Juxtaposing images

I have always been intrigued with the way one image plays off of another in terms of suggesting concepts. To that end I have been collecting images that could potentially work together to form a new image with a specific meaning beyond what either of them convey on their own.

The photo combination below is one such juxtaposition -- some barren trees in fog, and a model I photographed recently specifically for assembling these allegorical compositions.

New York is treated to half of an eclipse

Last night cloud cover rolled in to hide the second half of the eclipse of the moon, but not before I was able to take the ten exposures I needed to record at least this partial view. I took one photo every six minutes for the first hour of the eclipse. Later I combined the photos as layers in Photoshop and put them over a darkened sunset sky I had recorded earlier.

I used a Nikon D810 set to its 1.2x crop mode. With a 1.7x telextender on a Nikon 80-400mm zoom I was able to obtain a bit over 800mm focal length, which was perfect for this scene. For the first part of the sequence I was working at 1/250 second and 800 ISO. I had to increase the exposure time and ISO as the moon darkened while going into shadow.

Location spots for photographing New York at night

Some of the best views of Manhattan can be taken from across the rivers that surround the island. On the west side is the Hudson River offering several spots along the coast of New Jersey, all of them an easy ferry ride from New York. Last night I hit two spots with good views of midtown.

My first spot was at Lincoln Harbor in Weehawken, a 6-minute ferry ride from the West 39th Street ferry terminal. It is directly across the river from midtown Manhattan. From Lincoln Harbor you can take another ferry one stop down the river to 14th Street in Hoboken for a more southerly view of both midtown and lower Manhattan, and from here it is a short ferry ride back to Manhattan.

A good view from Lincoln Harbor is from the riverside terrace of the Chart House restaurant. A nice thing about this spot is that you can enjoy a glass of beer or wine, as I did, while sitting on the terrace waiting for the right time to photograph. It is also an enjoyable place to have dinner after the shoot.

I intend the images to be used to make large prints so I used the 42mp Sony A7RII camera and stitched together a panorama. The first photo below is a combination of four images taken with the Leica 135mm APO Telyt lens with the camera in vertical position. The APO Telyt is one of the sharpest lenses out there so the image quality is exceptional, and the final print size is 4' wide. This could easily be interpolated to double that size if needed.

Four vertical images with the Leica 135mm APO Telyt combined to make an extremely large panorama. This photo was taken about 15-20 minutes after sunset, the best time for balancing the light from the sky with the lights in the buildings. In this shot the building lights maintain their details and are not blasted out as they are in the shot below. In fact, on the top floor of one of the buildings across the way you can actually see a party going on inside. 

This shot taken a little later in the evening was done as a single photo using the Nikon 70-200mm f/4 zoom mounted on the Sony A7RII.  This lens is one of the best zoom lenses available today and offered me the versatility of rapidly adjusting the focal length. Though not nearly as sharp as the first image, it is good enough for more moderate enlargements. The light streaks are from a ferry that passed by during the 20 second exposure. 

This is a more southerly view of midtown from 14th Street in Hoboken. By the time I took this shot it was getting late. To work more quickly I switched to the Sony 24-70mm f/4 Vario-Tessar zoom for this shot. It is not nearly as good as the other lenses I was using, but it was quicker to set up and compose. 

Both of my stopping points also offered this view of lower Manhattan, this one taken with the 135mm APO Telyt from Lincoln Harbor. 

Magnificent sunset over New York

Last night we were treated to a brief, but beautiful display of sunset clouds in the southwestern part of the city sky. With the sun moving further south as the year progresses, we are approaching the best time for taking sunset photos looking south towards lower Manhattan. I originally went out just to see if I could get some sunset skies to keep for use in putting into photographs in the future, but the sky was so dramatic over the city that I also grabbed a shot of the tiny city silhouetted against it.

I used both the Sony A7RII and Fuji X-T1 for the photos. The city shots were done with the A7RII so I would have a file size big enough for making large prints.

I kept the silhouetted city small and jammed towards the bottom of the frame so the sky would dominate the composition. The lens on the Sony A7RII was a 21mm Leica Elmarit-M used at f/5.6. Super-wide angle lenses such as this give the most dramatic skies with their ability to include the higher up atmosphere.

This panorama is a composite of two images taken with the Fuji X-T1.

This was one of my favorite sunset shots with the sun so tiny in the dramatic sky. It was taken at a 18mm (27mm equivalent) focal length on the Fuji X-T1 and 18-135mm zoom. 

It pays to always have a camera with you

I've been very pre-occupied lately with images for my Metropolis series, but not so busy that I haven't also been shooting some black and white of the city with my Fuji X-T1 and X100T. All of the images are essentially grab shots because I carry a Fuji camera with me all the time when walking around the city.

This was taken using the Fuji X-T1 in black & white red filter Fuji mode in addition to a polarizing filter on the 18-135mm lens to obtain the dramatic sky. 

A straight shot with the Fuji 55-200mm zoom right into the morning sun as it came up across the East River on a hazy morning. 

Late afternoon shadows and the polarizing filter used the same way as in the top image of the Flatiron Building. 

Taken with the Fuji X100T

The World Trade Center and nearby building with the Fuji X-T1 with 55-200mm lens.

Tower of the World Trade Center reflected in a nearby building. 

The Metropolis gets back to work

It's Monday morning and the city begins a new work week. Over the weekend I created another addition to my Metropolis series, this one titled, Metropolis - Workday morning. Five photographs were super-imposed to create this image of the city beginning its workday. The final print size is 27x48".

Split personality of the Metropolis

The diversity of the city is intense. At the same time it is cloaked in calm, meditative serenity, it can also take on a chaotic, boisterous frenzy. It is always filled with high energy, sometimes to the point of over-powering.

This past week I tried to capture two opposite extremes of the Metropolis -- its sophisticated side and its wild side. Both are night time views made up of multiple exposures. The top image, called Dressed for the evening,  is the minimalism of the city grid reflected in its architecture and lighting. The bottom image, called Boogie-Woogie too, is Times Square and Broadway lights at night. This image pay homage to Piet Mondrian who moved to New York to escape the second world war. He loved the "dynamic rhythm" of the city, which he liked to "Boogy-Woogie" jazz popular at the time, and tried to capture this spirit in an abstract painting finished in 1943 and entitled Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Using purely abstract forms, Mondrian sought to convey an order he saw underpinning the natural world. I have used found grid patterns of the city architecture to similarly tie together my compositions of the Metropolis series of photographs.

Metropolis - Dressed for the evening, NY, 2015

Metropolis - Boogie-Woogie too, NY, 2015

Because I intend to print these images quite large I have taken to photographing them with the 42mp Sony A7RII  equipped with high quality, usually Leica or Zeiss, lenses.