A great way to start a New York City experience is to visit the ever-bustling Times Square. We started our evening with a great dinner at Tony’s Di Napoli just off Times Square, then headed to the New Amsterdam Theater at 42nd Street to see a splendid performance of Disney’s musical “Aladdin” (a present from the kids for The Signifcant Other). I was a bit concerned bringing my camera into the theater, but it turned out to be no problem whatsoever, as long as the cam stayed in the bag during the show, where photography was obviously not allowed. I needed to have it with me, as after the show we wanted to have our Times Square experience with a chance for me for some night photography. For the images continue after the jump…
My gear for our week in the Big Apple was my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom. The 12-100 (24-200 in full frame due to the m43 crop factor of 2) turned out to be the perfect lens for shooting the streets of New York. Sporting a constant aperture of F/4 across the whole zoom range, plus having a lens-internal image stabilization, that allows me to shoot at a slow shutter speed of 1/5 sec hand held and still get pin sharp images. Perfect for night photography in the city. Although Times Square is lit up like a Christmas tree, and wide angle shots can easily be done with the lowest native ISO, in my case 200. Only when zooming in (and having less light on the sensor) I needed to increase my ISO. For your reference I included image specs below each photo.
Famous on Times Square is the US Armed Forces recruiting center, doubling as the perfect background for some reflection shots of the passing cars.
Obviously, Times Square has its share of dressed up street artists, posing with the visitors for a few dollars. There were various exemplars of the Statue of Liberty, as well as a few transformers. What was fun to watch were some comedians pulling a show for the onlooking crowd, as you can see in the photo below.
The crowd os amazing, a Street Photographers’s dream, everywhere you see people posing, kissing, hugging, there is lots of gesture to be captured to add interest to the street images.
Then I experimented with some long exposure photography, using slow shutter speeds between 1/3 sec and 1/8 sec in combination with turning the zoom or panning while pressing the shutter. I’m always a big fan of some creative experimenting, also because it helps you to avoid the “usual” shots everyone takes of well known places and attractions.
RAW conversion and post processing of my photos was done in Lightroom Classic CC.
From Times Square we continued to Rockefeller Center for a late night trip up “Top of the Rocks”, but this is for another post. Stay tuned for more impressions of our NYC experience.
The included links to places we visited are for reference only, there was no collaboration of any sorts and we did not receive any benefits for mentioning it here in this post.
I wish you all a great start into the weekend! If you look for some inspirations what to do with your camera, check out my free Learning Center for all my tips and inspirations around photography.
Marcus
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