Fog

It has been cloudy and rainy for days. Yesterday the clouds dropped down and created a fog. I was reluctant to go out, but I pushed myself because the light was mysterious.

I visited the graffiti walls. There are new pieces with vibrant colors.

I had wanted to photograph the Callery pears that I caught blossoming last spring. But there was not enough distance to see the fog.

However, there was this cool beam of light under the BQE.

In this tiny park near the East River, the fog surrounded me, muffling out the sounds. It was soft and peaceful.

Colors

It was raining when I woke up but by noon the sun was burning through the clouds. It was a little hazy from the fog and the colors were popping. I saw this building from the subway the other day. It is frustrating to see something that I want to photograph and be unable to do anything about it. Sometimes the image never reappears because the light changes. When I saw the sun breaking through, I rushed out.

I love the way people post their building numbers.

I crossed the Williamsburg Bridge on the pedestrian side. It is steeper than the bikeway.

 One is rewarded by a very pretty rainbow at the top.

The guardrails were originally a more serious red color. The sun has bleached them to a girlie pink. It reminds me of winter.

Just Before Solstice

I do not participate in the post Thanksgiving shopping orgy, I find it really weird. And for the first time in weeks, on Sunday, I felt relaxed and not tired. I wandered around in the cold with my camera.

Some autumn leaves are still hanging on in spite of all the wind on Saturday. I wasn't really finding the images that I wanted.

Then I found this wall which had some nice light falling on it and it felt good just to play around with the shapes.

It was a brief pause, all the crazy is back this morning.

Early Snow

 

The weather continues to be strange. What was advertised as an rainy nor'easter turned into a snowy one. When we first saw the snowflakes we all laughed as they melted in the puddles. Then they began to stick and the city was muffled during rush hour.

It was startling how quickly the landscape transformed.

The young son was delighted and tested the texture for snowballs.

He found it good quality and launched one in my direction.

The snow all but vanished the next day. Temperatures in the 70's have been promised but have yet to materialize. 

After the storm

An uprooted tree, in Bed-Stuy

We did not particularly suffer from Hurricane Sandy. We did not flood and we had electricity. Still without the subway and with lower Manhattan blacked out, we were stuck in a kind of limbo; not as much fun as a vacation, but not nearly as dire as others had it.

I got a lot of work done on my dream sequence, but it is not ready to post. It has been hard for me to take photographs. The sun has been arriving in a blaze of glory only to slip behind a bank of clouds. It has been so windy. It is still hard to get around and tomorrow promises to be a horrible day for traveling around the city. November used to be such a pretty month.

October and Elm Trees

Things have been busy, I have been visiting high schools with the young son. I think this is more of a city thing, scrambling to find a good school in a place with several choices; some fabulous, most kind of scary. On Monday I was rushing off to another visit, the sunlight was so beautiful, I regretted not bringing my camera. I planned to return the next day, but the beautiful light was veiled in misty clouds. It wasn't so bad, a cloudy bright instead of grey gloom.

At least I got the elm trees in their autumn colors. I am usually too early or too late. 

There was a nice green and gold thing going on that made me very happy.

The sun has not returned and the brightness has deepened into plain old cloudy.

And it does not seem ready to come back any time soon with the big Frankenstorm on the way.

This picture sums up my feelings about all the gloomy weather.

Midtown Getting Taller

Detail of the Roosevelt Hotel

On Sunday, the New York Times had an article about how Mayor Bloomberg wants to rezone the area around Grand Central Station. He wants taller buildings. It is hard to imagine an area less in need of more tall buildings. There are some pretty old ones in the area and I worried that these were in danger. So I plunged out in the afternoon gloom to see which buildings would fall under the rezoning footprint.

Luckily most of them were stodgy old brick buildings or bland glass blocks. I have a fondness for the old brick buildings and I would be sad to see them replaced. But at least none of the old beauties is in danger.

Well almost none, 345 Madison is one of the buildings that may be torn down. It is all black marble and bronze highlights. I sketched it once years ago, I would miss it.

While I was prowling around, I passed one of my favorite mid-century buildings diagonal to the Chrysler Building.

I love its streamlined arches and its pressed aluminum.

I cannot go into this part of town without passing the Chrysler building. It is too close to appreciate its spire, but it's good to appreciate the entrances too.

One main drawback to the rezoning is it could add 16,000 workers to the area. On a cold rainy Sunday, the streets were full of people, I can't imagine where all those new workers would fit.

Equinox Askew

The season shifted towards autumn rather abruptly. Last week I was planning on putting out some plants.  Then the air turned cool and windy. I felt it was too late in the season to do plant installations. It was probably for the better as a rowdy storm blew through with high winds and heavy rain and took the last traces of summer away.

I brought the plants inside and made some more cuttings. I will wait for spring. Then I hope to have more plants from the cuttings and can really green up the abandoned bicycles of the city.

I like equinox light because it is so clear and sharp. It is a bit harsh for photographs though. It softens at sunrise and again at sunset, I watch the colors melting together as I work in the kitchen. I always seem to end up in the kitchen, chopping something, watching the light in the street.

Today the sharp edges of the light pleased me. I wandered through Soho and was not horrified by the rampant commercialization and luxury explosion that goes on there. It was early in the day and the tourists were not ambling yet.

There is a really cool shop that sells tile. They have mannequins wearing tile mosaics in their windows. I have never really paid attention to the shop, but today it caught my eye.

I have been so disorganized. I feel as if I have to arrange my work better. I need to work on my dream images and eventually find a way to present them. My posts may be a little spotty as I try to get myself together.

Summer's end

There are summers that end softly, the warm days linger, the sunlight becomes slowly sharper. Other summers end abruptly in storms and darkness. This year we have the latter. Labor day weekend was a sorry affair. It was gloomy and cool, with the promise of bad weather.

In spite of this, we lit a bonfire and toasted marshmallows. After that, the rain moved in. On the last day of summer break, the young son and I had planned to go to the beach. The weather was not the best for such an endeavor, but we were stubborn. As we approached the shore, a storm moved in, the sky darkened, lightning crackled in the distance. We plunged on, even though Jones beach was closed, the town beach in Babylon was not. It was still raining as we picnicked in the car.

The rain tapered off, and we explored the deserted beach.

The sky was moody as the waves rushed back and forth.

The young son faced off against the surf, using the energy washing against him to fuel plots to anime style dramas.

The only sunny day this week was humid and too hot. Today we had two tornadoes, small ones.

Starting tomorrow, all the days will be beautiful, not too hot. It sounds like early autumn.

Adventures With JR

You remember JR?
Last week I volunteered to help some students from the Beacon summer program put up posters for JR's Inside Out project. It is a participatory art project in which people upload portraits that are printed on 4x5' sheets. The people then wheatpaste their portraits onto walls. JR is using the money from his TED grant to fund the project which recently met its goal of 100,000 portraits from all over the world.

These are some of the young ladies from the summer art program. They were lovely people and it was a blast working with them. They wanted to send a message against bullying.