Northern Spy Food Co.

northern-food-spy-portrait

My wife and I made a visit to the always awesome Highline Park yesterday, where I made this portrait of the young sandwich artist (artisan?) who hooked up our excellent grilled cheese sandwiches at the Northern Spy Food Co.’s Highline outpost. Like many other photographers, it’s an ongoing goal of mine to shoot more portraits of strangers, so this was a small step in that direction for me. Sadly, I neglected to get my subject’s name — definitely a rookie move on my part.

Incidentally, the sandwiches were slowly crafted and went well with the gazpacho we shared. Gazpacho is one of those things that’s never my first choice, but when I do have it, I enjoy it immensely. We finished our meal off with a tasty treat from L’Arte del Gelato across the way. Delicioso!

One last note: I made my diptych above with Tych Panel, which was recently updated for compatibility with Photoshp CS6. For the unfamiliar, Tych Panel is a fantastic extension for Photoshop that allows you to easily create n-tychs from a group of photographs. I highly recommend it.

One World Trade Center

 One World Trade Center, aka the Freedom Tower

Here’s a vertical pano of the still-under-construction World Trade Center building that I shot a few weeks ago. I had rented a 100-400mm zoom lens from Adorama over the weekend, and wanted to get in a few last shots before returning it, so I could get the most possible bang for my buck out of it. I decided that a good way to do that would be to get up early and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge before work, and get some shots that I normally wouldn’t be able to with my own stable of lenses.

This shot is a vertical panorama stitched together from three shots, and at full size, it’s a whopping 3403 x 9236 pixels. I scaled it down to a more respectable 6000 pixels tall before uploading it to Flickr, but even at that size you can still see some construction workers if you look closely.

The development has had its share of problems (consider that the Burj Khalifa was started after and completed years sooner than One WTC), but I think it’s shaping up to be a gorgeous building. It recently achieved the milestone of surpassing the Empire State Building in height, becoming the tallest building in New York City in the process, and will ultimately top out at a very symbolic 1776 feet when construction is complete.

From the Archives: Five Boro Bike Tour 2008

From the Archives: FDR Panorama

On May 4th, 2008 I took part in the Five Boro Bike Tour for the second time. The 42 mile tour passes through all five boroughs of New York City (hence the name), starting in Manhattan and finishing in Staten Island. This panorama was made as we headed south down FDR Drive, which runs along the East River. In the distance, you can see the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge - aka the 59th Street Bridge.