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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.

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.

Quick Tip For Photographing Stunning Sunset or Sunrise Skies

Many beginner photographers struggle with the issue of capturing detail in the sky. Whether it’s a sunrise, a sunset, or just an interesting cloud pattern that you want to capture, many times you will point your camera at the heavens and just end up with a bland, white sky.

The reason this is happening is because your camera is exposing the shot for the whole scene and not just the sky. Your camera wants to give you an evenly exposed photograph where everything is balanced. Usually this means that the camera will try to overexpose your shot to capture detail in the darker parts of your photo such as any ground, trees or buildings that may be included in the frame. Because of this, the sky in your shot will often be overexposed or “blown out”.

To fix this problem, what you need to do is force your camera to expose for the sky and only the sky. You can do that with exposure compensation.

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.

Why I Still Like Micro Four Thirds

A few years ago, when the Micro Four Thirds system was introduced, it was rather revolutionary: it offered small mirrorless cameras paired with equally small high-quality lenses, giving photographers image quality that came pretty close to consumer-level DSLRs in an easier-to-carry package.

Basic Tips for Night Photography

Photographing at night isn’t easy. For a lot of photographers just starting out with night photography, it can be a frustrating experience filled with photos that come out either too dark due to underexposure or very blurry due to camera shake.

But as you can see, most of my photos are taken at night and I think I consistently get pretty good results (and hopefully you agree). Here are some of my tips for shooting at night.

Beginner Question – What is “Bokeh”?

Let’s cut to the chase – you wanted a “real camera” (which for most people means a DSLR) because you wanted to take photos with a blurry background. You were tired of your cell phone images where everything was flat and in focus, and you wanted to produce gorgeous images where your subject was sharp but the background was blurred.

You might have heard the term “bokeh” used alongside images with a blurred background. On Instagram, photos with a blurred background often have tags such as #bokeh or #bokehlicious on them.

But what exactly does “bokeh” mean?