Urban gas stations are a fascinating subject, very bright, sometimes nice, sometimes dirty, and they have to make due with whatever location they have (not like highway gas stations which are all built in the same manner).
Archive for the ‘Nighttime’ Category
Astoria Pool
Jun 9th, 10
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The Astoria Pool (Astoria Park) is the oldest and largest public pool in NYC, and while it was used for olympic trials in the last century, the NYC Parks department is feeling the constraints of a lower budget, and hence the pool opens relatively late in summer, and it’s general state of repair isn’t the best. The main pool is pretty shallow, 40-100cm, and jumping pool is completely out of commission. Kinda sad, but unfortunately a fact of life in the city.
Hell Gate Bridge in Astoria
Jun 8th, 10
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The Hell Gate Bridge was opened in 1916, and was the inspiration for the Sydney Harbour Bridge (built in 1925). The red paint used on the bridge fades relatively fast, I believe it had it’s last paint job in 2005 (bright red), but has returned to a very dull maroon color.
View from Chrysler Building
May 20th, 10
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The Chrysler Building is beautiful, and I really love when it’s in some of my panoramas. Then I got the chance to actually shoot a panorama from a upper floor… the view was spectacular. I was debating how I can turn this into a horizontal pano, but in the end it became a square pano.
Sugarhill Gas Station, Harlem
May 5th, 10
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My original plan for this panorama was the gas station, but I couldn’t find an interesting angle to it. On the other hand, the mansion on the corner just looked too strange to not take a panorama. The Victorian mansion is supposedly one of New York’s finest examples, built in 1886, and just recently sold, according to locals who stopped to chat with me. Stribling has some more info about the building.
It took me a while to take all the shots, because traffic was random, and significant. Fortunately I was already almost finished when the cops stopped by and started interrogating me, and giving me a quite insulting and intimidating and harassing speech that it is illegal what I am doing here, and other BS like that, and basically insisting that I have to leave right away. Since I was done anyway, I left. I am wondering if they were just bored that night and hadn’t fulfilled their harassment quota, or if they genuinely believed the stuff they said.
Bloomberg Building (test shoot)
Apr 29th, 10
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Those two panoramas are just location shots for a shoot I am planning later this year. The Bloomberg Building is incredible interesting, and incredible difficult to photograph.
NY Advertising Agencies
Apr 23rd, 10
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The area between the West Village and the Holland Tunnel is home to some of New York’s ad agencies, especially Euro (on the left) and Saatchi (on the right). Since this is a 180 degree panorama, I was struggling a bit with the composition: panoramic, or wide angle? I think for this the wide angle works better. And if you are in the area, visit Jaques Torres for some great chocolate 
Woolworth Building from Park Place
Apr 18th, 10
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All three panos are from the same shoot, I just couldn’t decide which one I like better. For one, the Woolworth Building is just New York’s second prettiest old high-rise, so it would be cruel to cut it out, on the other side, the WTC buildings are coming up, and they are just ultra modern and sleek.
Cop Cot in Central Park (II)
Mar 18th, 10
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This is another attempt to photograph the cop cot. The first one was beautiful, snow and everything, so I was hoping to recreate some of the magic, but I guess this scene is really difficult with out snow, so I will give it another try in winter, given that we will ever see snow again in NYC.
East River Roundabout
Mar 17th, 10
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The East River Roundabout park is easily the most unknown and inaccessible park in NYC. It’s only use at the moment is a dog run. The structure is an old garbage transfer station, and the sculpture on top of it was designed/installed in 1995 by Alice Aycock. The NYC parks department has a bit more info about it. I love the structure.
Johnson City, TX Christmas Lights
Nov 29th, 09
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Johnson City looked like a small Texas town during the day, but transformed itself after sunset into a christmas light spectacular, with everybody competing who has the most lights out, and the obvious winner was of course the local utility company, who decorated a whole grove of trees with lights, Hill County Style…
Austin, TX: River Sunset and Kettle Restaurant
Nov 28th, 09
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On our road trip through Texas we landed in Austin and spent one and a half day, barely enough to get a good impression of the city. I had the feeling that we had not enough time and everything felt a bit rushed, but at least I managed to shoot some panoramas.
Of course I had to walk around and find strange abandoned/deserted places that would look interesting in a panorama, like this Kettle Restaurant. Especially the juxtaposition between “Always Open” and the restaurant closed for the afternoon/night was hard to resist:
Austin, Restaurant, River, Sunset, TexasHouston/Baytown Gas Station
Nov 26th, 09
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One of the fascinating aspects of Houston was the clustering of well known staples, like Starbucks, Wafflehouse etc. This panorama is an attempt of a panorama… I wanted to capture the handful of large signs, but I should have probably spent more time to get it right.
Goose Creek Memorial Highschool in Baytown, TX
Nov 26th, 09
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It was just a very curious evening, and we decided to simply walk around and see how Baytown looks at night, and see if there is anything interesting to photograph. I have to admit that this might not be the most successful panorama that I have ever taken.
Chemical Plants in Houston
Nov 25th, 09
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The oil and chemical industry is all over Houston, particularly in the south, and the sites look fabulosly at night, much nicer than the handful of installations in NJ. If you happen to own one of these, or work for one, please contact me, I would love to photograph some more of these for your company.
Shell Gas Station, Harlem
Nov 7th, 09
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This was my second attempt photographing this gas station, and gas stations in general. It took a lot of patience, since it is actually a very busy gas station, with cars constantly pulling in and filling up.