Yesterday (May 30) I got myself into the city — it was a really gorgeous afternoon — and photographed the corners from 73rd Street up to 110th Street for the "then & now" (sub)project.
The light couldn't have been better, except towards the end of the shoot, coming back down the west side of the Avenue (shooting the east side corners) I ran into some problems with flare (this happened shooting the stretch from 13th to the 34th too) of a kind that I've never had before (same lens for this project for over four years now) so something's up that I need to figure out and take care of it.
Yesterday's shoot included one of my favorite corners on the whole island: Tenth (in this stretch called "Amsterdam") and 104th Street, the northwest corner. I'm not sure what I like about it so much, maybe it's the particular green of the store awning against the particular red of the brick building (see below — and if you click on the image it will open up much larger so you can see what I'm talking about a little further on in this post).
Tenth (Amsterdam) Avenue & 104th Street, Northwest Corner
(2006 above, 2010 below)
Just for fun I've adjusted the cropping so that two photographs match as much as possible in this respect, and also adjusted the white balance, though that only partly overcomes the time of day difference (2006 closer to 5 PM, and later in the summer (compare the trees on the right), 2010 around 3 PM late spring.
It would be even more fun to have all the then & now photographs cropped and otherwise adjusted to match as closely as possible, but that's a project of such enormity that I'm just not going to give it another thought. (I might eventually do it for a relatively short stretch of the avenue though, if and when this "then & now" thing gets a little more focussed.
It'll be a few days, maybe even the end of the week before I get the "then & now" set put together for this stretch, but in the meantime I thought I'd put up that favorite corner, essentially unchanged since 2006 ….
The white plastic saw-horse barricades are gone, a pedestrian-crossing warning sign has gone up, the corner cupboard under the vegetables has been rebuilt, the brick wall at the back under the awning has been painted a sort of electric yellow-green, the big tree on the right has been trimmed back a little (you can see the stump of the missing branch just below the fork), the air-conditioner has been taken out of the second floor second window to the left of the building corner — I'm sure there are more differences: the trash can has been moved, but this could happen every day for all I know, and what does it matter? (Is that a "good" question?)
What gives this corner its main character hasn't changed: Kim's Fruit & Vegetables (and Fish Market on the left), the green awning, the red (painted, I think) brick, the trees left and right.
Unchanged (almost) — sometimes that's the way I like it.
Maybe later today I can get to the enumeration of "signs of change" on the stretch from 43rd Street up to 57th Street. I think it's going to be too hot to go in and photograph the stretch from 111th Street up to 145th or 155th. Or maybe I'm just too lazy today, and besides, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, photographing vs. processing. (But why should that matter?)
The light couldn't have been better, except towards the end of the shoot, coming back down the west side of the Avenue (shooting the east side corners) I ran into some problems with flare (this happened shooting the stretch from 13th to the 34th too) of a kind that I've never had before (same lens for this project for over four years now) so something's up that I need to figure out and take care of it.
Yesterday's shoot included one of my favorite corners on the whole island: Tenth (in this stretch called "Amsterdam") and 104th Street, the northwest corner. I'm not sure what I like about it so much, maybe it's the particular green of the store awning against the particular red of the brick building (see below — and if you click on the image it will open up much larger so you can see what I'm talking about a little further on in this post).
Tenth (Amsterdam) Avenue & 104th Street, Northwest Corner(2006 above, 2010 below)
Just for fun I've adjusted the cropping so that two photographs match as much as possible in this respect, and also adjusted the white balance, though that only partly overcomes the time of day difference (2006 closer to 5 PM, and later in the summer (compare the trees on the right), 2010 around 3 PM late spring.
It would be even more fun to have all the then & now photographs cropped and otherwise adjusted to match as closely as possible, but that's a project of such enormity that I'm just not going to give it another thought. (I might eventually do it for a relatively short stretch of the avenue though, if and when this "then & now" thing gets a little more focussed.
It'll be a few days, maybe even the end of the week before I get the "then & now" set put together for this stretch, but in the meantime I thought I'd put up that favorite corner, essentially unchanged since 2006 ….
The white plastic saw-horse barricades are gone, a pedestrian-crossing warning sign has gone up, the corner cupboard under the vegetables has been rebuilt, the brick wall at the back under the awning has been painted a sort of electric yellow-green, the big tree on the right has been trimmed back a little (you can see the stump of the missing branch just below the fork), the air-conditioner has been taken out of the second floor second window to the left of the building corner — I'm sure there are more differences: the trash can has been moved, but this could happen every day for all I know, and what does it matter? (Is that a "good" question?)
What gives this corner its main character hasn't changed: Kim's Fruit & Vegetables (and Fish Market on the left), the green awning, the red (painted, I think) brick, the trees left and right.
Unchanged (almost) — sometimes that's the way I like it.
Maybe later today I can get to the enumeration of "signs of change" on the stretch from 43rd Street up to 57th Street. I think it's going to be too hot to go in and photograph the stretch from 111th Street up to 145th or 155th. Or maybe I'm just too lazy today, and besides, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, photographing vs. processing. (But why should that matter?)
No comments:
Post a Comment