Visiting the Olympic Peninsula and the Hoh Rainforest

Tags

Hoh rainforest, Lake Quinault, olympic peninsula, photography, rain forest, Ruby Beach, toy cameras, travel, washington state

In September 2012, Tom and I visited the west coast. After spending a few fun days in Vancouver, we drove south, hopped on a ferry to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, and spent two days driving around.

What attracted me to the Olympic Peninsula was the Hoh Rainforest near Forks. I’d never walked through a rainforest. And how does a rain forest end up here, anyway? This is the wettest part of the U.S., at about 175 inches of precipitation a year.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think it through when it came to choosing a camera. I wanted to shoot with my Diana camera. Rain forests are not bright and sunny places, and even with 400 speed film, the widest aperture and the accident of a sunny day, this gorgeously murky forest was way too dark for my camera. The three shots below were the only ones on the entire roll that managed to materialize. Don’t you hate it when stuff like that happens? Live and learn.

Here are two shots from my phone. What a place! Even on a sunny day, perfect for a spooky fairy tale.

Of course, my Nikon had no trouble at all. The root systems of these enormous trees were incredible.

After the forest, we headed south to Ruby Beach, known for its wildly photogenic appeal. No disappointment there. What a beautiful spot. My Diana cameras had a field day in the bright light.

We stopped for lunch next to this driftwood-filled bay.

By afternoon, we’d arrived at Lake Quinault, where we took another stroll in the woods. This was also considered a rainforest, but was quite different from the first, dense and scrubby and not as mossy, although the trees were still skyscrapers.

We spent our last evening at the lovely Lake Quinault. This photo was shot from the restaurant where we watched the sun set while eating dinner, before heading north and home. A memorable trip.

 

 

 

 

Catching Up

Tags

decorative painting, diana camera, faux finishes, iphonography, photography

Hi everyone, I’m sorry that I’ve been silent for a few months. Between work, fixing up my new apartment and trying to find photographic inspiration, I was completely distracted. But things are calming down again. So, what’s happened in the meantime?

In January, I traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas for a glazing job. On our last day, we stopped by the Central Arkansas Nature Center. Ironically, almost all of the nature inside was dead and stuffed, and an exhibit about native wildlife attributed the destruction of the great buffalo herds in the 19th century to loss of habitat. Loss of habitat? Not proliferation of bullets? However, we did see a great exhibit of fishing lures. Some were handmade, others not, but all were beautiful and the inventiveness and playfulness of the lure designs was amazing.

Blizzards started rolling through NYC. This is the view from my new office/studio/guestroom. Hello Fort Tryon Park!

With an assistant, I glazed this Park Avenue lobby in various shades of cream.

It was time to experiment with a new pinhole lens for my Nikon D3000. I tried it for a couple of weeks and I really wanted to like it, but it left me cold. My photos bored me to tears. So much for that.

Next up, tackling the dining area in my new place. In NYC, some apartments have a dining nook, which is basically a glorified hallway leading from here to there, but widened out by a couple of feet to give the illusion that a table, chairs and family of four could somehow wedge themselves into this sorry excuse for a room. I decided to have a cabinet maker build a long banquette bench with storage inside and extra cabinets for even more storage at one end because in a New York apartment, storage is king. The distance from the wall on the right to the countertop on the left is just under seven feet. Here’s the before shot.

Here’s the after shot. Missing: bench cushions, table, chairs, and wall treatment. I’ll write a separate post about the process with more details once I’ve finished everything up; it will include the most fantastic table ever. It was such fun to design and pull this space together.

More blizzards. Central Park, lovely in the snow.

I glazed and gilded this little cabinet in a client’s entryway.

Thought I’d try shooting in color for a change, so I stuck a roll in a Diana camera and went out for a spin. This is the Little Red Lighthouse at the base of the George Washington Bridge, a few blocks south of my apartment. I love film!

Still shooting with my phone while exploring my new neighborhood. This is the Henry Hudson Bridge, which spans the Harlem River where it meets the Hudson River, connecting Manhattan to the Bronx.

Spent a couple of days matching switch plates to oak and marble.

