New York City Noir

Hard Times in New York City

The unemployment rate in NYC hit 9.5% today. 

I took these pics a few months ago on a Nikon Coolpix 7.

 

NYC Fireworks

 

I was in the West 80's and too far uptown.  The fireworks barely broke over the rooftops far to the south.  All the technical data is the same as in the post below.

Moonglow over Central Park West

 

I was on the roof of a building on Columbus Avenue about 9:00 pm hoping to photograph the July 4th fireworks.  Turning to look behind me, I saw to the east an almost full moon rising.  About ten minutes later, the fireworks still had not begun; but by then the moon was positioned directly behind the Beresford's northwest tower.  I shot a five second exposure with the Nikon 18 -200 DX lens open to f5.6 and the D200 (mounted on a Tiltall tripod) set to ISO 100.

Cornell Woolrich

It was Cornell Woolrich, with his series of novels containing the word "black" in their title -- Black Alibi, The Bride Wore Black -- who actually invented "noir" back in the 1930's and who was the total master of urban paranoia, always with an innocent young hero and his girl fleeing through the city at night as sinister forces conspired against them. He also wrote Rear Window and Waltz into Darkness. 

In a biography of Steiglitz by Richard Whelan, I came across a great quote: 

"[New York had been] built up now to a pyramidal splendor, crowded, immutable, and terribly, terribly deathlike... It is a city in which man has almost completely disappeared; despite all its metallic precision, it is like an enormous graven image of some very ancient civilization in which all signs of humanity have withered and everything is wrapped in silence."

Harold Clurman, America and Alfred Steiglitz

Riverside Park

The day after I returned from Japan, I did a shoot here in NYC with Jasmine, who was visiting from Boston.  On Jasmine's suggestion, we did a shoot in Riverside Park where the trees were just going into bloom.  I got some great photos using the spring foliage as a background.

In processing the pics afterward, I made the lighting more dramatic through the use of third-party Photoshop plug-in filters (see below).  On the other hand, in the pic above, I created a composite effect by selecting the model's face and figure (which had been greatly underexposed) and making a number of lighting changes to the selection while leaving the background, which had been correctly exposed, intact.

Brooklyn Photoshoot

On Friday evening, I did a photoshoot in the Bushwick and Williamsburg sections of Brooklyn with model Jasmine.

Brooklyn offers what Manhattan no longer does -- great location backdrops.  In particular, there are murals on the walls that have not yet been painted over by developers and worn graffiti-coverered industrial backgrounds on the walls and doorways of warehouses not yet coverted to condos.

Vanishing New York

The New York Times reported that two NYC landmarks from an earlier, non-gentrified era are about to disappear from Manhattan.  The first is Cafe La Fortuna, famous as the former hangout of John Lennon who, at the time, lived around the corner in The Dakota.  The other is Off Track Betting, or OTB, that throwback to a tougher and more desperate Damon Runyon version of NYC. 

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I was in Williamsburg (the first stop across the East River on the L train) yesterday.  I was there to meet with an Asian model for my project.  Afterwards, I wandered around the neighborhood to take some location shots. 

Williamsburg is an old warehouse district that became popular with artists who were forced out of Manhattan by rising rents.  In the old days, it was a rundown Irish neighborhood.  Both my father and grandfather were born there.  Unlike Manhattan, there are still a lot of gritty street scenes in Williamsburg, as well as a fun arts scene that's reminiscent of what Soho and the East Village used to be like.  Hopefully, the NYC real estate market will crash before the scene there becomes overly gentrified.

The model I met with was named Anais Sin and was a really cool person -- a conceptual artist who's both Japanese and Brazilian and also works as a burlesque dancer.  She had great style in her clothes -- very downtown -- and a lot of attitude, which is exactly what I'm looking for.  We talked over coffee at a cafe named Fabiano's on Beford Avenue.  Anais was really interested in my project since here in NYC she's had to endure not only hurtful Asian stereotypes, but equally stupid stereotypes that consider all Brazilian women to be nothing but oversexed sluts.  Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, but that doesn't stop American men from acting like complete idiots.  Anais even told me on one man who, when she politely declined to go to bed with him, quickly offered her money on the assumption that Brazilian women are always ready to whore for a few dollars.  Anais (not a shy woman by any means) told me how forcefully she had set him straight.  I would have loved to have been there to have heard the dressing down she gave him.

Both the photographs in this post were shot several years ago on a Sony Cybershot and were heavily manipulated in Photoshop.

Fashion Week: Couture Show

I'm not a commercial photographer, but I did go Friday evening to the Westin Hotel to photo my friend Jasmine at a couture show in the Westin Hotel on 43rd Street. 

Of course, my name did not appear on the guest list, even though Jasmine had requested it.  But I was in luck.  The two women at the registration desk, not knowing what to do, finally said, "Well, if you're a photographer, I guess you should just go in and set up."  Without waiting for them to change their minds, I went into the ballroom and joined the other photographers at the end of the runway. 

The photographer next to me told me she was "totally bitched out" after having shot in a tent for the last week and having had her camera stolen in California.  But she was really very helpful in giving information about ISO settings and what spots on the runway the models would pause long enough to shoot.  (Flash, though not forbidden, is not used because the light can blind a model as she's walking.  ISO's higher than 640 -- I went with 400 -- create too much noise in the digital images.  Accordingly, in order to get a reasonably sharp photo, it's necessary to photo the models while they pause to give the audience a better look at the clothes.)

"You've really never shot one of these shows?" the photographer asked.

"Lady, I've never even been to one of these shows," I answered.

As for the show itself, I thought the European designer showed too many outfits. There were definitely a few great pieces, some of them very sexy, but just as many failures.  I thought of the photographers' old rule of favoring quality over quantity when showing a portfolio.  There was also something too ornate, perhaps the use of flesh colored fabric to cover bare skin, and overdone to be really glamorous. 

Aside from Jasmine, the models were all caucasian blondes and brunettes.  Jasmine later told me many were Russian.  They were all the right height, but some seemed much too wide in the hips to be working runway.

Fashion Week

Fashion Week is once again taking place in Bryant Park and models and photographers are gathering in NYC for the event.  I'm not a commercial photographer myself and won't be working there, but I am looking forward to meeting dear friends.