NYC Day 3
2014.09.19
Day One Hundred and Ninety Eight. Today started in Battery Park, where we got in the wrong line several times while trying to trade our City Pass tickets for the real tickets to get on the ferry. Things are not labeled nearly as well as they should be. But, after we got our tickets, the wait to get on the ferry was very short.
The ferry ride out to the Statue of Liberty provided for an excellent vantage point of both downtown, and the statue itself, though I did have to use Lightroom's straightening feature since I was hand holding and boats don't provide quite as good support as solid ground.
Once on Liberty Island, I experimented with IR to see if it did anything cool for the statue. It didn't. It probably would have if there'd been better clouds rolling through, but then again, a normal ND filter still probably would have been better. If there's no foliage in the shot, there's little point in IR if you have a 10 stop ND filter.
I also got a nice shot of Manhattan's skyline while there. I don't know if you can get onto Liberty Island for sunrise, but I'd be willing to bet you'd get some amazing pictures if you could.
After Liberty Island, we headed over to Ellis Island, where I didn't shoot much and only kept one wide angle shot of the inside of the main hall. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the day, and it wasn't dusty inside, so there's no epic light streaming in through the windows on one side, vis-à-vis the classic shot from 1930 of Grand Central Station. Oh well, maybe next time.
After we got back to Manhattan, we made our way up to Washington Square Park, where I did a study of the arch and again, only kept one shot. So, I made up for it by processing it four different ways. Which one is your favourite?
From there, we went to Wall Street to see the bull because it was totally on the way back to the flat. And, by "totally on the way", I mean, "the exact opposite direction". Who's planning this trip anyways?!
The Bull proved rather difficult to photograph. For one thing, he's very reflective (blown highlights are a serious problem). For another, given all of the extremely tall buildings on either side, he's not lit particularly well, and only fully lit in the middle of the day (which has the most boring light). For yet another, he's constantly surrounded by people trying to get their picture taken with him.
I resorted to thick ND filters and HDR to get the shot I did. I'm not overly happy with how it turned out, but it was super fun elbowing people to keep them from bumping my camera during the long exposures. Oh wait, no it wasn't. I enjoyed almost no part of it. Maybe I'll try again at night on the next trip. Maybe ...
That aside, I'm really happy overall with how today turned out!