Bought a film scanner, so I can finally scan my neglected negatives. These photos are from a September 2012 trip to the west coast, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, that I’d never printed. When I left my last apartment, I left behind my darkroom, aka the windowless kitchen. I was so tired of setting up and tearing down my darkroom whenever I wanted to print that I hadn’t printed in over a year. Of course, now I miss it and want a darkroom again. I hauled all of the darkroom stuff here, but haven’t quite figured out how to create a darkroom in a place that’s full of windows. Stay tuned on that.

More color matching, this time light caps in a mahogany-paneled ceiling.

Did I mention how much it snowed?

And last but not least, I started a photo project on my iPhone using the Retro Camera app. Usually when I work in someone’s apartment, there isn’t much to photograph when I’m done, since the rooms are emptied out before I begin and my painted finishes are often subtle. So I thought it would be fun to photograph details of the rooms in progress. Here, all of the drapes are wrapped in plastic for protection, portions of the walls are taped for glazing and the floor protection has been pulled away to tape off the base boards.

That sums it up for now. I’ll be back to posting regularly. Thank you for reading and following me!

On a Sunny Spring Day

Tags

central park, diana camera, new york city, photography, plastic camera, toy camera

Today I walked through Central Park twice. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, a relief after the long, chilly spring. The park was full in every sense — throngs of people, the road filled with runners and cyclists, branches in full blossom, the trees past the pale green of early spring, their leaves dense and bright.

I thought it would be fun to post a few Diana photos that take us from the spare days of winter through the melting waters of spring and into the lush fullness of summer. Few things are prettier in New York than Central Park in May and June.

Travel Sketchbook: Florence’s Boboli Gardens

Tags

Boboli Gardens, diana camera, florence, italy, photography, toy camera, travel, travel photography

When we visited Florence a couple of years ago, we spent an afternoon wandering the paths of the Boboli Gardens, the beautiful ornamental gardens behind the Pitti Palace. The Boboli Gardens were one of the first and most formal 16th century Italian gardens. Elegant and lavishly designed, they were originally used only by the Medici family for private strolls.

The gardens are filled with statuary dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, along with Roman sculpture. This made for a photo-filled afternoon. I liked the way the lush foliage seemed to almost overwhelm the sculptures, which were scattered everywhere.

The gardens house all sorts of marvels, from a bizarre grotto to an amphitheater, with an emphasis on elaborate fountains, all linked together by alleyways and paths, dotted with sculptures and whimsical stonework. This lovely path is called the Ragnaie, or “Spiders Lane.”

When the Medici family bought the Pitti Palace in 1549, Cosimo and his wife Eleonora hired the famous mannerist architect and sculptor, Tribolo, to transform the hillside behind the palace into a formal garden. Once he accepted the undertaking, Tribolo promptly died, leaving the development of the gardens to Bartolommeo Ammanati and a slew of architects and designers.

The original design centered on an amphitheater behind the palace; the first play was performed there in 1576. This 1599 painting by Giusto Utens shows the amphitheater (the sunken area directly behind the palace) and the surrounding gardens.

The compact design seen above didn’t last long; the gardens were expanded upon for the next 300 years. Because this involved generations of designers, the gardens are considered a living outdoor museum of landscape architecture history.

Below is an etching from the 18th century. You can see the palace down in the lower left and the amphitheater above it. The gardens have exploded out to the right, with all sorts of beautiful interlocked circular patterns to take you on a leisurely stroll, usually ending in a fountain surrounded by ornate sculpture. The gardens cover almost 11 acres.

Despite its proximity to the Arno River, the gardens lacked a natural water supply. Special conduits were put in place in surrounding natural springs and rivers to keep the gardens hydrated and the fountains bubbling. These two monkeys live in a fountain next to the Porcelain Museum, one of the small buildings within the garden.

The Medici family, the ruling family of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, lived in the Pitti Palace from 1549 until 1737, when the last Medici family member died and the dynasty became extinct. The palace and its gardens then passed through a variety of hands, depending on the ruler of the day, until the property was presented to the nation in 1919 and opened to the public.

This is an 18th century rendering of the amphitheater, which seems to suggest that by this time, you might not have to be a family member to play in the garden.

As you depart the gardens, the lovely lady below waves goodbye from behind the palace. Perhaps to the consternation of the ghosts of the Medicis, today anyone can pay to enter the gardens and wander its well-worn paths.

