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By mike, 28 February 2010 1:42 am

Not about to let Friday’s abundant snowfall go to waste, I grabbed my camera, two lenses, and headed off to Central Park.

Me and about half of New York, rather. I have never seen as many people out with cameras as I did today. At one point I saw about five or six people on the same small bridge, all looking out over one of the railings, shooting The Lake. It was kinda ridiculous.

Earlier in the day, I found myself walking around Jackie O Reservoir and happened upon a small hut-slash-gazebo right on the water, with some ducks milling about on (and in) the ice not five feet away. Inside the hut-slash-gazebo was a man and his dog, just hanging out. Despite the droves of people flocking to Central Park and despite the fact that we were in the heart of Manhattan, the scene was quiet and still. Quiet, that is, except for the soft, mournful tune emanating from the man’s harmonica.

I stood there for a while, taking some photos but mostly just enjoying the peaceful tranquility of the moment. The air was crisp, ducks silently milled about in the water, and all you could hear was the man’s quiet harmonica.

That, and the three other photographers, about fifteen feet away, snapping photos.

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By mike, 12 February 2010 12:16 am

Went for a walk on my lunch break (worked from home today) and passed a running track, where a bundled-up runner was doing laps. Winter runners always make me feel especially lazy. I can’t be bothered to run when it’s nice out, and these guys are running in cold winter weather. Oof.

Post-processing was fairly minimal on this one. I added a gradient filter on the top to bring out a little more color in the sky and did some basic level and curve adjustments. I also did a tiny clone job to clean out a distracting part of lamppost in the upper-right corner.

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By mike, 11 February 2010 12:06 am

Earlier tonight I had the brilliant idea to go out into the driving snow and freezing cold, and take some long-exposure shots of the Triboro Bridge. I won’t bore with the details, but the high moment of the outing involved me standing by the freezing East River, 25mph winds sandblasting my face with sleet and snow while my umbrella whipped around me, my tripod threatened to topple over, and frost and sleet accumulated on the front of my lens as it was exposing.

Giving up the excursion as lost, I packed it up and headed back to the apartment, taking some hand-held shots along the way. It wasn’t until I got back and started going over the photos that I realized I hadn’t cleaned all the slush off the lens. What little had remained blurred and obscured parts of the outer rim of my lens, giving photos this ethereal, glowy quality to them.

The longer you shoot, the more you get used to things like this, these “happy accidents.” Photos where the thing that makes it work the most (or at least one of them) was completely unplanned. It happens more often than one would think. For all the control you try to exert on your shoot, making sure that everything — the gear, the location, the talent, the lighting, the timing, everything — is exactly as it needs to be, randomness always manages to creep in.

It used to give me pause; how good a photographer could I possibly be if some of my most memorable, most lauded, most beloved photos were products of chance? Eventually I started to realize that chance is always a factor, but it doesn’t run the show. The camera didn’t fall out of your bag, land on the shutter release, and take the photo. It was the photographer who put it in the right place, at the right time, under the right circumstances, and took the photo. There was still talent and skill involved with that.

That said, I really love the old-timey feel to the photo. I actually didn’t have to do much post at all. The low light gave the photo the reddish tint; all I did was tweak contrast and levels a little, and built on the vignette caused by the sleet and the corners of my ultrawide. Everything else was like that when I got there.

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By mike, 4 February 2010 12:34 am

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.