Monthly Archives: February 2012 This is the souvenir stand next to the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. As with all other images in the series, it was taken with real film, early on a Saturday morning in January. Having just been to Disney World last week, the parallels and contrast stands out for me here. Every Disney ride has an associated...   I posted a nearly identical image in color 2 weeks ago. I do not remember the details of shooting both images, but based on the shadow patterns being nearly identical, I must have shot them one immediately after the other (I was carrying two film cameras, one stocked with color and the other with black...  Out here the subway is an elevated, and more than one line terminates at this station, so the Coney Island subway terminal is a rather ornate and impressive structure as subway stops go. It’s not my sharpest image, but I’m pleased with it nonetheless. I find I need to be a bit more forgiving of technical flaws... It has been a little more than a year since I asked your indulgence for a non-photography related post, and I need to do it again. I have a credit card issued by the Bank of America, which I will soon be canceling. Apparently some company somewhere had a security breach that included, at the...  This is the exterior front of the Dreamland Roller Rink. As far as I can tell, it is currently closed (not just for the season) and unlikely to open. A very cool building that I think is unlikely to survive long,so I’m glad I was able to capture it. You can see the light towers...  I’ve been away for the last week on a family vacation to Disney World in FLorida, so I want to thank everyone who has come by, and especially those who left comments, since I was largely uncommunicative and did not reciprocate and rarely responded. While on the trip, I concentrated most of my photographic efforts...  People stream into and out of Grand Central Terminal through a vast array of passageways and doors, some of them semi-secret, at least to those who do not need them. But this is the main one. Decades ago, if you visited New York for the first time, there is a good chance that this would...  Grand Central Terminal was once a major point of arrival and departure for nationwide travel. It now functions mostly as a regional and largely commuter rail service. The two main lines leaving the terminal are the Harlem Line (North and East) and the Hudson Line (North and West). What’s that? Would you like to see...  You do not see phone banks ver much any more, not even in hotels or similar venues. But there are a few of them in Grand Central Terminal. Tweet  Vanderbilt Hall used to be the main waiting area for Grand Central Station. Now it is sometimes roped off, sometimes used for various exhibitions, and sometimes serves as a semi-quiet and less hectic spot to catch one’s breath. By the way, this post was temporarily and accidentally published briefly last Friday, so if it looks...  There are two walkways from the Main Hall at Grand Central Terminal leading to Lexington Avenue. I could have stood in the other one for 30 minutes, and I don’t think it ever would have presented me with a scene empty of people. This passage looked like this every time I walked by. Tweet  A new week begins a new series, this one showing mostly small scenes from Grand Central Terminal (with a few from the Grand Central Station subway stop). All were shot in black and white, using a Minolta CLE, and Ilford HP5+ 400 film pushed to 1600 ISO. All were taken on a Sunday morning. The...  This will be the last image in the series, but only for a while. Starting tomorrow I’m presenting another series of images from Grand Central (both the Terminal and the Station), all black and white and like this series, all film. This series will continue, but I’m not sure when. I also have black and...  The fenced off amusement park rides are the most modern and well maintained features at Coney Island, even though most of them have an inherently retro look that reminds you of decades past. There’s also something unsettling about their painted cheer when you see them put aside and unused for the off-season. I’m not certain,...  In addition to my interest in shooting and documenting Coney Island in its present state, my other main inspiration for this series was a series that my friend Bob Lussier did last winter. He called it “Off Season.” It featured winter photographs of Salisbury, Massachusetts, a beach/resort town, and like Coney Island, its heyday is...  Here is some evidence of renewal, as to the right you can see that a section of the the Coney Island boardwalk is being rebuilt. But it’s still a bit sad that the only major construction is of an open space. I did not see any evidence of new construction at any of the empty lots. This...  One of the ideas I found myself playing with as I shot these images, was how it was hard to tell the difference between places that were closed for the winter, and those that were closed for good. Some are obvious. This Coney Island ticket booth and the rides behind it appear very likely to...  One of my inspirations, or perhaps motivations, for this photo series and project is that Coney Island is changing and much of its physical history is disappearing. In fact, from what I have read, much of it is already gone. There is substantial controversy about the area’s redevelopment, and to the extent there might be shady dealings,...  So I think I have the next four weeks of posts here all planned out, which is unusual for me. As I’ve mentioned, if not comprehensively, two weekends ago I shot several rolls of film. Saturday morning at Coney Island, Sunday morning in and around Grand Central. Juggling 3 cameras, I shot color, black and...  At this point in my film adventure, it appears that it will be a long time before I can take a good photo except by accident. It happens often enough, but the difference between those images that come out as I wanted and those that do not has more to do with chance than with...  |
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