When Is It Time to Give Up? On Using the Right Tools

Tags

central park, geology, glacial formations, glaciers, photography, pinhole photography, pinholes

One of the hardest things to figure out when making art is why an idea isn’t working. There’s a certain amount of stop and start when a new idea gets going and that’s an expected part of the process. It’s different when things won’t gel, when what you see in your mind’s eye isn’t within reach, despite many attempts. I ran into this problem when I began shooting the glacial formations in Central Park with my pinhole cameras.

During the Pleistocene age, several continental glaciers flowed across this region from northwest to southeast, moving across the Hudson Valley and what would eventually become the land beneath New York City. Through a combination of uplift and erosion caused by the glaciers, the bedrock, which had originally formed at depths of almost 20 miles, became exposed. Much of the rock in the southern part of the park is from the Hartland Formation, composed of sedimentary and volcanic rocks folded together, while the northern section consists of the Cambrian Manhattan Formation, more commonly known as Manhattan Schist.

When Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Central Park in 1858, they recognized the impressive natural beauty of these geologic features and incorporated them into their Greensward Plan.

I had long admired the rock formations and thought it would be interesting to create a set of pinholes documenting them. I worked on it for nine months, for the most part unsuccessfully. What I saw as beautiful, dramatic formations were flattened by the pinhole camera. The undulations and jagged edges of the stone disappeared, the scale didn’t translate, and the incredible presence of the formations vanished. It took me a long time to admit that my method wasn’t working. While I did take a decent photo now and then, most of them went straight into the Failure File.

However, one of the first photos in the series, of Umpire Rock (below), came out just as imagined. At first, this made me think that the ensuing duds were unusual and that fabulous photos lay ahead, enticingly within reach. Nope.

My nemesis was a formation that I called Jaggy Rock, just north of the Children’s Zoo, at about Fifth Avenue and 67th Street. A remarkable, jagged mound of stone that clearly showed the direction of the glacial flow, it was impressive. Well, in person, it was impressive. Here it is shot with my phone.

Here’s a person standing on top for a sense of scale.

In my pinholes, it looked like an puny lump.

Maybe low angle would make it more dramatic? Uh, no.

What about a close up of that amazing texture? What is this thing?

I shot it close up and from a distance, on rainy days and dry, in the winter and the spring. It didn’t matter, it was either indecipherable or uninteresting.

Fascinating fact: New York City may not seem to be the most practical place to study geology, but the city’s rocky floor is one of the most exposed and excavated in the country. Excavations for subway and water tunnels, buildings and railroads have brought the rocks and minerals beneath the city into the hands of many happy geologists.

Another subject was Umpire Rock, one of the biggest and most spectacular natural exposures in the park. It has beautiful folds, areas where the rock resembles frozen liquid, and gorgeous glacial troughs at the northwest corner, where meltwaters once carved their way. Here they are, again shot with my phone. Look at these incredible grooves!

I tried to photograph the glacial troughs. As usual, I placed my camera on the ground, since I don’t use a tripod. This is the strange pinhole that resulted. I still can’t figure out what we’re looking at.

Some photos sort of worked when I used the rock as a feature of the landscape, but the stone’s drama is M.I.A.

Pow! This is what it’s really like.

This is one of the folds in the rock. Not a showstopper, but finally, some texture.

In person the surface looks more like this.

The grooves in the rock are caused by sand, pebbles and boulders embedded in the base of the glacier as it flowed over the slopes of the rocky hills. Most of the glacial formations have these grooves, lending a beautiful texture to the stone, which you wouldn’t know from the pinhole photos.

After months of frustration, I realized that this was no different than problems I encountered while painting. If a task is painfully difficult, if the technique should work but doesn’t, if I can imagine something but can’t bring it to fruition, then the first thing to do is to determine if I’m using the right tool. Instead of trying of force an outcome, it’s time to rethink the method. The details of these rock formations are better served by working with a different camera.

Eventually I began shooting the formations with a Diana camera. Suddenly, the texture, mood and drama were right there. What a difference!

Lesson learned: Sometimes an idea is sound, but the tools need to change in order to bring it to life.

