About Photography

The power outage in New York City affected the area of lower Manhattan from approximately 34th Street down to the Battery.  I took these photos near 23rd Street in the Flatiron district.  The uptown views show the contrast between the blacked out foreground against lights from the uptown section including the Empire State Building.

Looking north from 23rd Street the Empire State Building is brightly lit against the blacked out foreground.

Looking south towards the Flatiron building the city was totally dark except for the blurred running lights of passing vehicles.  The brightness from the full moon helped to silhouette the building against the sky.  An 8 second exposure with a Nikon D600 and 24mm focal length lens blurred the traffic.  I placed the camera at a low angle to emphasize the color and texture of the street.

 

In this image I liked the way the headlights flared out from the darkness.  Their immediacy draws the viewer into the scene with a sense of the dangers that existed in the darkened city.   Lights from a passing bus provided the upper horizontal red blurs in this 5 second exposure.

This image taken from the same spot as the one above has a different interpretations of the scene.  Here the effect is more from the perspective of a distant observer and is less threatening and more story-telling of the contrast between dark and light areas of the city.