The Williamsburg Bridge - New York City

One of my favorite things to do is take a walk over the Williamsburg Bridge. It is the Northern-most bridge of the three bridges connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, with funky industrial-era architecture (it was completed around 1896). The bridge connects my current neighborhood of Williamsburg with my previous neighborhood - the Lower East Side. Combining the time at the two residences, I've been making bridge treks for about six years now!

I find the 20-minute walk to be very meditative, and have taken a lot of inspired photographs on the bridge in all this time. There are cool views of the mid-town and downtown Manhattan skylines, DUMBO, and Williamsburg. Plus, you can watch the boats and barges coming and going along the river and out to sea.

The photos in this post are the most recent ones I shot on the Williamburg Bridge, using just a little, plastic, panoramic camera. (It's a long walk, so I often get creative, instead of carrying heavy equipment. I've taken plenty of cool shoots on my cell phone!) Right now, there is a lot of construction going on in Williamsburg, and there is an amazing view of a huge crater at a construction site. That particular day, there was also a boat-plane soaring over the East River, getting ready to land. You could see it in the sky, looking tiny against the huge bridge girders.


Walking the bridge gives me a lot of perspective on city life because it allows me to be out in the fresh air and looking at the city from a distance. Of course, there is a lot of pedestrian and bicycle traffic on the bridge, so it isn't exactly an escape, but it is simply a way of stepping back and seeing the city in its glory. You can really appreciate how vast and dense New York City is, how much human brilliance and strength went into building this place. It reminds you of the pioneering spirit that created it - one of the greatest cities in the world - and it reminds you that all the pushing on the subway, all the determination to work one's way through a crowded sidewalk, maybe have their own reason after all, and don't have to be regarded as a nuisance. They are, in fact, symptoms of the same pioneering spirit, of people who will not be stopped, people who came to the city to pursue their dream.

Cleveland Steel Plant

On a recent trip to Cleveland, I visited a steel plant, not too far from downtown. Well, I didn't exactly visit, but rather parked my car illegally across the street to get some photos. I thought it was amazing to see these huge relics of the American Industrial Revolution, and I am fascinated by Cleveland. Actually, I have also started a tourist blog about all the fun and quirky things to do in Cleveland called, "Cleveland Hipster." (Click on the link to check it out!)


(Artistic note: All of the black and white images were shot on a plastic, automatic panoramic camera that I found at a yard sale in the Berkshires for $1.00. Below is a design I mocked up for a new Cleveland Hipster logo. Soon, I will convert it into a t-shirt design, as well. In the meantime, you can see how it looks as the branding on Cleveland Hipster's facebook page.)



One of the things I love most about Cleveland is the way the old industrial artifacts surface here and there around the city, but its modern-day aesthetic is very green and lush. In fact, there is a famously large strand of city parks that form a circle around the Greater Cleveland area called, "The Emerald Necklace."

Standing on the side of the road in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, looking in one direction, I saw this freshly paved road leading towards the aforementioned steel plant (right). And in the other direction, a field leading down to a brand-new shopping center - a field of wildflowers slanting steeply downwards from the road, waving in the summer in breeze (below).


Cleveland is full of these little pockets of nature, making it a such a beautiful city by "green-consciousness" standards. And there is something very grounding about the American history present in a place where a lot of immigrants once came to find work when "green" was not the big thing - back then it was "steel," or "industry." Pretty far from green, in fact! It is fascinating to be in a place where you can all at once witness how much times have really changed in a hundred years and see a lovely community thriving in present times.

Argentinean Sun Prints

FOUND ART (sort of)
When Kyle and I were in Buenos Aires last year, we found a little family-owned camera shop where they were selling old glass plates. In the photography timeline, glass plates were what preceded plastic film as the fixture onto which an image was formed within the chemicals - this is how a photo was recorded in the old days before digital was invented. (Nowadays I sometimes have little kids come up to me when I'm shooting film and try to see the back of the camera, saying, "Let me see!" and looking completely blank and awestruck when I tell them there is nothing to see - the image isn't fully formed yet.)


In any event, I was delighted to find them selling these old glass plates - some of them were 3x4 and some were 5x7 inches large, and we got a couple of each. They weren't expensive, and I would have bought the lot if we didn't have to worry about how to fly back with them. I don't really have any idea how old they are, although glass plates originated in the mid-1800s, and plastic film was being used for motion pictures by the 1880s, so it's possible they are quite old, indeed! (Or that someone was using an old technique some time later - still cool.)

For over a year now, I've been wanting to take the plates to the darkroom to make black and white prints out of. The cool thing about such large negatives is that you can make a contact print with them, and what's even cooler about the glass plates is that you can set them right onto the paper and the image makes contact with the surface of the paper - all of this gives you a very sharp image (the 19th-century equivalent to high-res).

Maybe it's laziness, or maybe it's too much time in front of the computer, but I haven't rented a darkroom in quite awhile. It seems like a lot of work, even though the quality of a hand-printed photo is undeniably beautiful. As un-jaded as I strive to be, even I like the speed and ease of the digital age, what can I say.


Wouldn't you know, a fun - yet analog - solution came along! While I was in Philadelphia last weekend, I found a little science store called Spectrum Scientifics, in the adorable shopping district called Manayunk. The science store sold paper for sun prints! This paper allows you to create, essentially, a very simplified version of a cyanotype (see sidebar for definition by Alexander Zolli), with the paper pre-coated with a blueish light-sensitive chemical. All you do is place something on it in the sun, and the paper inverts negative into positive. So Kyle and I could make contact prints at home in 3-and-a-half minutes! (All you do then is wash the prints under running water - highly recommend this for young, budding photographers who want to know what it's like to see an image take form on the chemically-enhanced paper. There's NO clean up!)


Although forgoing some of the sharpness and nuances available by properly fashioning a print in the darkroom, it was cool to finally see the glass plates in positive form. There is a portrait of a man, a portrait of a girl who appears to be blind, the front of a theater in the rain, and amazing shot of a flooded city - with a boat floating down the road! Of course, you could kind of tell all of this from the negative images on the glass plates. But it was a lot of fun to see the positives take form on the paper.

ICA - Boston

I just got the black and white scans back from my visit to the ICA in Boston, and wanted to share a few frames. I thought the look and feel of most of Boston was very "American-Revolutionary-War," but the ICA really stood out as a piece of modern architecture. The ICA (which stands for Institute of Contemporary Art) was designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and presently houses an exhibit by Louise Bourgeois featuring a huge, room-filling metal spider (I walked under it!), and a design exhibit that is essentially a snapshot into present-day design aesthetics. A lot of the design was not an unusual sight to a New Yorker who has access to SoHo shops like Moss, and whose friends and colleagues are modern artists with their nose in everything modern in order to maintain average-level clever quips over cocktails. I did however, come away with a juicy treasure of a lead into future decorations for my apartment - Seattle designer Jessica Smith's line of ironic wallpaper! (Check out her company, Domestic Element.)

I recommend visiting the ICA because the architecture is elegant and wonderful with a certain Scandavian flair. Also, the view from the wall of windows between the galleries offers the incredible optical illusion of one's feet protruding out directly over the Harbor. (You can see from the side view that the building does not actually protrude over the water, but through optical convergence when looking down from the 4th floor, it really looks like it does!)