The artist calls it Cloud Gate, but the public calls it The Bean. No matter the nomenclature, it draws people to its reflective surface to look at themselves and the city in reverse. I've only seen it once, in summer, on a sticky, steamy day, but I'm sure it's as enjoyable on a windy winter day.
The new condo building on 23rd St. seems to be finally completed, and it now provides an attractive reflection of the Met Life Building in its windows -- which is pretty much the only attractive thing about it.
I liked how the arrow for the toll lane was reflected upside down in the back of this Mustang.
Showed a friend from L.A. the High Line this afternoon before I went into work and as I looked up before heading down to street level, I noticed the sun shining on a plane high above and the sky reflected in the windows of the Caledonia condo building.
Nothing too special about this one. Was stopped at the light on 18th St. at Eighth Ave., looked over, and liked the melding of the reflections in the window and the displays in the store. I did take a more closely cropped shot first, and it shows more detail in the reflections and displays, but in the end I liked this one better.
For my birthday, I headed home to have lunch with my parents at The WindMill in Long Branch. I chose the original specifically to sit on the second-floor deck at the base of the red windmill and look out on Ocean Blvd. and the ocean. I shot the tower reflected in the back window of my mom's car as we headed up the road for ice cream at the Lighthouse.
I was tired and lazy this Saturday and didn't try very hard. This is the one and only time I pressed the shutter, and I just let it be.
I love taking pictures in the car mirror. This one came as I was waiting to pick up Casey at the train station.
I guess that can happen after 137,000 miles. I managed to hold it in place with a bungee cord secured through the door and drive it only once -- to get it to the dealership for repair.
Not the prettiest of days in Manhattan, but the cold, wet weather meant no line at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. And then it provided this dual image.
Flickr (or Blogger, not sure which is responsible) is ticking me off. The "blog this" link isn't working, and the "Try Again" button does nothing. It's so much easier to post when technology doesn't crap out on you.
Anyway, my previous (slightly) longer post has been whittled down to this:
The Harmon Cove Towers reflect the setting sun from across the Meadowlands, and the Hackensack River reflects the condo/office complex as I zip by on the train on my way to work.
Spent 2 1/2 hours on trains getting to work tonight -- a trip that usually takes one hour, door-to-door. Switches on the tracks that move trains from one set of rails to another froze outside Secaucus, delaying us indefinitely somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. I managed to get a lot done -- I napped, I read The New Yorker, I tried to get a few photographs. None of them proved to be keepers, except for this one, settling though it may be.
I just had to put up something more soothing -- that is, less agitating than yesterday's post.
Life is too short to hate.
I took a plane, I took a train
(Ah, who cares, you always end up in the city)
-- "Myriad Harbour," The New Pornographers
Around here, "The City" only means one thing, one place, one city. New York.
New Jersey has its own cities and its own highlights, but if you say you're going to "the city" or were in "the city" over the weekend, you mean New York. Most of the time, we're only talking about Manhattan. The other boroughs are referred to by name, but the big island gets the singular title.
The City.
What else do you call a 301-square-mile metropolis with eight million people? Taking Manhattan alone, it's 23 square miles -- 13.4 by 2.3, at its widest -- with 1.6 million people on it. Who knows what the average number of people in New York at any one time is when you consider the commuters and the tourists.
One thing's for sure, though -- if there are one million people in Times Square, 999,832 of them are tourists.
Officially, it's called Cloud Gate, but everyone knows it as The Bean. It's Anish Kapoor's installation in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, and on an extremely hot day in early August, it drew people to the shade it provided. Standing underneath it, looking up at your distorted reflection, you're cooled by the breeze that glides through the arched opening.
I'm a sucker for distorted reflections, shooting any and all angles to ensure I don't miss a view I'd wish I had later. The sun didn't fully cooperate since we happened to visit the park near midday, and with the heat, I was too lazy to make the extra movements necessary to pull the graduated neutral density filter out of my bag. So with this shot, I pushed the saturation up to the max to exaggerate the sun's white-out and give it a bit of a painted look while creating a sharp demarcation of The Bean's edges. Other shots from the plaza show the installation in truer colors, but considering how heavy the air felt that afternoon, I like how the enhanced colors add some weight to the image.
