New York City Archives

Want to Photograph NYC? Bring Your Wide-Angle Lens

Photographing New York City presents unique challenges. As a photographer, you will have to contend with both cramped spaces indoors (such as inside bars, restaurants and the subway) and incredibly tall buildings outdoors.

The best way to deal with these disparate photographic challenges is to simply use a wide-angle lens all the time.

For our purposes, “wide-angle” means any field of view that is 35mm or wider. The 35mm field of view is great for capturing the city. 24mm is even better. My personal favorite field of view sits in between these two at 28mm.

No, Now Is Not a Good Time to Visit NYC

Consider me a pandemic junkie. I actually enjoy following the pandemic and the statistical trends of the virus, and I have since New York City was hit hard by COVID in 2020. I used to write a series of very popular Tweets early in the pandemic when information was poorly presented to the public. I would combine my photos of the empty and dead city with the grim statistics taken from the Department of Health in the hopes of presenting information that people could use to keep themselves educated and safe.

My NYC Vaccination Experience and Thoughts About Boosters

I was a vaccine holdout — not due to politics, but due to concerns about an eye condition I have called lattice degeneration. Lattice degeneration is a congenital thinning of the retina that leads to holes and tears in the retina. This condition puts me at high risk for a retinal detachment at any time. A retinal detachment is a medical emergency, requiring an immediate visit to the hospital and delicate eye surgery to repair the retina. If it’s not taken care of quickly, it can lead to permanent vision loss.

I was not sure how these vaccines (or actual COVID-19) would affect this condition since there’s little official research about how the COVID vaccines interact with a retina that’s already damaged by disease. My thought was that any micro-clotting caused by the vaccines could affect blood vessels in the retina and cause issues.

Women’s March NYC, October 2nd, 2021

Women’s March events were held all over the country in response to recent efforts by right-wing radicals to use the rigged judicial system to restrict the rights of women.

Using an Action Camera For Photography

GoPro pioneered the concept of an “action camera” – a tiny, rugged, easy-to-operate camera that is intended to be used to record action sports. In the years since the first GoPro was launched, many competitors such as Akaso and DJI have produced action cameras as well. Regardless of the brand, these cameras are primarily video-focused, and the newest ones are capable of recording crisp and detailed 4K and even 5K video. Though it’s not their primary function, most of these cameras are capable of doing still photography as well.

While they aren’t the best choice for general still photography, action cameras can be very useful as a photographic tool, particularly to capture very wide landscape shots. Here are some things to consider when using an action camera for photography.

Note: In this article, I used an Akaso Brave 6 Plus for all of the photographs.

The Real Heroes of the NYC Pandemic

There’s a recent article in the New York Times about how dangerous it is in New York City for the guys and gals doing food deliveries on bikes. They’ve become targets for bike theft due to their usage of expensive ebikes. Ebikes have been essential tools for delivery workers for years now, but have become even more crucial due to the high demand for food deliveries during the pandemic.

This isn’t run-of-the-mill bike theft, where a sneaky thief uses a portable powered saw to cut the lock of a bike that’s been locked up to a bike rack. Instead, these delivery workers are often robbed at gunpoint of their expensive ebikes and cash by old-school armed robbers.

Biden Victory Rally and March in New York City, November 7th, 2020.

This event was originally planned as a rally to protest Trump’s underhanded attempts to undermine the election. A coalition of groups including Black Lives Matter, gay rights activists, local community organizations, and NYC labor unions were slated to band together to protest Trump’s actions.

However, shortly before the rally started, it was announced that Joe Biden was the projected winner of the 2020 election, and instead of a protest this turned into a victory celebration.

Why Did I Buy An E-Bike?

2020 can definitely be described as a year of change. There are so many things that we took for granted that we can no longer do anymore, or have had to alter to fit the new reality of daily life. We have all had to learn to adapt.

Like many New Yorkers, part of that adaptation has been finding ways to avoid mass transit. Nobody here wants to be packed into a crowded bus or subway car anymore if we can help it.

Because of this, New York City has seen an explosion in bicycle usage. I personally have never seen so many people riding bicycles around town as I have seen this summer in NYC. A significant and growing number of these bikes are electric bicycles or “e-bikes”. E-bikes have batteries and motors and can usually reach top speeds of about 20 miles per hour (32 kph).

The New Normal – New York City During the Coronavirus Lull

And yes, it’s a lull. Or at least I believe it’s a lull, since I also believe that virus cases will eventually spike in the city again. As of this writing (August 22, 2020) the COVID-19 case numbers inside New York City are extremely low. According to the New York City Department of Health website, we’re averaging under 200 cases per week in the whole city, and have been this way for a while.

Coronavirus and life in NYC – What’s it like?

NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 27, 2020 – The novel coronavirus, which leads to the illness known as COVID-19, has hit New York City harder than the rest of the country. Of course, New York City will one day no longer be the hardest hit area: cases are expected to surge in other parts of the United States in the coming weeks. Many of these other places did not take the disease seriously, or simply have not prepared, apparently for political and economic reasons.

But at the time of this writing, there are 25,573 confirmed COVID-19 cases inside New York City, and 366 deaths from the disease, making the city the epicenter of the pandemic in the USA. Even as I write this, these numbers are no longer correct; any published source, including the New York City Department of Health website where I got the numbers from, is out of date immediately. That is how fast this virus is spreading and how quickly the deaths are increasing.