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Speaking candidly

unposed shots of people at work, rest, and play
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With space in my bag limited it was just my luck that of the 3 wide angle zooms in my arsenal I would choose to stick the one with the least field of view in my camera bag today. OH how I would have killed for even ONE degree wider field of view for this shot. It was so difficult to not cut off some part of the scene I needed to keep while lining things up, that huge beads of sweat poured down my face, as I knelt down on one knee to capture the composition I desired. Boy this shot was a lot harder than it looked.
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With space in my bag limited it was just my luck that of the 3 wide angle zooms in my arsenal I would choose to stick the one with the least field of view in my camera bag today. OH how I would have killed for even ONE degree wider field of view for this shot. It was so difficult to not cut off some part of the scene I needed to keep while lining things up, that huge beads of sweat poured down my face, as I knelt down on one knee to capture the composition I desired. Boy this shot was a lot harder than it looked.

bandsstreet performerscandidfallCity Hall Park

  • DSC_0122 family fishing day
  • DSC_0204 Saturday afternoon concert in Columbus Park
  • I can't imagine cities could be livable without their parks. And it's always a wonderful thing seeing a new generation, claiming a park as their own.
  • Here at the new Meadowlands for the Jets first ever regular season game, it was easy to find Jet fans displaying their passion for our home team, and hopefully a big winning season.
  • With the defense jumping out of the gate absolutely on fire, the start of the season's first game had we Jet fans on the edge of our seats - our euphoria wouldn't last long...
  • I kept hoping to capture a shot of the crowd celebrating a huge game changing moment to capsulize the seasons first game. However as the game wore on, the conservative offense combined with the Ravens stout defense led to many shots of the crowd that looked like this instead, and this shot was in the 2nd quarter with us still leading 6-0. I stayed to the bitter end, and while the fans exhibited even more expressive frustrations than this, as the game dragged into the 4th quarter, the impact in the photos were weakened by all the empty seats springing up everywhere you looked.
  • DSC_0980 pub alley
  • The cobblestone roads, and narrow crooked allies, the old style buildings, many of them hundreds of years old, makes several of the most southern streets in Manhattan wonderful places to walk through. None that I enjoy more than this section of Wall street I dubbed "Pub Alley". A constant gathering place of after work Wall Streeter's and tourists alike, it's awash in character and charm.
  • With space in my bag limited it was just my luck that of the 3 wide angle zooms in my arsenal I would choose to stick the one with the least field of view in my camera bag today. OH how I would have killed for even ONE degree wider field of view for this shot. It was so difficult to not cut off some part of the scene I needed to keep while lining things up, that huge beads of sweat poured down my face, as I knelt down on one knee to capture the composition I desired. Boy this shot was a lot harder than it looked.
  • It was a nice night weather wise, and as the warm air flowed around my body, I walked up and down the Esplanade gathering pictures of people doing their thing on an evening before fall could come in and chased away the summers warm kiss on our fair city.
  • DSC_1360 scenes at sunset
  • Give a girl a fish and she'll eat for a day, teach your daughter to fish and you'll have memories for a lifetime...
  • After spending the first 2 early hours of the morning searching for a way to reach the part of the shore that I knew from past experience was favored by migrating shore birds, I exhaustedly gave up and decided to explore a part of the Staten Island shore that was new to me. First I took pictures of the different butterflies feeding on the many flowers strewn across the beach. Then my attention turned to the shores inhabitants that were human.
  • Working my way further down the shore I came upon this interesting beach feature and thought of the photographic possibilities and decided to plop down my stuff right here and wait for the tide to come back in, which I figured would be in another 3 hours or so, right around sundown - perfect! Having brought along my (shockingly) comfortable collapsible nylon travel seat, purchased in the camping section of Paragons Sporting goods store, my tiny portable radio, and a pack lunch, I was well prepared to wait it out. <br /> <br /> Not the most picturesque spot on the beach to sit nor any kind of spot to go fishing, I attracted a lot of attention from the locals who walked by who asked me what I was looking to capture with my camera. Truth be told, after spending much of the morning trying to find a new route to the shore because the only route there I was familiar with was temporarily blocked, and the several alternate routes I tried were all heavily thicketed paths that constantly snagged my clothes and two heavy bags of camera equipment (yet didn't lead to the beach either) - I was kind of tired, and really needed a break. Since the migrating shore birds I hoped to photograph this day looked to have already come and gone on their way south, I looked up and down the coast for a minute then decided that waiting for the tide to come back in would probably be a wonderfully relaxing way to spend the rest of the day while waiting for the lighting conditions to cooperate. Happily I was correct.