On Friday I met up with Katie, a friend from Portland who moved to NYC back in the summer, and her friend Ashley. We took a nice walk across the Brooklyn bridge and then headed over to Battery Park to see if we could get out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We missed the last ferry so instead we took the ferry to Staten Island.
The night ended with a great dinner/dance party with Katie’s awesome friends and roommates. The next morning we woke up to snow on the ground so we headed out for a nice walk in Prospect Park.
Tomorrow I take off for Israel. I’m leaving my computer with my brother in Brooklyn so most likely the next update will be when I return to NYC in March.
Today I headed up to the Top of the Rock, which is on the roof of Rockefeller Center, with my photography friend Lindsay. When I lived her in 2008 I always wanted to make it to the top but either lack of money or horrible weather kept me from going up. I made a point of it this time to go.
The views from the top were incredible and breathtaking. While I was up there it seemed like everyone else was from another country whether it be Great Britain, Germany, China, or Canada . . . all asking if I could take their photo.
When it got dark out came the tripod and within in a minute a security guard was on me. Apparently you can only use a tripod up there if it isn’t open. A little absurd if you ask me considering when I had the legs extended it was only about a foot wide and a foot high. I managed to get around it but straddling my tripod on the metal bars (which was much more dangerous for the people below than if they just would have let me open my tripod out a couple inches). Next time I’ll have to bring my Gorilla tripod which could have easily attached to the bars.
After we headed back across to Dumbo in Brooklyn and finished with some shots of the skyline from the shore between the Brooklyn and the Manhattan bridge.
I’m pretty tired so I’m going to keep this post short and just show a couple selects that stood out to me as I browsed through the hundreds of photos I took today. They’re all rough edits. Enjoy. And now sleep for me.
I’m waiting to meet up with a friend to go check out the Top of The Rock Observatory, in NYC, so I thought I’d share some experiences from my past weekend trip to Eugene.
Last Saturday I visited my cousin Syd. He’s taking a class in large format cameras so he showed me how to use one and we got to play around with it for a little while. Large format is a completely different world than 35mm. When I start making a little more money from photography, large format and medium format cameras are definitely an area I want to explore.
The weather outside was drizzly all day so we didn’t get to take the camera outside. So instead we hopped in the car and headed up to Cougar Hot Springs (about an hour outside of Eugene). We ended up getting lost (multiple times) so we didn’t make it up to the hot springs until it was dark. Even in the dark though it was one of the best experiences I’ve had. In the dark all we could make out were shapes of the hills, huge rock faces and vast forests which forced me to take in the surroundings in a much different way.
A short walk from the car and we arrived at the steaming pools of water. At Cougar Hot Springs the hot water comes from the mouth of a small cave. It then flows into a generously sized pool (created by rocks being piled up). From there it flows down into three or four more pools, each one a little cooler than the last.
Syd and I stripped down into our birthday suits and carefully walked down the slippery rocks to the hot springs pool below. Tealight candles bathed the pool in a warm and soothing light. About 5-7 people were already in the pool.
For the next four hours we lounged in the amazing water that somehow was the perfect temperature. We had great conversations with our fellow bathers, learned how clean our faces with the soapstone that surrounding the pool, and had plenty of time to mediate and take in our surroundings.
Cougar Hot Springs; I will be back.
On the way back to our car we stopped along the road to take some photos. I had forgotten my remote trigger for the shutter so I had to hold down the shutter on my own, while in bulb mode. For the shot below I believe I held the shutter down for 6 minutes. It ended up making the photo look like daytime when really it was pitch black out. The second photo Syd took of me while a car passed by.
And I’m off. Yesterday I started my month-long trip to Israel. I’m going to Israel with a group called Taglit-Birthright. This group gives the gift of a free trip to Israel if you’re of Jewish heritage. The trip lasts ten days. After the trip I’ll be exploring Israel on my own for a little while. Haven’t decided how long yet.
First stop NYC. In typical fashion I didn’t pack till the last-minute so the night before my flight consisted of only an hour of sleep. This ended up being a good thing though as I slept pretty much the entire plane right. And yet somehow I managed to wake up just as the sun was rising.
It is nice to finally be back in NYC after attempting to make it here 2-3 times since last year only to have various problems stop me at the last minute. Anyways, time for me to go out exploring.
It’s been awhile since Mike and I have gone on an adventure together. In typical adventure day fashion Mike asks me last-minute at 12pm if I want to go to the coast. I had planned on spending the day editing photos but a day at the coast sounded better. We get to the coast and it’s a torrential downpour and very windy. I kind of liked it though (despite my face below which was actually due to all the wind and rain hitting my face, haha). We ended up going on the short hike which takes you down to Ecola Beach. By the time we got down to the beach the storm had broken and clear sky began to peak through . . . just in time for the sunset.
