Street Legal

The courts uphold the rights of photographers, or anyone in the general public, to photograph the exteriors of federal buildings from public places.

Hurray for the first amendment!

Are you a terrorist?

I think not.

The TSA may think so though.

Check out the TSA poster on the blog Photography Is Not A Crime.

California Reality

Back in my blog post of December 27, 2009 I talked about looking for a scene I had shot back in 1990, and even showed a sample of it.  I was not able to find the exact scene last time, thinking it had changed so much as to be unrecognizable.  Well, I was back out on the west coast last week, and undeterred, I decide to keep trying to find that street.

This time, I walked further up and down every street in Chinatown, up and down all the hills, peeked into every alleyway, stared up at every building, until finally, at the bottom of Jackson Street, I felt a kind of six sense about it.  I turned a corner, feeling somehow I was close, and sure enough, I was there!

Amazingly, most of the scene was intact 20 years later, save for the Pac Bell phone booth, the Far East something Service has changed to Wayne’s Liquors, and a sign of Chinese characters has come down. Unfortunately the Grassland Cocktail Lounge sign as seen better days, and is no longer lit up- probably because the space is for rent.  I doubt it will survive another year, but who knows.

And, the Chinese restaurant not visible in the foreground is now a Thai restaurant, all of which, if you are interested on Kearny, at Jackson.

The end is the beginning

Dateline September 1- First shoot day on my new photographic project. I venture to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx with my trusty designer/creative director/friend Jan Uretsky, under cloudless 95 degree skies, in search of….

I found the oldest house in the Bronx, dated 1748, next to one of the oldest trees (okay, it looked really old), visited Santa Fe (braving coyotes and dead cows), was tempted to join the local families grilling out & enjoying the park, was not tempted to run on the beautiful Van Cortlandt Park track, and followed the remnants of the “Old Put” railroad where trains did run on the tracks.

photo ©2010: Jan Uretsky

I am still working on defining the theme, tightening the parameters, setting the style and tone, but sometimes you have to just jump right in, get your feet wet, even if it is just from your own sweat dripping on them.

And we met another Bob fishing in the pond, an elderly woman behind a screen who told us the whereabouts of a neighbor who drives a Yugo with the license plate YOGOGAL, some kids enjoying one of the last days before school starts, some nameless drivers looking to score riders to Westchester, and an endless parade of riders for whom this last stop of the #1 train is only the middle of their long journey home, or to work or to play….

I see dead people! In color. From 1922

Some footage from a test of Kodachrome color motion picture film circa 1922, a full 13 years before the first full length color motion picture was released. A bit dated (obviously), a bit camp, but kind of fun to see compared to our current polished digital world.



And maybe the little kid is still alive- she would only be like 92 years old.

Are you an illegal (photographer)?

Police crackdown, DC style, disregarding your first amendments rights.

WIP it Good

I am pleased to announce some of my personal work has been featured in WIP8, starting on page 45 and is available for download here.

Sneak peak at the top secret iPhone 5 prototype

Retro is in!

Abridged

My “slideshow” Bridging the Gap did not make the cut for the SLPS IV, although my Caesar salad seemed to go over quite nicely. You can see my effort on the theme of Bridges below.

Further proof that I have the ability to travel forward and backward in time, as long as I stay in the Astor Place IRT station

And if you really want to know, the fare in 2044 is $12.

Mission Impossible?

A not so cheery “portrait” of the current state of the professional (and amateur) assignment and stock photography business here at the New York Times. Nothing we haven’t heard, experienced or feared, but it does show how forces of technology, the economy and human nature have all created a perfect storm that threatens to destroy our livelihood.

Pretty much anyone can take an occasional decent picture that is good enough for many stock uses, given enough time and some luck. But, if professional photography as a career falls by the wayside, who will clients call when they need an assignment done that requires experience, and lots of it?

As the entry point for creating decent images has dropped, and continues to drop, we as professional image makers really need to sell ourselves not on our abilities to get sharp well exposed images, as most point & shoot cameras can do that, not as the cheapest way to get images (although in the long run hiring a professional can often be the most cost effective), but on the strength and individuality of our visions, and on our professionalism and experience in getting jobs done on schedule, on budget (or under), and under the worst of conditions & circumstances.

Perhaps our only hope is to all become amateurs. Unfortunately, we will of course need to work another job or two just to support our new “hobby”!

Mission Improbable

Today the Impossible Project is releasing the first in its' new line of instant integral processing films, PX film (when’s the last time you typed the word film?), a sepia toned black & white pack that will fit into folding SLR Polaroid models, like the SX-70. Supposedly the film is able to be manipulated, like the classic SX-70 or Time Zero films were, and a color version will be introduced this summer. You can read more details here.
Then there is this, on the Impossible Project site, a special film pack made with expired chemicals, called SX-70 Fadetoblack Film that “…shortly after taking the photo drifts through different colour schemes before it finally turns to blackness after 24 hours”- I am not sure if this is an early April fool’s gag, or if I should call Jim Phelps.

What I did on my spring break

I recently shot an ad for long time client GMHC- the final ad will have a New York City scene striped in behind the models, so look for it at a bus shelter near you.

Hello Kitto Katsu

According to AdAge, there are 19 special flavors of Kit Kat bars available only in Japan that you just can’t get anywhere else, like strawberry-cheesecake, blueberry, cherry blossom and green tea (no big deal you say).

Have you ever tried yubari melon, yuzu, grape or wasabi-flavored white chocolate? No, how about sweet potato, miso, baked corn, green beans, red potatoes or kinako (a toasted soybean flour mostly used to coat mochi)? My mouth is watering already.

The number one flavor- surprise, it’s soy sauce (who would have thought that). For the whole story, go to adage.com.

