nyc - The Twilight Report

Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn city councillor, wants to ban the feeding of pigeons. Mr Felder, a Democrat, would like to slap a $1,000 fine on every transgressor, and hopes to introduce pigeon-terrifying hawks, avian birth-control and a “pigeon tsar” to control the bird population. He argues that pigeon droppings damage buildings and other infrastructure and can carry disease, and cites as a success the experience of Ken Livingstone, London’s mayor—who uses hawks to scare pigeons from Trafalgar Square. Pro-pigeon advocates plan to stage a protest on the steps of City Hall on November 30th.

—The Economist

I want the job of pigeon tsar. I think it would look awesome on my resumé.

also: I am hear by declaring that next Tuesday to be reclassified as Gorfstag.

Yesterday I had lunch with Adil, Ed, and pretty much the rest of my old work colleagues in EDA. It was really nice to see everyone and a pleasant surprise that pretty much everyone wanted to see me. After everyone else left Adil and I had a chat and I got to meet his kids, which was quite nice. Adil, don’t forget to send me that picture!

(click to see in Google Earth)

As promised (or threatened) I did the long loop of Breakneck Ridge after lunch. I did it in the afternoon, so it was a lot hotter and a lot harder than last week. I ran into lots of people this time. Most of them asked me for advice or how far it was going to be to the turn off. I suppose I looked like I knew what I was doing. I had this conversation several times: “Are you from around here?” “I used to be. I used to live in Beacon.”

Upwise it is like the last Breakneck Ridge hike except for more up after the saddle where you turn off for the short loop, and a more gradual descent. It is also about a mile longer. I feel like I left this hike as unfinished business when I left Beacon a year and a half ago. I’d hiked it a million times, but I left in a state where I wasn’t really up to hiking it anymore. Now that I’ve come back and hiked it again I feel a lot better about it.

After the hike I met up with my friends at Boscobel for As You Like It. I was disappointed that I missed Richard III, because it is one of my favourites, but As You Like It was really funny and definitely worth it. They presented it using a Western theme that accentuated the humour. Joe said it was his favourite Boscobel Shakespeare yet. I’m not sure that I would go that far, but it was quite good. If you are ever in the Hudson Valley during the summer I highly recommend seeing one of the plays that they are presenting that year. They usually do two plays each summer, they present them outside at Boscobel, where there is a lovely view of the Hudson.

...and with that, my Hudson Valley adventure draws to a close, as I head back to New York City, and prepare for my next big adventure in New Mexico.

“Do we need to check our bags here?”
“No, we trust our customers.”
“Can we just leave this bag here?”
“No, it might be a bomb!”

It begs the question though, if we can’t check our bags, don’t the terrorists win?

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna

I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

(Read more...)

In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.

Robert Frank

I went into New York City today. Started out with the new Museum of Modern Art, now back in Manhattan after a short retreat in Queens. Excitedly went to the Photography gallery where they had all kinds of cool stuff, including many prints from Robert Frank's The Americans, and one of William Eggleston's prints from Guide. Overall, the museum was excellent. I will have to return when I have more time to visit it with greater scrutiny.

William Eggleston

We met mum's distant "relative" as defined by the fact that his mother has the same last name as my mother, had a very expensive lunch (thank goodness, The Company got us into the museum for free) and saw some of the paintings. They had a lot of Impressionists.

Idina Menzel

Then we went to see Wicked starring Idina Menzel and Jennifer Laura Thompson. This musical is The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, making her the heroine. Glinda's portal as a dumb blond is cliché, but forgivable, since the whole thing takes the story you know and turns it on its head. My mum left the theater saying it was very 1984, because she had recently read the book, though I corrected her by saying the term usually used is Orwellian.

The original story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Balm was overtly political. The movie adaptation The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland (of course) is not. It was kind of neat to see the producers of the musical inject some of the original themes of the story, although with very modern overtones.

I have finally gotten around to posting on-line portfolios for two recent projects.

New York City	Decay

Please take a look at them and tell me what you think. Last year I took mostly black and white, this year I have seem to have been focusing on color. Unlike my B&W NYC shots, these NYC photos are not really street photography... they were actually a creative interpretation of a landscape assignment I had for Color1. Most of them anyway, I threw a couple more in there after taking the class. The rust shots are all digital... totally experimental. I enjoyed playing with the colors in Photoshop. For you purists, I didn't introduce any colors that were not already there, I just adjusted the RGB curve, contrast and saturation to make them more vibrant.

