograph it forever. This was another result of the production from the motor drive. Oh well. If I’m not happy with it, I’ll have about a million more chances to photograph it.

On second thought….

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Here is the original of the warehouse industrial photo that is b&w below. I had all day to look at it and I grew to like the blue. So, you, my viewing public comment on which one you like better. And, there is no spelling to be corrected here.