Spotted this while walking along the water earlier today. It was accompanied by a few photos showing a middle-aged man posing on or with his motorcycle, tooling around in the garage, and the like. I think the casualness of the photos — as opposed to the usual memorial photos, which tend to show a person in their ‘Sunday Best,’ — made the whole thing seem more real. A snapshot from a wedding reception or a graduation photo just shows the face; seeing someone in their element, with the things they love, shows the person. Looking over the photos tacked to the tree, it was obvious that a person, not a face, was dearly missed.
When I die, I hope they use the photo from my “About Me” page, or something similarly silly. I don’t take myself seriously in life, I’d hate to start after I was dead.
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Minimal post on this one, just some basic tone and curve adjustment, and a black & white conversion from there.
I just love that the bridge is called Hell Gate Bridge. It brings to mind images of demons and hellspawn erupting from some portal to the netherworld. Trains go in through one side of the portal, and a massive snakelike demon emerges from the other, wreaking havoc and laying waste to the countryside.
In reality, the only thing that erupts from the bridge are freight trains and the occasional Amtrak line. And while Amtrak trains are certainly pretty hellish in their own right, they’re not actually of hell, sadly enough.
My first update in over two weeks. Funny that I should break my shooting dry spell with a shot of the first snowfall I’ve seen all winter. I was expecting mountains of snow for my first New York winter since 1981, and instead I got two months of nothing and a light dusting of snow to finally break the drought.
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I think I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately. It’d be easy to blame my lack of shooting on the miserable weather or the lack of light, but really I think I just haven’t felt the creative juices flowing. I’m not too worried, though. Our relationship with art is just like our relationships with people; it can’t be expected to be fiery and all-consuming all the time. If it were, we’d burn out in an instant. There are ebbs and flows to it, and the trick is to know which is which; to know when to ride the current and when to just sit back and let the wave come to you.
I’ve spent the last two weeks mostly indulging myself in idle distractions; TV shows and movies and reading and video games and the like. I’ve seen enough writer’s blocks to know that fighting it only leads to frustration and aggravation. Better to just resign yourself to the fact that, for now at least, the waters are still. And you can either try and force the issue by paddling yourself and get real tired real quick, or you can just lay back on the board, look up at the clouds, and enjoy the moment.
Just remember to sit up every now and then and check the currents, or you could find yourself out to sea without realizing it.
It’s amazing how much can happen in just a week. The tree has lost so much of its foliage in so short a time. I find it hilarious, though, that all the other trees have been bare for so long, and this one tree is holding on as much as it can.
(There are a couple of other, smaller trees, but those look like they don’t lose their leaves at all, so they don’t really count.)
I finally got to see God of Carnage tonight. Amazing play, which is as much as I had expected. I really wish I’d forced myself to see it when it was still the original cast of James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, and Jeff Daniels. The new cast was good, don’t get me wrong, but Harden won a Tony for her performance. And ever other member of the cast was at least nominated.
It was cool, though. I still really enjoyed myself.
And also, I apparently still have the hots for Annie Potts. She looks good for 57.
I’m not a fan of telecommuting. I’ll do it when necessary (such as today, when I was under-the-weather enough to wanna stay in but not so much as to use my last sick day of the year), but for the most part it’s a fairly painful process. My VPN connection is always a little sluggish, I don’t have all the tools I need, and it’s a little harder to concentrate on my work. Especially with views like these right out my window.
At work I sit in a cube. Three-and-a-half fabric-covered walls, keeping me safe from the big, bright, beautiful world outside my building. I’m nowhere near any windows, and the filtered air that pumps through the vents replaces any need for the fresh air of an Autumn day. It’s not the most cheerful of environments, but it keeps you focused on the task at hand: doing your work.
At home it’s a different story. Directly outside my window is Astoria Park, clean, green, and serene. Beyond that, the Triboro Bridge crossing the East River, in full view thanks to the Autumn-bare Astoria Park trees. On the far right, the Hell Gate Bridge. And in-between, the Harlem skyline, though not as visible during the day as by night.
And as if that view wasn’t distracting enough, I have my big, soft, warm, cozy bed right next to it.
It’s a wonder I manage to get anything done at all.
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