Trefoil Arch Passage

There are 35 bridges and arches in Central Park - each one unique. Trefoil arch is, in a way, the most unique, as it's the only one where each entrance to the passageway is shaped differently. The west-side arch is a round Roman one, while the east-side opening is the trefoil (three-lobed) one you see here.

Trefoil Arch was designed by Calvert Vaux and
Jacob Wrey Mould, and constructed in 1862. It serves one of several paths that connect Bethesda Terrace to Conservatory Waters.

Welcome to our newest Forum member, Carl! Warren's message that you were joining prompted me to check, and I realized that I'm way behind in holding up my end of the forum. 

From the Sacred to the Profane

I figure I should strike while the iron is hot! Here's one I took on my trip to NYC last December and forgot to post here...

Emerging from the quiet of St. Patrick’s Cathedral around sunset, I was greeted by this pre-Christmas rush as I looked across Fifth Avenue.

Vaux's Folly

No, I’m not trying to say that Calvert Vaux, the co-designer of Central Park, was foolish; perish the thought!

In architecture, a folly is a building designed and constructed purely for the delight of those who behold it. Belvedere Castle is exactly that, and has delighted visitors to the Park since 1869.

Strictly speaking, an architectural folly is built for no practical purpose, but since 1919, the National Weather Service has operated a weather station at Belvedere Castle. You can just about make out some of the instruments, above the peak of the main turret, in this photo. So next time you’re in New York City and here a radio weatherperson says, “… and the temperature in Central Park is…”, you’ll know where it comes from.

Belvedere Castle is a major stop on my Central Park photo safaris, as the view from its ramparts is stunning. Also, the Castle itself, perched high on Vista Rock, is photo-worthy both from below and close-up.

This post is in honor of our friend and blog founder Warren, whose "everyone check in" email reminded me I haven't posted here for a while. Thanks, Warren!

Rockefeller Center - Dressed for Christmas

So even an old Jewish guy like me can't fail to be impressed, and yes, a bit moved, by the beautiful Christmas displays at Rockefeller Center.

I had wanted to walk down the Channel Gardens to get that classical view, from Fifth Avenue, of the angels along the Gardens and the Christmas tree straight-on against 30 Rockefeller Center - but there was just too large a crowd for me to even get close in the time I had left before catching my 6pm bus back home. I detoured west on 51st Street, which was less packed, at least in relative terms, and took this photo from the north side of Rockefeller Plaza.

St. Bartholomew Dome Interior

I got up at the proverbial oh-dark-thirty Saturday morning to take a 5:30 am bus to Manhattan for a lesson in post-processing workflow with the incomparable Dave Beckerman. Specifically, Dave shared with me his more than two years of using NIK Software's suite of impressive add-ins for Photoshop or Lightroom.

It was a great experience - Dave is very creative and an excellent teacher. If any of you get a chance to spend some time in NYC, try to look him up, or even better, take a lesson from him. You won't be sorry.

After our lesson, I went to St. Bartholomew's on Park Avenue and 51st Street. It's a beautiful Byzantine-style basilica. It's one of those special places where even if think you haven't seen it, you probably have - Hollywood loves it for scenes of high-falutin' weddings. Both the original and the remake of Arthur used St. Bart's for their wedding scenes. The church also had a very big part in the Angelina Jolie film, Salt.

I took several interior shots with a tripod at St. Bart's before a docent came up to me and said that tripods were not allowed. To get this photo of the interior of the dome, I laid my camera flat on its back on a table just underneath the crossing, set it for Automatic Exposure Bracketing, and triggered off the three exposures with my infrared remote shutter release. Back home, I assembled the three exposures using NIK's HDR Effex Pro to get what you see here.

It's very interesting... I could barely make out the detail in the dome, it was that dark. But thanks to 21st-century electronics, our digital sensors just keep sucking up photons until the image processing chip says "enough." And unlike film, long exposures don't suffer from reciprocity failure. What a great world we photographers now live in!

p.s. Sorry about that photo of Russel Brand running out of St. Bart's in his gatkes.

More Nikon FM Photos...

Just after I took a few snaps of the gentleman, this beautiful young woman stepped in to pose in front of the vintage bike. I think she looks like a young Joan Collins... maybe even more lovely.

The other photo is an abstract of shadows of the cast iron railing on the steps of a brownstone on W. 15th Street. The brownstone was indeed brown, and I gave it the sepia treatment.

These were taken with the Nikon FM that Warren generously gave me!

Vintage Model, Vintage Film Nikon

I kibbitzed my way into getting a few shots of this photo session last Saturday in Central Park, NYC.

Now this is pretty special, because it was taken on actual film with one of the actual classic Nikon SLRs that Warren generously sent to me a couple of years ago. This was a long time coming, because I promised Warren that I would use these beauties, but this is the first time I took one out for a spin... my apologies, Warren... and I'll try to make up for it in the next few weeks by shooting more with them!

For the record, I took the handsome black Nikon FM with me, mounting a 50mm f/1.8 Nikon Series E lens that belongs to a Nikon EM I bought in 1983. My film was Kodak Gold 200 (less than six bucks for 3 rolls at Target!) I took the roll to Costco tonight and had them develop the negatives and scan them. For about four bucks and change, I got the processing and a CD with 5444 x 3658 .jpg scans of the 24 negatives. Now, if my math is correct, 5444 x 3658 pixels comes out to about 19.9 megapixels - not bad!

I'll spend some more time with Photoshop CS5 to see if I can squeeze more performance out of these scans, but meanwhile, this image is "processed" in Picassa version 3, the free photo editor from Google. The scans all seemed a little overexposed, so I used the shadow slider in Picassa to darken a bit, corrected a little blue cast, and then converted this image to sepia, which seems to me to fit the subject.

I wanted to take the Nikon F2 Warren has also sent me, but at the last minute, I realized I never got split-rings for it so I could attach a proper camera strap (the snap-swivels on the straps won't fit through the strap lugs on the F2 body)... and I wasn't able to get the triangular split rings off of the FM or any of the other SLRs I now have. I'll take a trip to my local Ace Hardware this weekend and get several sets, one of which I'll attach the the F2's strap lugs.

Warren, thanks again for these wonderful cameras - I'll be finally putting them to good use over the next few weekends. In particular, I'll take them into Annapolis and shoot some scenes that I've already done digitally, so I can do some comparisons. I have a 43-86mm Zoom Nikkor that I snagged for a good price on eBay that's going on the F2 - I think it will looks especially cool with that classic lens (it's the newer, 11-element version.)

I have several more photos to post from my NYC trip, taken with the FM, that will follow this one.