The City from Above

Tags

central park, diana camera, digital pinhole, new york city, photography, pinhole, toy camera

It seems that no matter how long I live in New York City, one thrill never stops: seeing the city from above. If I have a camera with me, I always feel compelled to take a shot. Thanks to my decorative painting clients, I often find myself in apartments with stunning views, most often of Central Park.

Here’s a mix of pinhole photos, Diana shots, iPhone pictures and even a few from my digital Nikon illustrating my fascination with this beautiful city and its biggest, most beloved park.

Starting on the East side, here we are looking west at about 74th Street on a foggy spring morning.

This pinhole is shot facing west from the Trump building on Third Avenue and 69th Street. Because of the distortion caused by the wide angle, the park looks far away.

It’s actually quite close, as you can see from the digital pinhole below, shot from the same building. I shot a series of digital pinholes last year, but never quite got the hang of it. Or said another way, I don’t think the photos are all that interesting! Handmade black and white pinholes are more my speed.

This is another pinhole from Fifth Avenue facing west, shot one winter morning around 9 a.m. The shadows from the apartment buildings are being thrown onto the snow as the sun moves higher in the east. Shadows on the ground like this are seen only in the winter, since foliage prevents them in the summer.

Here’s a photo of a typical street on the Upper East Side. When people think of NYC,  they may often imagine a concrete jungle, but many of the streets are thickly lined with trees. I like to look at all of the secret terraces and gardens on the rooftops that aren’t visible from the street below.

Now here’s the view of my dreams. Both photos below are shot from the same place, a narrow terrace fronting an apartment on Fifth Avenue in the mid 60’s. The first shot faces northwest, with the buildings on Fifth Avenue marching north on the right; the second faces southwest with a full view of Central Park South and Central Park West. Look at the park, spread out like an enormous, lush carpet at our feet! So beautiful.

Now we’re heading over to the West side, starting at Columbus Circle.

This pinhole is shot from the highest apartment that I’ve ever visited, the top residential floor at the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle. That dark square in the foreground is the park. We’re facing east.

Here’s part of a contact sheet shot from the living room of an apartment just north of Columbus Circle, at 61st and Central Park West.

This is a print from the series above. The buildings of Central Park South are clustered on the right, facing north into the park. The park is so pretty in the winter.

I love glimpses of the park like this shot below. If you were selling this apartment, it could be described as “with views of Central Park!” A buyer would imagine open views to the horizon, then arrive to find this sliver. Which is pretty great, actually! We’re still on Central Park West, looking east.

Here’s a pinhole shot from a terrace at the San Remo apartments, on Central Park West at 74th Street. Love the detail of the adjacent building’s rooftop. Central Park is visible in the distance.

Here’s a straight digital shot of the park on a fall morning. Look at all of those taxis jammed in the park! One more good reason to walk everywhere. We’re looking northeast from Central Park West in the 60s.

One more Diana camera contact sheet series, shot from the same apartment, where you can see how hard it is to get a photo that’s exposed correctly with this finicky little camera.

And we’ll finish with a picture from my own living room window on a cold, blustery day. Not as impressive as Central Park, but it makes me smile anyway. Happy holidays, everyone!

Learning How to See

Tags

black and white, cityscape, diana camera, florence, italy, photography, plastic camera, toy camera, travel

What inspires us to make art? How do we decide which tools to use? How do we learn?

One of the ways we learn how to be artists is by imitation. Maybe we’re inspired by the way someone works with paint, bronze, fiber, words, paper or light. Maybe we’re taught a certain style in school, or perhaps we want to be as successful as our favorite artist and mimic their style, thinking it will help us become successful as well.

One of the reasons that I began to work with a Diana camera was because of a book that I stumbled across called “Angels at the Arno” by Eric Lindbloom, a portfolio of Diana images shot over an eight year period in Florence, Italy. I had never seen photos with this kind of a timeless, eerie, ghostly mood, so velvety, tactile and lush. I had to try it myself.

After I’d been shooting with Dianas for a couple of years, I took a trip to Florence, but didn’t consult the book before we left, worried that I would find and imitate his shots. The photos in this post are from that trip.

After we returned, I picked up the book again. I was surprised to see that I’d shot some of the same places from the same angles, but he came in much closer to the subjects. I was a bit removed, he was completely comfortable and familiar, shooting details, off on side streets, climbing through gardens. He really knew Florence; the city flowed through him in a special way. I was only visiting.

