Scooter escape

Every once in a while I try to throw in something different than my normal wide angle cityscapes and candids and today is that day, as I feature some shots taken with the 50mm from New York.  It’s not a lens that I use that often, however when I do have it on (making a quick run to the store/family gathering/don’t feel like lugging around the WA or telephoto) I say to myself, “I really should be using this lens more often”.  Being a primary HDR photographer and not having the benefit of autobracketing or VR lenses on my first camera, the D40X, and also seeing how the 50mm doesn’t have VR, I think that that is probably the primary reason why.  Now, tripod, no problem.  But when you are standing in the middle of a busy New York street with nothing to lean against, bracketing five shots without the benefit of VR can be tough.  I thought that I would give it a shot anyway.

The first shot is one that I took on Saturday afternoon with friend and fellow photog Mark Garbowski.  I met him around lunch, we grabbed some pizza and then started making our way down through the city.  I started off shooting some wide angles of Park Avenue and some other various buildings then decided to thrown on the 50mm and work on some candids, which I displayed in a previous post.  One such building was what I thought was Sarah Jessica Parker’s character from Sex and the City apartment, however it turned out it was not.  I promised my wife that I would get a picture of it for her, but this day was not the day it was going to happen.  This set of fire escapes and the accompanying shadows caught my eye however, so I flipped the bracketing on and fired away.

On Sunday, my last day in New York, I had plenty of time to kill since my flight wasn’t until 8:00 that night.  After spending the morning with my family in Central Park, I made my way towards Greenwich Village, where I had more reliable information about the location of the famous front stoop of Carrie Bradshaw.  As soon as I turned the corner, I knew that I had the right place, as there were a handful of women standing around taking some photos and posing.  Was I the only guy?  Yep.  I got my shot and moved on.  On my way back to the subway I noticed this scooter/Vespa that was just begging to be photographed.  And I was happy to oblige.

Both shots are five exposure handheld HDRs taken with the 50mm and processed with Photomatix and Photoshop.  They both got a variety of filters in onOne PhotoTools, for example Enter the Dragon, Blue Dawn Leonidas, Golden Hour Enhancer, Dreamland, Turbo Boost and High Pass Sharpening.  I didn’t really do a great deal to the pictures outside of that, just some cropping and straightening.

Thanks for hanging out today.  Pretty excited too, as I have my second shoot with the band Act of Pardon tomorrow night.  Should be another great show.