PWH3.COM – Page 2 – New York City Photographer

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.

Always Strive to Deliver High-Quality Images

Your goal as a photographer should be to show your clients, your audience and your fans images of the highest possible quality. I’m not saying you always have to “wow” people with dramatic shots of exotic locations. What I mean is that you should produce images of high technical quality. Here are some guidelines for evaluating your own images to see if they meet the standards of high-quality photography.

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.

A Visit to SoHo, NYC

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.

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.

How to fix the “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress” Error on HostGator

This is an off-topic post, but many photographers use WordPress as the basis of their photography portfolios and photo blogs, so I am writing it anyway.

If you’re using HostGator and you tried to update your PHP version to the most recent one (like I did) and you thereby broke your entire WordPress blog (like I did), here’s a quick fix I found that will hopefully get everything working for you again.

Even though this is specifically for those of us using HostGator, it may work with other hosting platforms that use cPanel. Or you may be able to extrapolate a solution that works for you based on this information if you’re using different control panel software or a Linux distribution on your own server. Give it a shot if nothing else is working – but remember, you are doing this at your own risk and I am not responsible if you mess up your site even more.

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.

Advanced Quick Tip – Set Your RAW files to “Lossless compressed”

Your professional camera probably has multiple settings for RAW compression. Changing how your camera compresses RAW files can be useful for saving space while shooting, but it may have some unfortunate effects, particular if you are using an older camera with an older sensor. You may not notice it in every image, but there may come a time when an important image suffers due to how your camera handles RAW compression.

RAW Compression Settings

Whatever you do, don’t bother with Compressed RAW images, as they will sometimes give you an unfortunate dithering or gradient in your sky shots (or any shots that contain large areas of solid color) that you can’t easily remove in post processing.

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.