Images

The New York Series…Part 2

/ Sherry Galey / 20 Comments

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Yesterday I posted an overview of Central Park in autumn shot from the Top of the Rockefeller Plaza. Today, let’s go into the park and enjoy some more intimate views…

Before I left for New York, I made a shot list. I knew that there was so much to see and capture in New York City that I might get overwhelmed if I didn’t at least have an idea of what I was hoping to photograph. It turned out to be a good idea for me. I didn’t get everything on the list and I got lots of shots I didn’t plan to, just by being open to what I was drawn to in the environment, but overall I feel that doing some advance research was well worth the effort.

Let me give you an example. I knew I wanted to shoot Central Park. But where? As was evident in yesterday’s shot, the park is huge and you could walk around in it for days…I knew I didn’t have a whole lot of time and I had plenty of other places on my list, so I decided to be selective.

I figured New York, being south of where I live, was still likely to have colourful leaves on the trees. So I googled fall foliage in New York and discovered that the fall colour was likely to be at its peak last week. Good start!

Then I went to one of my favorite photo sharing sites — 500 px — and did a search for Central Park. This site is chock full of wonderful high-quality images that provide great inspiration. The search function works really well (much better than flickr)  because it can filter by date and also by popularity.

Lo and behold I saw a stunning image of a beautiful stone bridge covered with red ivy. I could see that it had been taken only a few days before so that confirmed that the colours were still quite glorious.

I could also see that it was called the Gapstow Bridge. I love stone bridges (covered with ivy especially) and this is a beauty. It did not take long to find out that this particular bridge was in the southeast corner of the park, not far from the entrance. Bingo! I had a great destination all picked out.

Once I got into the park, I had to ask directions to the bridge, but it was only a short walk and there it was! I was in my element running back and forth trying to capture the bridge from a variety of perspectives with a few different lenses. It was obvious that it had a completely different personality and feel shot from different vantage points. It was late afternoon so the sun was providing fairly nice light.

I am more comfortable with intimate landscapes than really large ones, so that is what I tend to shoot. But it was good practice to try to capture some wider shots as well.

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I had to work around the people who were walking across the bridge and feeding the ducks at the water’s edge. Sometimes I like to have people in my shots, but I did want to make sure I got some of just the bridge.

I probably could have stayed there a good while longer, but the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Tosca was on the agenda for that evening, so I had to reluctantly wrap it up. (Little did I know then that by the end of the night I would become a raving fan of opera and especially Roberto Alagna! If you’re curious why, click here to hear.)

As I walked out of the park, I managed to get a few shots of the park’s trees with the New York skyline behind.

I just love images that show the natural and built worlds side by side, which stands out so clearly at the edge of Central Park. Such a study in contrast.

If you’re going to New York and don’t have days to wander at will, a bit of advance research can really save you a lot of time.

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The New York Series…Part 1

/ Sherry Galey / 23 Comments

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I’ve been to New York City a few times before — 12  to be exact — but this was the first trip I had a good camera — and it was autumn in the city. That made for a great combination!

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I took hundreds of photographs. I plan to spread some of them out over a series of  blog posts.

I’m starting with this image since Central Park is one of my favorite places in the world.

I wanted to see what it looked like from a great height in the fall with the trees leafed out in their beautiful colour, so I took the elevator up the 67 floors to the observation deck on the Top of the Rockefeller Plaza on a sunny perfect fall day.

What a vista!

In this photo, you’re looking north and you see the west side of the park and the buildings of the Upper West Side.

A few years ago, my mother and sister and I took a guided walking tour of Central Park, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Up until then, I simply had no idea what a massive accomplishment this park is and how unique it is.

Central Park was the first public landscaped park in all of the United States.  In 1853, the state legislature first set aside land for a major public park. City commissioners spent $14 million for the land and the construction of the park, which extended from 59th Street to 106th Street, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.

The designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were chosen in public competition in 1858. The park was developed over a span of 16 years.

(Olmsted is considered the father of landscape architecture and he went on to design Prospect Park in Brooklyn and many other North American parks, such as Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, Mount Royal in Montreal, and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and the White House. Here are ten lessons for landscape design you can pick up from him.)

