Spring Arrives in NYC

Oh my god!  The last two days have been the most beautiful in the city in months!  The sky has been bright and sunny, and the temperature yesterday reached the mid-50s.  Today it's supposed to go into the 60s!

I spent the whole day wandering the city.  Well, Brooklyn and Manhattan, actually.

I started out by going over to Brooklyn Heights and checking out the view from the Promenade.  As I have before, I snapped a few shots of lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge.  Nothing came out particularly noteworthy, though... owing mostly to the fact that my camera sucks (as if we didn't know that), and that despite the really wonderful weather, the city still has a rather gray aspect to it, since there's not an ounce of green to be found anywhere.  In nature, at least.

As I was going back down into the Clark Street station to catch the 2 train into Manhattan, I thought briefly about trying to recapture that wonderful, lost shot of the platform there that I so loved.  Sadly, because of Computer Crash '02, I managed to lose the high resolution version long before I'd ever had a chance to print it - which is a shame, 'cuz I still believe that the shot of the Clark Street platform is the best photo I'm ever likely to take.  The low-resolution version to the right is the only one I have left, and it breaks my heart every time I see it.

In the end, I didn't try to recapture that shot.  I'm an actor - I think pretty good one - and like any actor worth his salt, I know that you don't try to recreate past performances.  You work on making the performance you're giving right now fresh and new.  So any attempt to re-capture that old photo would only be disappointing.  I have to live with the memory of it and take what joy I can from that.  That doesn't mean, of course, that I passed up the chance to get this interesting shot (at least I think it's interesting!)... it's of an arriving 2 train, heading into Manhattan.  Might even be the one I got on, for that matter.

After the Promenade and Clark Street, I hoped on at Manhattan-bound train and did something I've always wanted to do... I got off and explored at a couple of stops I don't usually have any reason to take.

The big one was Wall Street.  Do you believe I've been in New York almost two years (in April!) and I've never been to Wall Street?!?  Frankly, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool conservative money manager, there's not a lot about Wall Street that's all that fascinating - but there is a lot of cool architecture in the Financial District, so I mostly spent my time checking that out.

I'd never before seen Trinity Cathedral, which is on Broadway, where it intersects with Wall Street.  One thing about downtown in the Financial District:  You know you're in the old part of town.  The streets aren't straight, they're narrow, and the go in all sortsa different directions.  The other thing is that you know that in no other part of Manhattan do you just stumble across graveyards on prime real estate.

I do have to say this:  Trinity Cathedral is nice and all, but somehow it doesn't compare, for me, to Christ's Church in Philadelphia.  The church itself, and the graveyard there are so relaxing and simple, that it leaves the much more overwhelming Trinity feeling a little flat to me.  I know what some of you are thinking:  Pretty odd talk for a guy who is so at odds with organized religion.  Fact of the matter is, though, that churches, despite the people who are often in them, are some of the most peaceful places to sit and think.  I'm just sayin', is all.

I've made reference before to the writers of the past who've described the looming buildings of New York City as "canyons," and I got the best-ever example of that when I turned the corner from Broadway onto (I believe) Pine Street and saw this shot:  A narrow side street with two sky scrapers seeming to loom, and off in the distance a single tower shooting up out of the ground, like some sort of odd rock formation you'd find in the Painted Desert.  I absolutely love this kind of stuff, and I wish I had a better camera for capturing it.  One thing is for sure:  If ever I'm actually able to afford a better camera, I sure as hell am taking some kind of basic photography class so I can take much better photos!

At Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn the other day, I finally picked up a copy of The Kid, by Dan Savage (so if any of you enterprising souls out there were thinking of picking that one up for my birthday, you can skip it).  But while I was skimming through the store, I stopped in the photography section, and discovered a neat little book (little! It was less than a half-inch thick and cost $25!), on using a digital camera to do portraits.  Expensive, but handy nonetheless.  There are tons of tips in The Digital Photographers Handbook:  Portraits by Simon Joinson (yes, that's really the author's name... I didn't mis-type it) that it's worth the price.

It inspired me to shoot a few of myself (which, of course, promptly revolted me, since I'm still convinced I'm fat.  Eating disorder?  You decide).  I was tired and half asleep, but I did it anyway.  Here, I think, is the best of them: