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.

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.

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."

Barns & Nobel Shadows

I headed crosstown the other day on a mission to Barnes & Nobel. The day was brilliant, and the sun was just about overhead - not normally a great time for photos.

But when I saw the pattern of shadows on the stairs, I thought it might make a good background for some people in an HCB-like setting. I took several as people came and went - this is my favorite of the bunch.

Taken with a Canon S90 digicam and converted to B&W via Channel Mixer in Photoshop.

Amberg: Schiffgaße

On Jan 28, 1950, I was born in Amberg, a small, 1000-year old town in Bavaria. It was in the American-occupied zone of Germany, and Displaced Persons, my family included, were housed in the old German Army barracks outside the town wall.

On Jan 28, 1978, I visited Amberg while on a business trip to Germany for GE. Somehow, there was a mixup, and the band and welcoming committee were not on the train platform to greet me.

I did get a few photos, though. This one is looking North on Schiffgaße along the Vils River, with Basilika St. Martin in the background.

Concrete Swoop

A portion of the West facade of the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, home of United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington, DC.

Fous du Volant

No special reason to give this one a French title except to hook Dave into taking a peek.

Sorry, Dave, that was a cheap trick! ;-)

It was a slow nightat the racing booth of the annual Earliegh Heights VFC Carnival, and the Carny is waiting for a mark.

Father & Son on the High Line

The High Line is Manhattan's newest park, built on a section of the former elevated freight railroad along the lower west side of Manhattan.

When I was there in mid-April, I saw lots of families out for a Sunday stroll. The design of the park is very innovative, including what looked to me like oversize chaise lounges on flanged wheels set on areas of renovated track.

There are great views of New Jersey, just across the Hudson River, as well as the many buildings that border the High Line.

As of now, the High Line runs through the old Meatpacking District, from Gansevoort Street to about 23rd Street. Eventually, it will continue through Chelsea and terminate at West Side Yard in the lower 30's.

Central Park Lamppost

You can find these lampposts throughout Central Park. Not only are they attractive, they can help you figure out approximately where you are. Look for a small metal tag near the base with four numbers, for example "7624". The first two numbers signify the street (in this case 76th) that is directly outside the park to the east or west of your position. The second two numbers seem to be arbitrary, but are unique to each lamppost along that east-west axis.

If you ever find yourself in an emergency in the park, you can call the police and give them the 4-digit number of the nearest lamppost; they'll know within a few dozen feet where you are.

The blossoms just beyond the lamppost in this photo are cherry trees in full bloom in mid-April. I used Channel Mixer in Photoshop CS3 with the red filter preset to convert the image to black-and-white and bring out the blossoms.

Goodrich River Delta

On a trip to Cape May back in April, I did a double-take as I passed through Elmer, NJ. Doubling back a few hundred yards later, I stopped in front of Fred Harz & Son, a full-service tire dealer.

Mr. Harz and progeny must have known a crazy photographer would be passing through that Saturday, as they had a neat stack of imposing, giant tires, treads nicely whitewashed, in front of their place. The old black tires, whitewashed stripes, and strong midday sun cried out for some photo-fun. I got several good views of parts of the stack, all with my pocket-sized Canon S90, and I'll put up some of the others over the next few blog posts.

Meanwhile, here's my favorite. The zigzagging channels reminded me of a river delta, hence the title of this post.

For those who are wondering, here's the "civilian" view of what I was shooting at.

Potbelly Chair Shadow

Walking eastward on Pratt Street after work today... the sun was just right to cast fabulous shadows from these wrought-iron chairs outside the Potbelly Sandwich Shop.

Photo Archeaology - Anatomy of an Image

Rue Foyatier, this oft-photographed stairs, climbs up the Butte Montmartre in Paris, ending near Sacre Couer basillica, the highest point in the city. On a stopover following a business trip in December 1977, I had walked here from a Metro stop a few blocks to the south, and found myself at the bottom of the staircase. I liked the disappering-into-infinity pattern of the steps, railings, and trees, but by itself, the scene looked to static.

So I did what I now realize is a frequent trick of mine - I anchored myself and waited for someone to walk into the scene. The strip of exposures above is the sequence of photos as I took them (click on the image to see a larger view).

