New York, New York

Helluva town. A recent trip to New York to meet with friends was a great opportunity to take some wonderful city shots. It had been a long while since we’d taken a bite of the Big Apple, back in 1998 before the skyline changed forever in September 2001.

This time our plans to tour around were enhanced by our friends, born and bred New Yorkers who had lived and worked in the city all their lives. Who better to take us to the less touristy places and restaurants and see more of the city. That said, there were places to revisit and many new – a lot has changed in twenty five years.

Over the next few posts I will share some of my favourite images I have worked on. The ‘touristy snaps’ I’m afraid are all on Facebook.

As usual I was camera-challenged, it was a digital dilemma, a photo fluster. What to take with me? Of course I had my very capable iPhone 14 Pro but how could I not take my Fuji XT-2 and lenses? The truth is, even though that camera was a much smaller and lightweight move away from my old full frame Nikon kit a few years ago, the Fuji bag is still a big bag to cart around, and I do like travelling really, really light. It’s a dilemma, because good as the iPhone is there are shots that just cannot be captured properly without the Fuji. But leaving it behind on a trip like this was not an option I was prepared to risk. So we shall see how they both got used….

It seems a good place to start, with an iconic image but hereafter they will be fairly random just to keep it interesting (did you just yawn already?).

It would be churlish not to include a tribute photo of our friends Ron & Susan, born and bred New Yorkers, who spent all their time with us, showing us the sights and avoiding the tourist traps, sharing their knowledge and most importantly, sharing martini time. 🍸

Our hotel was close by Grand Central Station and everybody’s favourite skyscraper, the Chrysler Building. Before our friends arrived we had time to explore the wonderful art-deco lobby and get a couple of shots under the very beady eyes and frequent orders of the lobby guardian constantly telling me “they don’t allow you to walk on the floor, keep to the edge!” without defining how wide this ‘edge’ was. Because I kept infringing this imaginary ‘edge’ it was clearly of the knife variety. Also, when trying to take a photo of the staircase “they don’t like you standing near the steps, they might come down them!” even though I could see up three flights and they were empty. As to who ‘they’ were I never found out and I had a feeling I didn’t want to know.

The Chrysler is close to Grand Central Station so it was only right to pop in to visit the Apple Store. Sorry, I mean view the building. I left with more images (but less $$$ at the Apple Store) and here are a couple of interest. Well, three. I was intrigued by the architecture but also one of the entrance to tracks 113 and 114 – making the place worthy of the title Grand Central station surely?

Moving on…..

Using the ultrawide lens on the iPhone required extra work using Photoshop with Topaz in addition to Lightroom.

With full on days we waited until one evening to take a ‘cocktail cruise’ down the Hudson around Manhattan Island, an event that meant a great personal battle between sipping a martini in the comfort of a 1930’s cabin or stepping outside to grab amazing images of the skyline. This was where I took the shots of the Statue of Liberty.

Coming next in New York New York – The Guggenheim, Tall Buildings, not so tall buildings and wet weather and more rambling.