In yesterday’s posts I left you with a small riddle, asking whether anyone would recognize the building were I shot the abstract fine-art architectural shots. While no-one came up with the right solution (Oculus – World Trade Center Station in New York City), a few readers correctly recognized the work of architect Santiago Calatrava. Today, continuing my series “NYC Experience” from our trip to the Big Apple in 2018, I show you a bit more of the outside and interior of this new iconic NCY landmark.
Instead of the bustling Christmas market on the main square there is emptiness and silence on the first advent weekend in the Streets of Nuremberg, with people being asked to stay home and most activities being shut down due to our second lockdown.
But resilient she stands, the old city, as she has for the past 970 years, having survived the plague waves of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries as well as the destructions of the aerial attacks during World War II that destroyed 90% of the buildings within the city walls. And the Imperial Castle, the mighty bell towers of St. Sebald church and City Hall will still be there when this ugly pandemic will finally subside.
I know there is the theory saying you should try to find an individual angle in your photography, not going after the shots that million others have taken. Thank heavens it’s just that…a theory.
Of course I went after the two classic night shots of the Seattle skyline. The first from Kerry Park was taken with 1/6 sec @ f/4 and ISO 500. I took it handheld, camera tightly tucked against the body, arms resting on the railing of the viewpoint. As I have written in other posts, getting tack sharp images with 1/6 sec handheld is no big problem with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 combined with the 12-100 F/4, where image stabilization of the camera are added to the lens internal image stabilization. Amazing technology. It was that crowded at the viewpoint that it would have been difficult to set up a tripod anyway.
Night Lines | Seattle | 2018
The second classic night shot of the Seattle skyline is from the 12th Avenue bridge across the I5. You have Century Link Field (home of the Seattle Seahawks) to the left, the Interstate 5 and Seattle downtown. Image specs here are 4 seconds, f/7.1 and ISO 200. As I wanted to capture the light trails of the passing cars I used a slow shutter speed of 4 seconds with the camera on a small tripod. I would have loved to use a longer shutter speed, but the problem was the bridge was vibrating with passing cars. Anything longer than 4 seconds always resulted in shaking from a passing car. Still, I’m quite happy with the result.
This episode from our week in NYC I takes you up one of the most iconic buildings in the world, the Empire State Building, located on the west side of Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets. The Art Deco skyscraper was completed in 1931. Including the antenna it has a height of 1,454 feet (443.2 m). For a bit about the building and more photos continue after the jump… Continue reading “NYC Experience – Empire State Building”→
Bokeh Bridge | New York City | 2018 | 1/10sec @ f/4 and ISO 200
DUMBO stands for “Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”, the Brooklyn neighborhood on the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Originally a ferry landing, with 19th- and early 20th-century industrial and warehouse buildings, the area is now a hip and expensive neighborhood with plenty bars, restaurants and fancy apartments in the converted brick buildings.
I love NYC | New York | 2018 | 1/80 sec @ f/4 and ISO 640
From Manhattan it best can be reached via the A-Line Station “High Street / Brooklyn Bridge”. Form the station you can easily reach beginning of the famous walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, or you can wander down to the East River to take in the awesome views of the Manhattan downtown skyline and the massive two bridges crossing the East River, best seen from the Brooklyn Bridge Park.
I was quite amazed by the nice bokeh my mZuiko 12-100mm f/4 produced at its widest aperture, and I loved experimenting a bit in the waning light of a splendid NYC day.
Blue Hour Skyline | New York City | 2018 | 1/13 sec @ f/4 and ISO 400
What also sets this lens apart, is the awesome lens internal image stabilization. I shot the next two photos with a shutter speed of 1/5 sec hand-held, and they are real sharp. This saves me lugging around a tripod, which is a key benefit when roaming a full day through a city on foot. Shooting low light with this lens and my Olympus OM-D E-M1 is so much fun. Despite the slow shutter speeds I could keep ISO at by, never exceeding 1600 (which is no problem noise-wise on the Olympus). And at f/4, the lens is still sharp across the frame and along the full zoom range. A great piece of glass.
Brooklyn Bridge | New York City | 2018 | 1/5 sec @ f/4 and ISO 800
If you want to rest a bit and are in for a pizza, directly underneath the bridges are various Italian restaurants featuring coal fired brick pizza ovens, something that is not allowed across the East River in Manhattan for fire prevention reasons. We went to Grimaldi’s on Front Street.
The Bridge | New York City | 2018 | 1/5 sec @ f/4 and ISO 1600
This photograph of the Manhattan Bridge behind brick buildings of Washington Street, with the Empire State Building visible beneath the bridge was on my “must have shot” list. During my earlier trips to the Big Apple I never made it to DUMBO, and I have a framed photograph of this famous view by German photographer Steffen Böttcher (“Stilpirat”) hanging in my office. So sure we finished our tour with this iconic view, just down from the High Street subway station.
This is my New York City eye-opener from this morning, in the truest sense of the word. When I opened my eyes at 6:05am this morning, this is what I saw from my pillow. Our hotel room has floor to roof glass windows, and sure we slept with the curtains open, with the view of the downtown Manhattan skyline. I grabbed my E-M1 and squeezed off a shot through our windows at 1/5 sec, f/4 and ISO 200, to capture the magic of the pre-sunrise blue hour.
Empire State Building | New York | 2018
The debate was not really a debate. We threw some clothes on and took the stairs from the 12th floor (where our room is) to the rooftop on the 19th floor of our hotel in the Meetpacking District directly above the Highline Park. In the midst of a freezing morning (it was 32F / 0C) we enjoyed, all by ourselves, a magic Manhattan sunrise.
Rooftop Reflections | New York City | 2018
The rooftop has also a glass wall, in which I captured the reflections of the sunrise behind the midtown skyline (behind us) and the downtown skyline with the new World Trade Center. No double exposure, a single shot. 1/320 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 200. Lens was the 12-100mm F/4 I brought along with my OM-D E-M1.
Room with a View | New York City | 2018
I took this panorama with my iPhone from the roof, this is practically the same view we enjoy from our room, only without any window reflections. Isn’t this a million dollar view? Life is good! Today we head downtown to World Trade Center and the 9/11 memorial and museum.
This day of my business trip around the world ended with one of the most spectacular view on this planet. As described in my last post, we flew into Taiwan the day before. Suffering from jet lag due to 9h physical time difference to the US west coast, I had a short night, hitting the sheets around 10pm, then being wide awake at 3am in the middle of the night. I don’t fight jet lag, so I got up and started working on emails and doing calls. At 9am I was in our Hsinchu Office for management meetings and an employee town hall. A quick but great lunch with our Taiwanese hosts, then a driver took us back to Taipei airport were we took a brand new China Southern A350 for the 1h 15min flight to Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport. I was on the ground in Taiwan for less than 24 hours. I didn’t even get as much as a glimpse of Taipei city or the Taipei 101 tower. Landing around 6pm we cleared immigration and found our driver who took us to the hotel in Pudong where we arrived around 8pm. Despite being dead tired after a super long day, I couldn’t let this opportunity slip away. Getting around Shanghai by taxi is cheap and easy. So I through my stuff in the room, changed into shorts and T-Shirt, grabbed the cam, and ten minutes later took a cab to drop me at the Pearl Tower for some quick nightly sightseeing around one of the world’s most spectacular skylines. See yourself after the jump…. Continue reading “Around the World in 12 Days – Shanghai”→