Central Park occupies 843 acres in Manhattan, 6% of its total acreage. You could fit 16 billion New York apartments in the park.

The park includes seven water bodies totaling 150 acres (some of which you can see above), 136 acres of woodlands and 250 acres of lawns. There are 58 miles of walking paths and 4.25 miles of bridle paths.

It also boasts more than 26,000 trees, 36 bridges and arches and nearly 9,000 benches.

It surprised me to learn that there are 215 species of birds in a 6.1-acre sanctuary, many rare to the area including the peregrine falcon.

The 25 million people that visit every year can also enjoy 26 ballfields; 30 tennis courts; 21 playgrounds; one carousel and two ice-skating rinks, one of which is converted into a swimming pool in the summer.

Stay tuned for more images inside the park…

Rich spiced residues…

/ Sherry Galey / 15 Comments
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Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Mary Oliver
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I’ll be away from my blog for about a week. I look forward to catching up with you when I return. In the meantime, I hope you relish whatever particular delights this time of year offers in your part of the world!
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Kim Klassen dot Com

On photography…

/ Sherry Galey / 10 Comments

Photography, both the craft and the art, helps me to be. It allows and enables me to live creatively, which is to honour creation and my own existence. 

FREEMAN PATTERSON

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Double exposure: Leaves and the river in the fall

I never know where I’m going to find creative inspiration next…Sometimes, I see or feel something in other’s people’s images or words. I may experience a sharp flash of insight or a soft sense of recognition that washes over me like a fine mist at the seashore.

Inspiration may come as I look through the viewfinder, or I may not feel it until I see my raw images onscreen. It may abandon me for days…only to return with a shudder of realization or a frisson of enthusiasm.

One thing I know is that human beings are all creative. That’s one characteristic we all share — although how we express it differs radically. Sometimes it is used for ill. Most often, for good.

How we choose to live out our creativity is at once a deeply serious yet profoundly joyous matter. And how we engage creatively with ourselves and with the world deserves some conscious deliberation once in a while…

Since this is a blog about photography…the question becomes how do we talk about what we do as photographers? I don’t mean the “how” — there is an untold number of informative books, articles, videos and courses about that.

I mean the why.

I ask myself why I am so entranced by pointing this boxy black gizmo at patterns of light and shadow and colour out in the world. Freeman Patterson offers one answer that speaks to me. But there are also others who help me understand my own feelings about photography — about creativity, originality and authenticity.

Lately David Duchemin and Kim Manley Ort have added to the depth of this important discussion with utterly thoughtful contributions. Each has just published a heartfelt reflection on the art and craft of photography and why they do what they do that I urge you to read.

I know I love a piece of writing when I find myself copying down several quotes from a short piece. Thank you Kim and David.

Photography, for me, is not so much about self-expression or even expression of the subject, as it is an expression of the connection between the two. Essence meets essence.

Kim Manley Ort

Evolution of a Photographer: Part 1

Evolution of a Photographer: Part 2

Chasing authenticity is like chasing originality. Spend too much time doing it and you’ll lose sight of the thing you were aiming for. Explore. Play. Follow your gut. You’ll know when it’s you and when it’s not.

David Duchemin

On authenticity.

On authenticity. Again.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Hue of you

/ Sherry Galey / 15 Comments

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This week I was inspired to try some abstracts by my brother-in-law and by Kim Manley Ort, who is offering an online course in abstract photography that looks fabulous. (I have taken courses with her in the past and she is one of the best and most generous of photography instructors.)

I was visiting a cemetery recently and Leo pointed out the intriguing patterns of lichen growth on the marble and granite headstones. I was immediately drawn to the tones and designs in the lichen against the white, gray and black of the stones.

One of the sources I consulted about lichens on headstones said that they do not harm the stone and it is best not to try to remove them. They actually protect the stones from damage due to weather and radiation.

Now that the fiery colours on the  trees are receding, we are moving into months redolent of brown tones.  At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss these tones as drab and dull and boring — but take a closer look! There are nuances to these colour schemes that can only be appreciated when you move in closer to the earth.

Heroic deeds remembered…

/ Sherry Galey / 30 Comments

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A visit to a beautiful old cemetery in Brockville this Thanksgiving weekend got us talking about the heroic actions of Francis (Frank) Blaine one awful foggy night back in 1906.

