I went back into my archives for this one, looking for something for the Film Friday and Plastic Lens Friday photo themes on Google Plus.* This is a shot of the Apple Store Cube on Fifth Avenue, taken with the first roll I shot on my Diana F+ plastic camera, and also taken before the recent renovation that eliminates the separate glass sections that you can see here held together by the small gold colored plate.

*  If you want to see what they are about, go to Goodle Plus and search for #filmfriday or #plasticlensfriday).

I know I’ve written the story of this morning earlier, but it’s really the most relevant and interesting thing I have to say about this image: it was New Year’s Day and a gorgeous, mild morning at that. I had planned to get up in time to shoot the year’s first sunrise, which actually is not all that early so close to the winter solstice. But I ended up being just a touch behind schedule so I was rushing about, still with time to make it to my chosen location and set up if all went well. But then things did not go well as it was impossible to find any available parking within even several blocks of my intended spot on the upper east side.

I did not really have a Plan B in mind, but I did have a plan to someday, eventually, shoot in Fort Tryon Park in the extreme north of Manhattan. So I headed crosstown and then up to the park. As it turned out, given the topography up there, I was still able to get some “just about” dawn shots even though I arrived and set up much later than official sunrise. This shot was even taken roughly 15 minutes after my first exposures in the park. I’m not sure which maxim applies best: Always Have A Backup Plan.  Be Prepared. Turn Lemons Into Lemonade.  Go With The Flow.

Whatever. If you cannot take the shot you planned, look around, move if necessary, and find the best shots you can take. Too long for a catchy aphorism I suppose, but Tim Gunn already invented “Make it Work!”

A common element of urbex photography, especially when using the HDR technique, is a shot that shows the interior decay of the abandoned structure contrasted against what is often verdant growth outside the window. Using an HDR program like Photomatix to blend multiple exposures can do this, but with a shot as simple as this one could also probably achieve the same effect manually, by using layers to mix the bright exposure of the room with a darker exposure of the bright scene outside the window to avoid it being over exposed. For this image I used Photomatix, but then also did a manual blend because the tones I wanted to emphasize inside the room were different from those I wanted to display in the scene outside.

Walking along River Street in Hoboken, I came across this subtle bit of neon advertising for Hoboken Cigars, and was immediately drawn to its studied, understated cool. You can see me and my tripod reflected in the bottom center window. While I do not mind it here, I wish there were a magic tool that would allow me to shoot into storefronts and other street level windows from straight ahead and not have to worry about getting myself in the shot.

I hope everybody had a great weekend, and faces a great week ahead.

I played with easily a half dozen variations of this – black and white, darker blues, more reds, etc., and finally settled on this, after I added the yellow tones in the trees. This is the Lake in Central Park, taken from the 72nd Street transverse looking northwest.

Happy Mothers Day to all the wonderful women who fulfill that role.

Events prevented me from adding any images to Instagram this week, so instead of selecting something from this week I’ve pick a couple from my archives. In addition, I have a small related announcement, which is that I now have a gallery at Instacanv.as. My gallery is here. As the name implies. Instacanv.as allows people to make canvas prints out of Instagram photos. People do some amazing things on Instagram, so please take a look not just at my gallery, but at the site overall. You never know if you might find something you like. Happy weekend everyone.

If this scene looks familiar to regular visitors, that’s because it is the same exact point of view as this image from just a few weeks ago. In fact they were taken the same morning, with this shot coming at the end of the same excursion as I circled back to where I started, but now with a plastic Holga-style lens on my Nikon D700 (also the pigeons left and a van parked at the top of the hill).

I did a black and white conversion and added some grain.

Walton Street is a short, two-block stretch in downtown Syracuse with a lot of restored buildings and pretty shops, but that is not what I chose to shoot that morning. This is a loading dock, I guess. There is a great ghost sign above, but I cut it off because “Hurbson Office Equipment” did not seem to do the scene justice.

Really, it’s the white rag that makes the shot, in my opinion.

This strikes me as a quintessential NY scene: a Queens barber shop promising Brooklyn flavor, and the sedan with the flags adds an extra touch. It isn’t my most exciting photo, but I think it captures something true.  It’s a shame that the parking sign is right in front of the awning, but sometimes that’s how it goes.