Instead of feeling discouraged, I learned a couple of things. One, that he had taught me how to see in a new way by using a Diana camera. And two, that it wasn’t enough.

Imitation is easy, and it’s a great way to learn, but it isn’t fulfilling. That spark of excitement, of discovering a place in my own way, was missing.

How to solve this? Shoot, shoot and shoot some more. Shoot pictures wherever I go. And one day, if I’m open and curious, patient and persistent, the places I love will flow through me.

Meeting the Matterhorn or Trying to Ski with a Camera Stuffed Down My Jacket

Tags

black and white, diana camera, landscape, photography, skiing, sports, switzerland, toy camera, travel, zermatt

A few years ago, it was my brother-in-law’s 50th birthday. In celebration, he invited a group of friends and family for a week of skiing in Zermatt, Switzerland.

This is the town of Zermatt, which has a beautiful rocky stream running through its center. That’s the Matterhorn, blazing white in the morning light.

I hadn’t skied in twenty years, but I wasn’t worried about that. I had a bigger question: how was I going to take a camera skiing with me? My Diana camera no less, loaded with film, with its thin plastic body held together by tape? Was this a dumb idea?

Why not give it a whirl? I wanted to take pictures from as high up on the slopes as possible, and tucked my camera into my jacket, the film side of the camera flat against my belly for warmth. Luckily my ski jacket had a tight closure along the bottom, so at least the camera wouldn’t fall out.

Here’s the Matterhorn. It was wild to ski past this iconic mountain. Look at the cloud hanging out just in front of it! The summit of the Matterhorn is 14,670 feet high and its four faces face the compass points. It’s one of the deadliest peaks in the Alps; more than 500 people have died trying to climb its slopes.

I wasn’t worried about my death, I was worried about the death of my camera if I fell over and squished it. Here’s another photo of the Matterhorn from a different angle.

As someone who grew up in Montreal and learned to ski as a child, where our instruction included how to ski safely over rippled sheets of ice, I’d never encountered powder before. This snow was like icing on a cake, thick, white vanilla frosting, rich and creamy, luxurious and lush. With no ice to skitter over, I was skiing in slow motion. Besides making me hungry for baked goods, this snow meant that falling over ended in a soft, pillowy landing. There was no rock-hard ice to smack down onto, just acres of sumptuous softness. My camera was safe!

This view is looking toward Gornergrat, the mountain to the northeast, where we skied on our first day.

The trouble with shooting landscapes like this is the lack of scale. Is that a pebble or a boulder? Still, I like the textures of the rocks and snow.

Here’s the cliff I didn’t fall over.

And the view of the valley, Zermatt with its snow-covered rooftops nestled below.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever go skiing in a place like this again, but it was good to know that as long as I was skiing on snow like this, my camera would live a long, adventurous life.

Why Shoot with a Diana Camera?

Tags

black and white, diana camera, landscape, new york city, photography, toy camera

I’ve posted many photos shot with Diana cameras on this blog. I realize, though, that many people don’t know what a Diana camera is, so I thought it might be helpful to discuss the cameras and why it’s challenging to shoot with them. Here’s one of my Diana cameras.

The Diana camera is a simple, basic all-plastic box camera: the body, the lens, everything is plastic. It takes medium format roll film (120 mm) and shoots 16 shots per roll in a square format of 4.2 cm. Its light controls are minimal, consisting of three exposures of sunny, partly cloudy and cloudy. Once the film is loaded, the camera needs to be taped up to prevent light leaks.

In the 1960s, the Diana was sold as a novelty camera for about 50 cents. In the 1970s, photography schools began to use them to teach creative vision. By removing the distraction of camera technology, the intention is that the photographer will focus on ideas instead. Today, the cameras are trendy, in production again and cost around $50.

Because the plastic lens is low quality, it creates an image circle, which results in strong vignetting, the corners of the image darkening. The lens can also create low contrast, blurred images, odd effects and inconsistent results. I own six Dianas and each is slightly different; no two shoot in the same way.

Well, that’s all well and good, but why shoot with something like this? What’s the point? What makes it interesting?