Frank Blaine was the great-grand uncle of my partner, Bob, and his brothers, Leo, Michael and Peter. He was their father’s great-uncle (that is, the brother of their father’s grandmother).

At 10:30 pm the evening of September 20, the “Montreal Express,” or Grand Trunk Railway Train No. 2 — a high-speed train for the time — left Toronto bound for Montreal. Frank Blaine was the engineer.

Early the morning of September 21 (2:00 am) just outside Napanee, Ontario, he confronted a westbound freight train which had just come out of a siding. It was very foggy and he could not see well.

The freight train had not set a red warning lantern to indicate the main line was blocked and provide enough time for him to stop the east bound train.

Aware that there would be a head-on collision, he told his crew to jump, saving their lives. Blaine stayed with his engine in order to reduce the speed of the train as much as possible using the air brake.

According to press reports of the day the impact was so great that the giant engines were interlocked and three freight cars were smashed to kindling wood.

But not one of the passengers or crew were seriously injured or killed, except for the engineer, Frank Blaine.

Blaine had come to Canada from Ireland with his parents as a baby. He was 53 years of age when he died. He left behind a wife and five children.

There were many railway men in my partner’s family — and many paid a steep price for their occupation by way of health problems and a shortened life span. (In fact, railroaders could not even buy life insurance, the work was so dangerous.)  But none paid a higher price than Frank Blaine, who gave his life for his passengers in the accident that day.

The passengers and crew erected a monument to Frank Blaine at his grave site in tribute to him.

It reads:

HE DIED AS ONE, WHO HAD BEEN STUDIED IN HIS DEATH, TO GIVE AWAY THE SWEETEST THING HE HAD, AS TWERE A CARELESS TRIFLE.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF FRANK BLAINE BORN IN COUNTY MAYO, IRELAND, DEC. 20, 1853 DIED AT NAPANEE SEPT. 21, 1906 REQUIESCAT IN PACE (May he Rest In Peace = R.I.P.)

ERECTED BY THE GRATEFUL PASSENGERS OF NO.2 EXPRESS, WHO OWE THEIR LIVES TO THE HEROISM OF THE DECEASED.

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Brothers, Leo (left) and Bob (right) Hussey, descendents of Frank Blaine, at the monument honouring him.

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Not knowing…

/ Sherry Galey / 26 Comments
Mist

Taken en route to the dogsitter’s house around Clayton Lake, Ontario…

NOT KNOWING

how would it be to allow for knowing

and not knowing:

allowing room

for the mystery

of creating

to be able to wonder

softly

without needing to understand everything

to trust in the process

to trust in love

to trust in the mystery and wonder

of the universe

that beats softly wildly

true

all round about us,

that is hidden

in the mists

in the clouds and the rain

in the wind blowing and the rain lashing down on your window,

reminding you

poetically

prosaically

that this is where you are,

on the island,

at the edge,

in a place of finding

and refinding,

and remembering

to remember

the feel of the mist, wind and rain.

John O’Donohue

Weekly Photo Challenge: Infinite

/ Sherry Galey / 42 Comments

Thank you for EXPLORE on Flickr

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Continuing along the thread of poetry I started, I found (was given, actually, by my poetry troubadour friend) this simple poem about simplicity by a Palestinian poet named Taha Muhammad Ali.

Every since I started making images, I have been striving for simplicity. It’s what speaks to me most directly and powerfully and what resonates most deeply. Often it is a simple impression I want to convey, a feeling, a mood, even an idea…

This week’s photo challenge is about capturing moments of wonder “when the infinite catches us by surprise” stumbling “upon it in things both big and small.”  And for me, it is often the small things that I return to over and over — a silent leaf caught in the light can be every bit as glorious as the thumping thunder of Victoria Falls.

Twigs

And so

it has taken me

all of sixty years

to understand

that water is the finest drink

and bread the most delicious food

and that art is worthless

unless it plants

a measure of splendor in people’s hearts.

TAHA MUHAMMAD ALI

I recently read a wonderful post by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits that touches beautifully on the essence of simple living. It’s about stripping down to the very basics — and revelling in them.

Sharing with Friday Finds.

Kim Klassen dot Com