The only thing worse than taking the 1:20am out of grand central is missing the 1:20am out of grand central, because there aint another train until six or something. So Kathy's friend Sally came to New York and they decided to have dinner and see a show, and I got invited along with a random allotment of other people.

"So anyone we know gonna be there aside from Nam?" I asked Kathy on the way to dinner where we were meeting Sally and the rest of the crew.

She explained that Sally was going to be there, and Sally's ex-girlfriend and the girl Sally was dating now... I felt like asking if there were going to be any strait women there, but that might be rude. Dinner was excellent. Two of our random crew with was a couple of blond Swedish women working for part of a company which did not get bought out by The Company. They were both spoken for, but I enjoyed chatting with them about different cultures and different places anyway.

Then we went to The Donkey Show, which was essentially Mid Summer Night's Dream without the high-falutin' Shakespeare-speak set in a disco... only the audience dances in the disco with the actors. Oberon's gal was completely naked from the waist up except for two strategically placed butterflies, if you take my meaning. There were equally scantily clad men in the production as well, for those of you who prefer that. The cast mingled in character with us as we waited to get in. I highly recommend it if you like fun and don't enjoy things that aren't fun.

After the show the disco continued and I kept dancing with my friends until at 12:45am, when I decided to make a dash and catch the last train. I wish I could have stayed longer, because the thumping of the music and the dance floor was calling me. I said my goodbyes and hailed a cab. As I write this I am on the train to Croton-Harmon stoping which stops at all local stops. Switch to the Poughkeepsie there, which gets me to Beacon and home at something like three in the morning. I am going to be soooo tired tomorrow.

I was down in the city again yesterday, specifically to photograph the reflections in buildings using my 100mm macro lens. I wanted to isolate small areas where two textures intersected, as my most successful photograph from Color1 was of this genre and I wanted to explore that further. (I will most likely eventually post the photograph, but I am still deciding in what form to present it and the pictures which go with it).

One of the neat things about NYC (for me at least) is that I often run into professional photographers working. I think it is natural for photographers at every level to check out what equipment others in the field are using. As described in Shutterbabe (see last entry) there is a sort of pecking order. Pros use Nikon or Leica, locals use Minolta or Olympus. (What does that make me? I use both Nikon and Minolta equipment, not to mention the TLR Rollieflex).

In Grand Central Terminal I saw a photographer with a medium format camera (not a Hasselblad, but nothing to be scoffed at either) photographing a pair of models dressed as you might see in a fashion magazine (next month, you probably will see them). With all the noise and the hub-ub, I probably would not have noticed them at all, since the photographer was up on a different level than the models and shooting down on them, except that the photographer was setting her camera exactly where I had planned to set my camera to do one of those highly cliché pictures of GCT in black and white with some people blurred and some not due to a long exposure. I can't remember what kind of camera she had, but it got me to thinking (again) that I really would like to have my own medium format camera. I want a Hasselbald though, since that is what I learned with in my lighting class and the glass the lenses are to die for. Can't afford it though.

Then as I was out doing the real work I had set out to do (down in south Manhattan) I passed someone with a Leica. Leica make these really high quality 35mm range finder cameras with incredible optics. I wouldn't mind having one of those either. Can't afford that either though.

The coolest spotting ever was one day I was going to see the Concord with a friend of mine, and we passed by Jesus Christ being photographed by a photographer with a large format view camera. Forget about Jesus for a minute though, that view camera was cool. It's so big and bulky that you carry it around with a large tripod attached because you really can't use it without one it is so big and heavy. I had seen a view camera once before, but not one this big. It probably exposed 8x10 negatives. That's 8 inches by 10 inches. You could easily blow up a neg or slide that size to cover the side of a small building without noticing any grain. Can not even come close to affording that one. Guess you have to choose your economic battles.

About a month later I was looking thorough one of those tasteless men's fashion magazines (which I do sometimes to critique the photographs) and right there was Jesus Christ walking through Manhattan. One of the shots was at the very same location we had seen him at too.