You must be strong now as the following pictures will show nothing else but me!
I usually do not like photos being taken of me but sometimes I feel I could need a shower under the softbox, so I can remember what I once looked like when sitting in my rocking chair.
Main light comes from a softbox almost above my head and in a straight line with the lens. Some of this light reflects in a reflector close to the floor.
I haven’t done a lot of photos this year. I can’t really tell why but sometimes it’s the familiar surroundings which isn’t very inspiring. It’s sometimes hard to see the world with different eyes, to create something brand new out of something very familiar. I think this is what people call abstraction.
However I appreciated my sister asking me to take pictures in the park I live close by. As she is very familiar to me and so is the park I decided to give the pictures a punch of color and light, in order to make them something special. The only tree in the park that was still carrying yellow leafs had already been occupied by color searchers like us. But when it was our turn I dialed manual (over) exposure, pointed the camera towards the sun and tried to produce as much flare as possible. And this with a lens I preferred to buy for its flare-resistance (Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8). After some minor color adjustments in lightroom I finally got the pictures that match the colors, the mood and the time of the year.
After we had taken the subway, two flights, a train and another subway we arrived at our hotel close to the Madison Square Park where we only dropped off our luggage and headed to the ferry to Liberty Island. It was a “once in a lifetime event” that I booked in advance – to be on the island at sunset (at least in September). So I had a chance to take a close picture of the Statue of Liberty at the so called blue hour. They gave us to eat and drink and we enjoyed strolling on this remote little island. The skyline is not very attracting from Liberty Island as it is from Brooklyn but at least for me it was an adventure to take the subway in Nürnberg and to end up at one of the landmarks of New York, which showed me how “close” the world became.
I fell in love with one of the pictures I took the following days, it is a panorama of the skyline taken from Brooklyn, right at the base of Brooklyn Bridge. Despite of all my planning and dusk simulation in Google Earth before my travels my companions have to always be very patient with me. We were standing at the dock for at least one hour until the brightness of the blueish sky matched the brightness of the illuminated skyscraper windows. You could also adjust everything in Photoshop or take a HDR, but I am still too lazy for post processing.
This is the picture (four pictures stitched with Hugin).
I do not want to make too many words about the great time that I had in Manhattan, all in all it is a vibrant city with its very own unmistakable flair.
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