Summer Streets is a series of special days in New York City when certain streets are completely closed to traffic. This allows people to use entire streets for biking, jogging and walking.
There are also many interesting events along the way such as live music, giveaways of food and clothing, and even dance and yoga classes.
Continue reading “Summer Streets 2024 – The Manhattan Route Goes Underground!”For people who have yet to visit New York City, I’d like to point out that the Brooklyn Bridge is actually a nice place to just hang out. The City encourages people to stay up there and relax — there are many benches on the bridge along the walkway. You can sit and look at the Manhattan skyline, look over the water, people-watch, pose for pictures, and gaze at the sunset (or sunrise if you get up early enough).
Continue reading “Hanging Out on the Brooklyn Bridge”Washington Square Park, in the heart of Greenwich Village near New York University, is one of New York City’s most beloved public spaces. Within this vibrant park stands an iconic landmark: the Washington Square Park Arch.
Continue reading “A Visit To The Washington Square Park Arch”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.
Continue reading “Want to Photograph NYC? Bring Your Wide-Angle Lens”SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan that is known for art galleries, lofts, shopping and a few interesting restaurants and bars. The pandemic has of course dampened the vibrance of the area and caused it to be littered with what we will refer to as “outdoor dining structures”. These shacks have definitely reduced the attractiveness of the area, but SoHo is still a nice destination to visit for an afternoon or evening.
Continue reading “A Visit to SoHo, NYC”New York City has one of the most beautiful and iconic skylines in the world, thanks to all of the tall and unique buildings on the island of Manhattan.
But of course, you can’t photograph the full skyline while on the island — you have to travel outside of Manhattan to do it.
While there are many spots to photograph the skyline, I feel one place is much better than all of the rest to do it, and in this article I’ll explain where that is and why.
Continue reading “The Best Spot to Photograph the New York City Skyline” The Vessel is a new structure built as part of the revitalization of the Hudson Yards area of the West Side of Manhattan. Construction of The Vessel began in April of 2017 and it opened to the public in March 2019.
The Vessel consists of a series of interconnected staircases and tiers designed to allow visitors to walk from the bottom to the top of the structure easily. The Vessel is 16 stories tall and consists of 154 flights of stairs totaling 2,500 steps.
Looking down from the top tier, one can see how elaborately designed and constructed The Vessel is. For those that can’t or don’t wish to walk up and down the stairs, there is also an elevator, which you can see on the right side of the photo above.
The Vessel offers great views of the Hudson River and the distant New Jersey skyline. In the photo above, visitors wait on the top tier facing West to catch the sunset. Below you can see the rail yard – that’s where Hudson Yards gets its name.
As the sun sets it brings out amazing colors in the sky. It’s best to plan a trip to the Vessel around sunset time. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance. Reservations fill up quickly, so be sure to reserve them a week or two ahead.
After the sun sets, the revitalized Hudson Yards area is a great place to hang out at night. It’s still under construction, but so far a shopping mall and arts center have been built in the area and more attractions are planned.
Have you visited The Vessel at Hudson Yards? What was your experience like? Let me know in the comments, and follow me on Instagram.
If you’d like an NFT of my sunset photo of The Vessel for your collection, visit here.
I was coming back from photographing an event in Manhattan, and wanted to add money to my MetroCard because I had a few more places to go to that day by subway and bus. When I tried to add more cash to the card, the machine gave an error, and took the twenty dollar bill without putting anything on the MetroCard. It spit out a receipt that showed an error code. The MTA had just stolen the money.
Robbed in the New York City subway.
I thought no big deal, I’ll just show this to the MTA employee working in the booth and get my money back. But of course, we are dealing with the MTA here: even though it just happened, even though I was holding the card that caused the error, and even though I had the freshly printed error receipt from the machine in my hand, the dude told me he could not refund me the money or even just electronically put the twenty bucks I lost onto the card. He said I had to contact the MTA for a refund. By writing them.
Luckily that wasn’t my last twenty bucks; I had more cash on me. But what if I didn’t? I guess I’d hop the turnstile like everyone else. Anyway, I spent another $20 getting a totally new card from the booth attendant and got on the next train.
The process of getting a refund from the MTA is, naturally, a pain in the ass. First, make sure you keep that receipt AND the MetroCard associated with the messed up transaction. You will have to mail both of them to the MTA as proof of what happened. So even if you think the MetroCard is busted, don’t toss it out, and don’t try to use it again anywhere else. Maybe put a small mark on it with a Sharpie so you don’t get it mixed it up with another card.
You will have to print out and fill out the form located here:
http://web.mta.info/metrocard/pdfs/form.pdf
The form is, of course, badly designed — I found it hard to write the letters of my address and all the other stuff inside those stupid little boxes. Then there’s a section of the form where you’ll have to write in all of the information that’s already on the receipt, because why not.
When you’re done, put the form along with the receipt and the MetroCard into an envelope and mail it off to the address on the form. And wait — it took about three months for the MTA send me back a new MetroCard.
Real New Yorkers simply call it the Central Park Reservoir, but officially it’s called The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. The Reservoir stretches from 86th to 96th street, and from 5th avenue to Central Park West.
I wanted a specific shot of some particular Upper West Side buildings, so I entered Central Park at 90th street and 5th avenue and walked up a few steps to the gate surrounding the Reservoir.
Whenever I think of the Reservoir, I’m reminded of the movie Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman. To this day, there is a constant stream of joggers around the Reservoir, and the path around it is a sort of loose, sandy gravel to facilitate running. I wonder how many of those joggers have seen that movie.
I didn’t know the Reservoir was decommissioned in 1993. That explains the lack of security around it and the low gate. I assume that if the Reservoir did supply New York City with water, no one would be allowed anywhere near it in this day & age.
The Central Park Reservoir is great to visit and watch the sunset on a nice day, or to jog around it if that’s your thing. There are many great views of the city and photographic opportunities to be had there.
The photos in this story were taken with an Olympus EM-10 and Lumix 14mm f2.5 & Lumix 25mm f1.7 lenses.
The World Trade Center Station is a transportation hub that connects New Jersey trains to New York trains. The centerpiece, called the Oculus, can be thought of as the main station house.
Inside the Oculus is what’s technically the Westfield Mall. There are said to be over 100 retail stores and restaurants in the Mall, including an Apple Store, Banana Republic and an Eataly.
Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the whole structure is supposed to resemble “a bird being released from a child’s hand.” I found it to feel more like being inside of some kind of futuristic dinosaur, since the curved beams reminded me of bones or ribs. It did have a very organic feel to it, and I did like the overall look of the place. It’s a bright, open space and if you enjoy shopping and dining out you can surely spend a lot of time inside of it.
From a commuting standpoint, the Station lets you access the PATH system to get to New Jersey, as well as many (the 2, 3, A, C, E, N, R, W) New York City Subway trains.
If you’re vacationing in New York City, you might as well check the Oculus out while you’re here. You’ll probably stumble into it after you’ve visited the One World Trade Center Observatory anyway. If you’re a New Yorker you can skip this place until you, for some reason, have to take a PATH train to New Jersey and can’t do it from Penn Station.
The photos in this story were all taken with an Olympus OMD EM-10 and the Olympus 14-42 RII kit lens.
