Life in the city

I’ve discovered that carrying a camera around can be addictive. I took this photo on Friday night while walking from dinner to a show with my friend, and I definitely stopped and started taking the shot and fiddling with my camera and had to apologize for not paying attention to either the story she was telling or where we were walking. (I did apologize, right? Sorry!) But as I’ve said before, now that I’m training myself to look for interesting shots, I’m noticing them — and if my camera is out already, well, I have to stop and take a picture.

I was already on my way to being like this with my point-and-shoot camera because I wanted photos for this blog, but my fancy DSLR (and the classes I’ve been taking!) have inspired me. I don’t think I’ll get to the point where I carry my camera with me everywhere — it’s heavy, and most days I’m just heading to work and back — but I do want to get in the habit of carrying it more.

I just had my last photography class, and I’m bummed. It was only three sessions long, but I learned a lot! It was through the Brooklyn Brainery, and the class size was small — only ten could sign up, and by the third session we were down to five of us. That meant that we had a decent amount of individual attention AND got through a lot of material in a total of six hours — all for $85! If you’re interested in taking the class, get on the Brainery’s mailing list and keep an eye out for the next time they hold it. I knew from the list that the photography classes usually sell out quickly, so when I saw this one come up I jumped on it!

This weekend’s assignment had to do with taking photos of motion (both blurred and frozen) and depth of field (both shallow and deep). And of course, what do we see moving in the streets of Manhattan? Cars! You’d think with our excellent (if gross) public transit there would be fewer of these around but no — even on a Saturday, people are driving all over the city.

Thankfully, though, most of them don’t go nearly fast as I’ve made it look like here. It’s my slow shudder speed causing this translucent blur — how neat is it that we can basically see through the cars to the scaffolding on the other side?

I think one of the neatest things about photography is how sometimes you can capture something wonderful and not realize it till afterward. I’m not sure what I was trying to achieve with the photo above, but what I got was an image with a shallow depth of field. The bicyclist is in focus, and the taxi is almost, but everything else is a little blurry, making the cyclist really pop.

I know I’ve shared a similar image before, but I just couldn’t resist giving you one more glimpse of that tiny Sature of Liberty in the distance. Even with the highway I love this image, especially the contrast between the vibrant green of the trees and the muted signs.

I love what I’m seeing through my viewfinder these days, and I can’t wait to learn more and practice. In the meantime, I’ll soon return to my regularly scheduled programming — it’s been FOREVER since I told you about a show I went to, I clearly need to write about one again soon!

If you were going to recommend one place in the city where I HAVE to bring my camera with me if I go, what would it be?