<br /> <br /> The first thing I observed from my comfy seat was that this very particular spot of Staten Islands New Dorp beach (which faces the Atlantic Ocean) is a focal point for local inhabitants possessing any number of legs from two and up. This gentleman spent a good 20 minutes or so turning over the rocks searching for tiny crabs to use for bait the next day when he planned to go fishing (he wouldn't be the last). A woman walking by asked me what he was looking for, and when I told her she said the it wasn't the season for finding those little guys, but as he left he showed me his bucket and it was filled at least an inch deep with tiny little crabs. As soon as he started to leave another man came to pick up where he left off, and so the rest of the afternoon would go as both man and bird would search these rocks and pebbles looking for these tasty 8 legged treats.
  • Whenever I set up my camera on one of my tripods anywhere, I attract a lot of attention, as numerous people tend to come up and chat. It's a great way to meet new people, and today was no exception. One man named Bob, told me he collected glass and marbles (the kind of marbles we played with as kids), and has a large collection of glass and bottles the sea has deposited here on Staten Island's ocean facing shore over the years. Some of them are several hundred years old. It turns out this was a busy place many decades ago. Rose (that's her and her dog "Baby"), told me that the this used to be a pier for seaplanes to load and unload passengers long, long ago. And Bob said that the remnants of the pier to my right (out of picture view) used to be a wharf that led to a popular restaurant. Both are now long gone - nothing left but the stumps of the piers that once were.<br /> <br /> I love how my camera not only captures moments in time, but brings me into contact with so many interesting people that divulge fascinating tidbits of things I could never have guessed about. A most enjoyable hobby photography has turned out to be.
  • DSC_ 3030 a nice looking way to travel
  • DSC_ 3042 a man and his manatee - poetry in motion
  • DSC_ 3060 a day at the shore, scenes from my seat at the beach
  • With the sun already starting to set in the western sky, this turned out to be the last group of people that would hunt for crabs here at this focal point at New Dorp beach, but I met a lot of interesting people. and learned about several interesting facts on this part of Staten Islands shore. So my day did not turn out that bad I had to admit as I packed up my gear and headed home for the evening.
  • So who's the bearded fellow smiling with the glasses? Why that's my best friend Scott. If perchance you've read my 'bio' here on Smugmug, you now have a face to go with the nice comments about him. Not quite as visually gripping as many of my other candid shots in this gallery, you might ask what made me take this particular shot, which is disappointingly grainy and slightly out of focus to boot, (sometimes your camera's autofocus just misses the mark, what can I say!) Well as it happened we were talking on the phone one day, and he mentioned that he was building a large scale model battle tank for the game 'Warhammer' that he plays with numerous friends of his at a store in the Village, called the Games Workshop.<br /> <br /> Now having been my best friend for over 20 years, and my roommate for 7 of them, I know when he goes big he goes all out. He once started building a flyable wood scale model of a DC-3 that had a 12ft. wing span. He mounted the wings on our living room wall, and suspended the fuselage from the ceiling between the living and dinning rooms, man it was so cool. Another time we each built HO racing car layouts that were so massive that they took up the entire living and dining rooms. The main straightaways alone on each layout (we built 4 different ones), were over 18ft long and it took a car two and a half minutes to complete just one lap! Don't ask about how difficult it was walking around the apartment while we were doing all this, we were just having too much fun to care.<br /> <br /> He told me the tank won first place for his Games Workshop store, at a worldwide convention that all the Games Workshop stores held this past August in Baltimore Maryland. And now that it had returned 'home' to his store here in the Village on 8th street, he was going to spend the next few months hand painting the colossal scale model, as he entered it in the contest unpainted in order to beat the deadline. So I decided to come down one day a get a few pictures of him at the store painting his imaginative creation.
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