To end our adventure we stopped at Pizza a’ fetta in Canon Beach for some amazing pizza and great conversations with the owner. He gave us a lot of great adventure locations for the future.
It’s been way to long since I’ve posted anything. It’s not that I haven’t been going on any adventures. I’ve actually been going on a lot. Just haven’t had time to post any photos or write about them. That’s going to change though. Expect more posts in the coming days.
A couple months ago my friends Lauren, Kevin and Josh started this awesome tradition of having friends over every Sunday for a potluck dinner. Last week the theme for the dinner was raw dishes so it was decided that this weeks theme would be the exact opposite; fried food. All delicious food.
The dinner is always followed by a game of Celebrity. For those who don’t know the game it basically consists of you putting 5 or so famous names in a bowl and then playing charades trying to guess the names. There are three rounds. The first round you can do charades and say any word that isn’t part of the name. The second round you can only say one word plus charades. And the last round you can only do charades. It ends up getting pretty funny by the last round.
Then we finish off the night by either going to Moon and Sixpence or the Ambassador for karaoke.
I believe this coming week we plan on having a murder mystery dinner party.
This past week I went down to the north waterfront twice to catch the sunrise. The first day I found a nice grassy patch to shoot that jetted out into the water a little bit. It was held up by a 30-40 foot retaining wall. I spent most of that morning sitting on the retaining wall thinking how great of a spot it would be to watch a sunrise . . . if there was one.
Not getting my fill of a sunrise I begrudgingly forced myself out of bed the following morning to try again. When I got to the site I noticed a huge difference but due to my still groggy sleepy state I couldn’t figure out what was different. I got my tripod out and headed to the spot where I had shot before and that’s when it hit me. Where I was standing the previous day was now, in a huge landslide, 30-40 feet below in the water. It made me pretty thankful it didn’t happen while I was sitting on the retaining wall the previous day.
In the photo below you can see the landslide. See the remaining retaining wall jutting out as well as the corner of the retaining wall now in the water? Those used to be connected and that’s where I was sitting. I guess I ate too much that morning and was more than the retaining wall could handle.
Can’t sleep for some reason tonight. I went to sleep at 11pm and slept for an hour and a half only to wake up feeling like it was already morning. The wheels in my mind just keep turning. Ideas bombarding me from all sides. Too many good things happening in your life can make it hard to sleep.
Below are photos from down on the waterfront under the Hawthorne Bridge. I wanted to capture a new vantage point of the skyline and this is what I came up with.
For the photo above I rocked the zoom lens back and forth for half the exposure and then let it sit still at the wider end for the rest of the exposure. All shots were exposed for 30 seconds at f/8 using the 17-40mm f/4 L lens.
It is Wednesday and that means adventure day. After brainstorming Mike and I decide to head up to Larch Mountain in the Columbia Gorge. Driving up there, as we gain elevation snow slowly becomes part of the landscape. Snow covered trees symmetrically line the road.
We decide halfway up to pull of to the side of the road and explore the surroundings. Opening my door I am pleasantly surprised at the absence of sound. Dead silence. I get my camera out and position myself in the center of the road to capture the symmetrical landscape in front of me.
Out of the silence a strange methodical sound surrounds me from above. I look up and see two huge hawks sweeping above the trees.
Twenty minutes later and we’re back in the car and on our way to Larch Mountain.
We are often so set on getting to our desired destination that we fail to enjoy the journey. While getting to the top of Larch Mountain, with the amazing view of Mt. Hood National Forest, was breathtaking, the most enjoyable part of the adventure was stopping and exploring the forest area along the road.
Two weeks ago I had a jam packed weekend of ultimate frisbee and hiking. The day after I returned from the Handford Howl Frisbee tournament I headed out to Bagby hot springs with a group of friends to relax my sore muscles. The following day consisted of ultimate frisbee, lunch at a Nicholas Restaurant (a Lebanees and Middle Eastern cuisine) and a hike on Wahkeena trail in the Gorge. About halfway through the hike it got completely dark so it became a night hike.
The photos below are of the stream that feeds Multnomah Falls.
Overlooking the Columbia river and I-84. I think it was a full moon that night or at least pretty close to one.
Speaking of night photography in the Columbia Gorge you should check out this photo taken by Ben Canales, a photographer I found on flickr. Pretty awesome story for how he got the photo.
