Adventures thru the Lens - Sharing Ideas through Images

More room for pedestrians in Times Square

This headline in The New York Times grabbed my attention yesterday: "Mayor Plans to Close Parts of Broadway to Traffic." The NYT report goes on as follows: "The city plans to close several blocks of Broadway to vehicle traffic through Times Square and Herald Square, an experiment that would turn swaths of the Great White Way into pedestrian malls and continue Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's effort to reduce traffic congestion in Midtown." Wow, this should be interesting. Supposedly we might be seeing some changes as soon as May of this year. Stay tuned.

Through a Lens Darkly, the Statue of Liberty

Lately I've been experimenting with photographing through a telescope. Up until now, it's mostly just been trial and error. Simply transporting the telescope to an area where I want to photograph is the first step. Secondly, I have to attach my camera to the scope and find a steady surface to balance the telescope on. But it's looking through the scope and getting focused on an object that is probably the hardest part of it all. You see, it's a very long telescope and therefore the slightest movement on my part results in a significant movement through the viewfinder--just staying trained on one object and keeping it centered requires a steady hand and smooth breathing. Plus, it's very dim when looking through it and getting an object in perfect focus is very difficult.

A few weeks ago, New York City had a snowstorm. I wondered what the Statue of Liberty would look like through the blizzard. So I went down to the southern tip of Manhattan and got aboard the Staten Island Ferry, which is the best (and cheapest) way of getting an up-close view of the iconic statue. But all those difficulties I mentioned about holding the telescope still? Well, you can multiply them by about 20 times when you're on board a ship in the New York harbor. The constant up-and-down heaving of the ferry as it hit the waves made it hard to stay centered on the statue, and it gave me a little bit of a seasick feeling as well. But I came away with this image of the statue. I think this picture works on its own, mainly due to its simplicity and its understanded tones and colors. But I think this picture works on another level because it was taken on January 19, 2008, the very last day of the presidency of George W. Bush. Now, like the man or dislike him, I think one has to appreciate the peaceful transition of power in America. Yet just because we have a new president who is very popular and who has given the nation a boost of optimism and renewal, it doesn't mean that our future is certain.