Back home on East 83rd Street, I developed the film and checked the contact sheet with my trusty 8x Agfa Loupe, the 20th-century equivalent of the "magnify" button on the back of our digital cameras.

The first three images didn't do anything for me at all. The fourth was a "maybe"... the woman caught ducking behind the fence seemed to lend a tiny bit of mystery. But the fifth photo gave me an aha! feeling.

The position of the woman within this frame, as well as her relative size, works well compositionally. Also, her slightly bent-over and schleppy look at this moment suggeted a tired struggle up the long staircase that matched the somber, lonely look of that soggy, gloomy December day.

Here's the "new" version of that fifth photo, newly scanned from the negative after more than 32 years, slightly cropped, straightened, and lightly adjusted for blacks in Photoshop.

I think it's a great marriage of new and old technology: Epson V500 scanner combined with 1970's Tri-X film and D-76 developer, a 1940 Leica iiiC body, and a 1952 50mm f/2 Collapsible Summicron lens.

Cable Reels

Snowy 'Z'

This is part of the Maryland WWII Memorial, covered in freshly fallen snow. The memorial, dedicated in 1990, sits just below an older overlook on a hill looking down over the Severn River, US Naval Academy, and the rest of Annapolis.

Doo, Doo, Doo Lookin' Out My Front Door!

I opened my front door one night and there she was, already having spun a pictorially perfect composition - must have known a photographer lived there.

I just used flash to illuminate spider and web, while leaving the nighttime front yard dark.

In Photoshop, I applied a reverse B&W gradient map (the small gray areas are tree leaves that barely left any shadow detail in the original.)

That's it - no cropping even!

Tech Tuesday: Better B&W From Digital

OK, I'll let you in on a secret - much of what I've learned about Photoshop Elements is from Scott Kelby's excellent books - I think he's written one for each version so far - I'm a little behind the times right now, so I'm still using The Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers.

One of the things I know very little about is how to get a decent B&W image from a color digital photo... but yep, Scott goes into that, too.


Here's the general outline to how he says to do it:

• Open the color image in Photoshop Elements.


• Make sure the foreground color is Black and the background color is White (or as Scott says, just press the "D" key - this will set your foreground and background colors exactly this way.)


• Go to the Layers palette and choose Levels from the Create Adjustment Layer drop-down menu (it's the half-black, half-white circle icon.) Once the Levels dialog comes up, just click OK.


• Now again, from the Layers palette, chose Gradient Map from the drop-down menu and just click OK on the Gradient Map dialog. This will give you a B&W image, and you should notice that it already looks better than just using the standard commands to create a grayscale image (Image/Mode/Grayscale, or Enhance/Adjust Color/Remove Color.)


• Here's where you can tweak the B&W tones a bit. First, in the Layers palette, double-click right on the Levels thumbnail to bring up the Levels dialog. Select Red from the Channel drop-down list, and then play a bit with the black-point slider to the right to increase shadows until you see what you like.


• Without clicking OK, select Green from the Channel drop-down list, and this time try dragging the white point slider to the left to increase highlights.


• Again, don't click OK yet - now pick Blue from the Channel drop-down list and try playing with the highlights (quite a bit) and the shadows (just a little.)


• You can go back and forth between the 3 channels, tweaking away - just stop when you're happy with the look, then finally click OK in the Levels dialog.

At this point, mush the layers you created into one layer with the Layers/Flatten menu. The file still has color information in it - if you want to save file space, you can turn it into a grayscale file with Image/Mode/Grayscale.

For this photo, once I got to this point, I applied local contrast sharpening as I usually do (see this post for how to do that) and then final sharpening. You can see the results in the second image - compare that one to the standard remove-the-color version at top. To paraphrase those laundry soap commercials - whiter whites, blacker blacks, and just nicer overall tonality.

Amazingly, I even got an excellent B&W print of this second image on my 3-1/2-year-old Canon i850 printer. I would have expected some tinting, at least in some areas of the photo, but this print looks like an old-fashioned paper-and-developer B&W print (I doubt that this will work out so well for every image - normally you need an inkjet printer that's designed to do B&W, such as some of the higher-end Epsons.)

If you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, check out Scott Kelby's books - he packs them with excellent practical how-to advice.