Six feet under…

...Atlantic Avenue is where the ladder takes you, after first descending
through a standard sized manhole, to a dirt floored passage, carved through more dirt and small stones.

Duck under the low concrete intrusion, mind the water and the mud, then walk maybe 70 feet, as you notice the curved brick ceiling low enough to touch.

You then come to a solid looking wall, with a very narrow sliver of a passage chiseled through it. Once you squeeze thorough a couple of feet of concrete,




you suddenly find yourself overlooking a long, seemingly endless empty tunnel, with homemade wooden steps leading you down to the bottom.
As you descend the steps, a seated man warns you to watch your step. You soon reach another dirt floor, only this one is fairly solid- damp of course, as the 60 degree tunnel maintains a pretty high humidity- and as you gaze around you notice the Manhattan schist blocks that form the tunnel walls, which are then topped with a gently curving brick arch that rises almost 20 feet over your head.

The man you passed is of course no other than Bob Diamond, who in 1980 discovered the long abandoned tunnel, after he was repeated told by everyone that it did not exist. But it does exist, and Atlantic Avenue bustles blissfully 30-40 feet above you, except you can’t hear any of that, as there is only the one opening to the street, and it is far, far behind you as you walk over the uneven dirt floor, noticing where each railroad tie used to be a century and a half ago.

Written about by Walt Whitman and H.P. Lovecraft, and rumored to be the hiding place of German spies, bootleggers, lost treasure, pirates, vampires and the final resting place of a murdered foreman, this tunnel has to be one of the most visited, and most legendary, yet least know pieces of New York City’s transportation, or for that matter, any kind of our city’s history.




Here and there your flashlight picks out things: graffiti from Mr. Lynch who put electricity in the tunnel during one of its’ many investigations for supposed criminal activity, a huge pile of curved brick sections where the above ground airshaft was torn down and dumped into thehole before being sealed on the surface, the occasional rotten piece of wood, or rusted metal object, patches of white paint still remaining on the ceiling which was painted that way to reflect light, and the fact that despite being built in 1844, and abandoned in 1861, the tunnel is in pretty solid shape.

After walking the equivalent of several city blocks, the light from the string of occasional bare light bulbs ends, and you are left with onlywhatever flashlight you have brought with you for illumination. You need to carefully avoid many large pieces of stone as you reach the far end of the tunnel- at least that is where another wall sits, blocking whatever may lie beyond it in the last section of the tunnel- perhaps just dirt and New York City infrastructure, or perhaps, as it is rumored, missing pages from John Wilkes Booths’ diary, or even an overturned 1831 vintage steam locomotive. Some large sewer pipes and pieces of conduit pierce the back corner of the crumbling wall, reminding us that even though the tunnel has sat abandoned and mostly forgotten for over 150 years, there does exist a bustling metropolis overhead, one that like an old tree, occasionally extends its’ roots down into the deep dark earth.

Will we soon discover what lies beyond that wall? Will another fascinating chapter in the story of this subterranean structure be written? Stay tuned.

Snow storm #3...or 4?

Who remembers by now? A few snapshots before the next one hits. All this will seem quaint in August….

Gawd, I love New York

Where else can you go to a museum, then upon exiting, a few doors down pass a mission, complete with two people asking for money- “I only need 80 cents…can you spare a dollar chief”, then past a dozen shuttered restaurant supply places, then cross a street and come upona gallery opening, walk right in, get a strong vodka & cranberry for free- tip the bartender of course- view some art, take in a scene, find yourself looking into a barbershop (is it a haircut if no one is there to watch it?), talk to a producer of childrens' television, exit, slightly buzzed, then pass a dozen lighting places- all dark of course, notice several windowsmade up of fish tanks, or rows upon rows of smoked chickens, of redpieces of roast pork, mystery meats all hanging from hooks, buy adinner’s worth of incredible seafood noodle soup with a curry broth for $7, pass a prison, then another mission, then cross one of the most famous streets in the world, look up & see a Gothic skyscraper, see a Dan Flavin neon sculpture, pass a $25 million home, then nearly step on a rat the size of a cat, see the Ghostbusters firehouse, then the building where JFK Jr. used to live, pass Harvey Keitel, then a cement mixer next to a Mercedes next to a backhoe, then see two lovers sharing a kiss where a homeless guy used to live, then finally climb my steps, slightly frozen, to reflect upon life in NY, my journey, and of course, enjoy my dinner, while watching The Office.

Show me the show

To mark the closing of the X Initiative gallery in Chelsea, they opened the doors for 24 hours and invited anybody- which of course includes yours truly- to exhibit pretty much anything you could drag over there.

I made a print of an image from my nightlife series, and placed in an "appropriate" location.

All around were installations of paintings, drawings, photography, sculptures, videos, sound recordings, conceptual pieces, interactive pieces, happenings, and the occasional small child or dog. These were hung, taped, nailed, screwed, glued, wired, push pinned, constructed, placed, poured, painted, drawn, silk screened, printed, and otherwise attached or put all around two floors of the gigantic X Initiative building….I only wish there were more galleries/shows like this where there were no rules, no curation, no limits, no arbiters of good or bad taste, just every kind of “art”- and lots of it!

Snow job

The good news, I got a last minute call to do a job before the end of the year. The bad news, it was literally on New Year’s Eve day (if that is it’s official name), and I had to try to drive out of the city in the blizzard. As I have a Volvo, and spent 4 winters upstate, I was not worried, but apparently I should have been. Trying to get out of Manhattan via the Williamsburg Bridge was not happening, so after an hour on Delancy, I took some empty back streets to the Brooklyn Bridge, which was open.

Once I got out of the city, the roads were passable, and I was able to make I to my shoot on Long Island only slightly late. I can’t show the images until after they have run, but look at the March 2010 issue of Consumer Reports to see what I did.