A Couple of Preview Photos

I shot quite a few photos while in Manhattan last week but a significant portion of these photos were shot atop the Empire State Building.  I decided to preview a couple of these photos and since they looked so good, I will share them here in this blog entry before I write about our visit to the famous observation deck towering above midtown Manhattan.

To be honest, when I first previewed and sorted my photos from the trip, I was a bit disappointed by the photos I shot at the Empire State Building.  Even when I was shooting the photos, I was a bit uncertain about how good they would be for quite a few very good reasons.  

First, it was frigid up there so I was shivering and distracted.  It is hard to stay focused and think clearly when you are being blasted by frigid air and wind.  As you would expect at this altitude (1,050 feet), the wind was whipping so much that I had to brace myself to keep from wobbling and swaying in the wind...  I had no tripod since they are not allowed at this location so I was handholding the camera...  it was late at night so the darkness meant I needed longer shutter speeds...  longer shutter speeds means more of a likelihood of getting blurred photos.  In short, capturing crisp photos was a challenge and I left the observation deck that night lacking confidence in my skills.  

I had also been having an ongoing issue with getting the exposure correct everywhere we visited.  Although it was dark out, all the lights were shockingly bright highlights which were easy to blow out because they were such bright points of light compared to the stark darkness.  The shadows were still black in the darkness but these very bright lights were easy to blow out and I hate blowing out highlights.  This was an additional and ongoing challenge throughout our entire trip.  

Because it was dark and I knew I would need a high ISO setting, I decided to shoot most of these photos a bit differently.  There is an Auto ISO mode that shoots a burst of three or four images and then the camera combines the photos by aligning them and stacking them.  This stacking reduces the noise (grain) introduced by shooting at high ISO values.  I had never really used this mode much before this outing so I was not sure how well it would work.  I was worried about the relatively longer shutter speeds while shooting a burst of images.  I wasn't sure I was keeping the camera steady enough for the camera to stack crisp photos. 

This morning, I decided to see what I could do with two interesting images I shot from the observation deck at the Empire State Building.  I'm relieved that I'm actually liking what I am seeing in these two images because the difficulties I had shooting these photos are still fresh in my mind.  

This first photo is a wide-angle shot looking south toward the new World Trade Center (otherwise cornily known as Freedom Tower).  This photo is impressively sharp and there is some really nice detail in this photo.  Those dots along the horizon are the unmistakable pattern of aircraft arriving and departing from Kennedy Airport...   New Jersey is to the right.... Long Island is to the left...

I didn't bring a long telephoto lens with me on this trip because I didn't want to be walking around carrying heavy gear.  I wanted my camera bag as light as possible to keep my spinal injuries from screaming at me!  I also didn't want to attract attention with a big long telephoto lens.  Many photographers lose all their gear to muggers everyday because they attracted unwanted attention so I didn't even bring a big telephoto lens with me.  

Since I had no long telephoto lens, I couldn't really get any close-up images of distant buildings and landmarks.  I did the best I could with what I did have on hand though.  This shot, below, is definitely stretching the abilities of the lenses I had but it shows the very distant Statue of Liberty right in the middle of the frame.  The Statue of Liberty was a tiny speck off in the distance of New York Harbor but even Lukey picked it out without any help.  He then found it with the big mounted binoculars on the observation deck "using math" as he excitedly proclaimed!

In the center of the frame, below, is the Statue of Liberty standing prominently in the harbor between Manhattan Island and New Jersey...

As I mentioned above, I'll write more about our visit to the Empire State Building soon.  I also have quite a few photos to share as well as a video clip of Lukey and Kenzie getting surprised as we entered the elevator to the observation deck...  (they had no idea we would be going to the top!).  

These two preview photos are looking pretty good though!