A New Blog Format for 2nd Exposure: Last Post on Blogger..

2nd Exposure is moving to a more feature-filled, WordPress-based blog!

The new web address is SteveRosenbach.com/blog.

Also, please visit my new website with galleries and photo store at SteveRosenbach.com.

Flatiron Detail

Another of my favorite buildings, the 1902 Flatiron Building (Fuller Building.)

Built to take advantage of the triangular lot formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street, H.G. Wells proclaimed when he first saw it:

"I found myself agape, admiring a sky-scraper the prow of the Flat-iron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the afternoon light."

Please see a schedule of some of my photo tours of NYC for Washington Photo Safari here.

Chrysler Building Details

The Chrysler Building at Lexington and 42nd St is the iconic Art Deco skyscraper, and my own favorite. This view shows off the stainless steel "gargoyles" at the 31st floor level. They're modeled after the radiator cap of the 1929 Chrysler. You can also see the mosaic cars that race all around the 31st floor.

The Chrysler Building is one of the many great photo-worthy sites we'll visit during my Photo Safari to NYC next Saturday, April 2, 2011. Photo instruction, including composition and how to get the most out of your camera is all included!

Register here

NYC Artist Makes It Big

Talk about making it big!

I was walking to the Lexington Avenue subway station on E. 23rd Street when I looked up and saw this giant work-in-progress. There were actually four men working on this - two each on two platforms.

I had my Tamron "super-zoom" 18-270mm lens on my camera. I racked it to full-out telephoto and started to watch the painters. The 270mm position was just enough to show a small but detailed figure against a large section of the painting.

From a superb workshop I took with Karen Schulman, I knew that in an image like this, gesture is important to keep the photo from looking too static. "Gesture," in that context, could mean a lean of the body, an arm or leg extended, in other words, just about anything that departs from "just standing there."

For this situation, I figured that "gesture" would be in the form of reaching out with the paintbrush. It took about 20 minutes, but sure enough, I got a few shots of two of the guys in a good lean-and-stretch. This one is the one I liked best, as he's putting his whole body into it.

In case you're curious, the... er... I don't know what to call the painting-on-the-side-of-a-building... is for a remake of the 1981 film, Arthur.

Man With A Mission...

... as he walks by this blue wall in Manhattan's Flower District on W. 28th Street early Saturday morning.

Join me on my next Photo Safari to Midtown Manhattan on April 2, 2011 at 1PM.

New Yorker Hotel

Opened in 1930, the New Yorker is a classic example of the Art Deco style, with its setbacks and bands of friezes.

Bad times in the Big Apple led to the hotel closing in 1972, but it was resurrected and renovated in the '90s, restoring a touch of class to the Garment District.

DUMBO

A view of the Manhattan Bridge from Washington Street in Brooklyn.

The up-and-coming neighborhood is now called "DUMBO", for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Brooklyn Tower

Here's the Brooklyn-side (eastern) tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. looking up through the spider web of cables and stays designed and built over 100 years ago.

Woman on Steps

This is part of the monumental facade of the main NYC post office, zip code 10001.

On the entablature resting atop the Corinthian colonnade is the famous inscription, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

האָוואַרד לייענת ייִדיש

A portrait of my friend and distinguished colleague, Howard.

Among other things, he's distinguished because when he joined our little team at the University, he was issued an ID card that says "Faculty," instead of "Staff," as it was supposed to be. So since then, I've referred to him as "Professor."

One day last December, as Howard and I arrived at our Light Rail destination in the morning, we got an alert from work that our building had lost power, and that they didn't expect it to be restord until late afternoon... so they were telling everyone to go home for the day. Howard and I decided to stay on the Light Rail and ride it to the northern end of the line - a nice 45 minute journey northward.

One the way back, I remembered that I had with me a copy of the "Forverts" ("Forward",) a Yiddish newspaper I had brought back from New York some months earlier. I bought it strictly for photographic purposes - I thought it would be humorous to take pictures of people who you wouldn't expect to be reading a Yiddish publication - and Howard fit the bill. I still have to arrange to take a picture of it with one of my Asian friends.

For a while, we had this photo posted in our office between our desks as a way of showing how learned Professor Howard really was!

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is, "Howard laynt Yeedish", which simply means "Howard reads Yiddish."