It’s true that distortions are caused by the lens. But I think of it differently. To me, the Diana can see things I can’t see. It captures a world with a dreamlike atmosphere, one of sensual shapes, ghostly images and unforeseeable effects.

Like a pinhole camera, a Diana shares the fundamental challenge of a camera that takes pictures in an unpredictable way. As opposed to a digital camera, which is designed to capture exactly how the eye sees, the Diana has a view of its own, one that I can influence but never completely control. Although I understand how the camera sees and use it in situations that I think will result in good shots, I never know if I’ve been successful until I develop the film. This lack of control, this mystery, is what I find so appealing. That’s what keeps me coming back.

P.S. Nancy Rexroth shot the first Diana photos that were widely acclaimed. Here’s an interesting interview where she discusses her work. This quote, from that interview, beautifully captures the seduction of working with Dianas: “What did I like about the camera? It was the dream, the liquid dream of the images that I could make with it. I went somewhere with the camera, into my own private landscape, a real mental spot, of needing, of longing, and with a real love of the beautiful… When I was photographing, it seemed that I was awake and dreaming at the same time.”

Diana photos, from the top: Rural Pennsylvania; Princeton Junction, NJ; Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC; West MacDonnell Range, Australia; Carl Schurz Park, NYC.

Cruising on Down the East River

Tags

diana camera, east river, iphoneography, new york city, photography, pinhole, toy camera

Manhattan is bound by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north and the East River to the east. The East River, which separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island, is actually a tidal strait that flows from Long Island Sound into the New York Harbor, which is obvious when you notice the high tide marks on the surrounding shores.

That may be the geographic reality, but as far as I can tell, the East River is simply a wide, aqueous road. It’s almost always busy, a mix of gigantic barges nosed along by colorful tugboats, pleasure cruisers zooming by, sailboats silently gliding next to  commuter ferries churning to their next stop, party boats with booming soundtracks, waving tourists on tour boats, police cruisers in their blue stripes and the occasional brave Jetskier.

Pedestrian paths run almost the entire circumference of Manhattan, perfect for biking along the river on a warm summer morning. Here’s a little tour in pinhole, Diana and Instagram photos.

The remains of this abandoned pier are at about 120th Street. Across the river at the right edge of the photo is a tent from Cirque du Soleil, which sometimes sets up camp on Randalls Island.

This beautiful little bridge at 103rd Street, the Wards Island Bridge, is a pedestrian and bike bridge that leads over to, surprise! Wards Island and Randalls Island. It’s painted a beautiful shade of turquoise. The center portion between the supports lifts up when river traffic needs to pass through and when the island closes for the night.

This pretty spot is next to Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, although he doesn’t actually live here. It’s in Carl Schurz Park, which has a beautiful promenade. In the distance on the far right is the ramp to the Triborough Bridge, now renamed the RFK bridge, but nobody calls it that. It’s still the Triborough to the masses.

Here’s a bit of river traffic, a sturdy little tugboat. This is shot from the promenade at 82nd Street. You can see the Queensboro Bridge coming into the photo on the right. These buildings are on Roosevelt Island, a long, skinny sliver of land which once housed both grazing sheep and a smallpox hospital, which survives as a ruin on the southern end of the island.

This is a pinhole shot looking north from the pedestrian walkway that crosses the East River Drive at 78th Street. The long exposure resulted in something you never see: a carless New York. Of course, the pedestrians and boats disappeared as well.

Here we are looking south from a high terrace on 72nd Street. The river is a little sliver on the left.

The Queensboro Bridge! What a beauty. I love this bridge. It’s the one you see in the movie Annie Hall, in the scene where Alvy and Annie sit on a bench and talk until sunrise. It’s also known as the 59th Street Bridge. Marathon runners come streaming over this bridge into Manhattan every November.

That was a pinhole. Here’s a Diana photo. I love the way the bridge hovers over Roosevelt Island like a protective shield.

This shot of the Queensboro was from a client’s bedroom window. Boy, would I love to wake up to this! Unfortunately, someone recently decided to paint the bridge beige. It looked more macho in its former light blueish-grey.

And we’ll finish with the famous Brooklyn Bridge. Instead of the classic head-on shot, I went down to the promenade and shot from below. Just behind is the Manhattan Bridge. There are 10 bridges that span the East River, so it looks like I have a bit more work to do!