New York - Central Park and the 911 Memorial Museum

Many of you know that I was in New York last week, presenting in the afternoons at B&H Photo. That gave me the first part of the day to play tour guide for my wife and daughter. On Wednesday morning, we walked over to Central Park to relax and take some photos.

Soon after arriving at the park, Ali spotted the old carousel and insisted on taking a ride. This carousel was built in 1908 and was restored in the 1950s. More than 250,000 people ride this every year, but there was nobody else there when we arrived, so Ali had the whole ride to herself.

After shooting photos of Ali being a little kid again, I walked around and took photos of some of the details of the carousel. All of the photos taken in this blog post were captured with a Canon 5D Mark III and the Canon 24-105mm lens.

I love repeating elements in my photos, so this was a fun shot for me to take. I took this photo at f/4 to create a shallow depth of field and have only one of the horses in focus.

My guess is that most people pass this small element and don't even see it. My wife and I took numerous photos of this post, showing the character and colors.

I walked them from the carousel to the Bethesda Fountain. Instead of taking the "standard photo" that everyone else was taking from above the fountain, I chose to shoot through one of the walls to get this view. I took numerous photos at different apertures to determine which look I liked the best. This photo was taken at f/14 (with the focus on the fountain) to maintain details in the fountain and the wall.

I could not take the family to Central Park and not have them see Bow Bridge.

Since I had to get back to the hotel to prepare for my B&H presentation, we started making our way out of the park. But not before stopping at the Conservatory Water. As we approached the small pond, we noticed the amazing reflections in the water.

There were a couple remote controlled sail boats in the water at the time, and they would create a tiny bit of ripples in the water. These ripples added just enough distortion in the reflection to add interest to the photo.

Seeing the ripples, and how they effected the reflection of the buildings, I quickly zoomed in and grabbed this photo.

This was a fun photo to capture. What you see is the reflection of the trees, but also the reflection of Ali and Annette who were across the water from me.

Here is the same photo which has been rotated 180 degrees. To me, this almost looks like a painting.

Fast forward to Thursday morning, when we had reservations at the new 911 Memorial Museum at the site of the original World Trade Center buildings. We spent almost 3 hours at the museum, and could have been there for another 2 hours, if I did not have to leave for my next presentation. It was really strange to be at a museum like this, looking at history which I remember so clearly. For me, this was not like seeing a museum of a past event, to which I could not relate. I remember that day, that event, that horror, like it was yesterday.

The museum was really nicely done, respecting the event in a classy way.

It was amazing to see solid pieces of metal bent and sheered as if it was paper.

This was once an old motorcycle in really bad condition. One of the firefighters who died on Sept. 11th was hoping to restore this bike. Well after that fateful day, a group of his fellow firefighters got together and restored the bike in this honor. Many people were photographing this motorcycle, like you see in the photo above.

I saw the eagle on the front fender and got down close to shoot this photo. I love the lines and the colors in this detail.

As we were leaving the museum, I turned around and saw the new World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) surrounded by these great clouds. I moved to a spot where the trees would frame the building and shot this. This was taken at f/10 to have everything in focus. This photo has special meaning to me, since this is the first time that I have been back to NYC with the Freedom Tower completed. To me, it completes the skyline and fills a void that has been empty for way too long. It isn't the quality of the photo per se, as much as the story it tells. And, as a photographer, this is our job...to tell the story.

With a great sky like this, I wanted to get more photos of the World Trade Center . I saw the tower reflecting in this building and had to capture this shot. I love seeing the WTC within the clouds and the grid lines of the other building. This was my last photo taken that day, and one of my favorites from the trip.

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If you are interested in purchasing any camera equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. I would really appreciate that.

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