Some colors are vibrant and some muted and  I’ve taken a liberty, with what Mother Nature has done, and added  a darker urban twist to the rose with the help of post processing software and my artistic imagination.  I brought out the delicate detail of the curl, fold and ruffle of the petal; the line of the vein in the leaf and the gentleness of the sprouting bud with fine grain. I added a shimmer or a shine to soften or blurred to a bright opacity and pulled out just enough color to draw the eye inward.

I hope you enjoy my little embellishments.

My favorite time though, was spent photographing the crashing waves under the pier.  The other was climbing on the rocks of the jetty that separates Coney Island from Sea Gate. This jetty was full of fisher folk casting their lines and luck out to the vast, cold and blue Atlantic Ocean as huge container vessels sailed forth loaded with cargo heading into or out of New York Harbor. Many pleasure craft drifted by filled to the brim with more people out for a day of fishing.

People young and old jogged along the shore or braved the cold waters for a first dip of the season. Yours truly went in only as far as my knees. I usually don’t dive into the water until July  when it has had a chance to warm up some. I was very pleased at how clean the water and the beach was and the only throw-aways I saw were fruits like a hunk of watermelon and the top of a pineapple. There were two strange items though; the first item was an entire picnic lunch complete with glasses of wine just abandoned on the shore. I have no idea why it was left there, maybe an offering to King Neptune to ensure a warm sunny summer. It was mostly vegetables and fruits beautifully arranged in bowls and plates. Of course I had to take a photo of it.  The second item was a man who dumped what looked like animal entrails on the sand for the seagulls, he explained. It was the most disgusting thing I ever saw, even the gulls were repulsed. One bird looked at the man as if to say “Do we look like lions?” On closer inspection it seemed to be the cut up remains of a Skate. The man must have been fishing and the poor Skate got caught on the hook.  And, yes I did take a photo of it and no it is not on the website because I can’t image someone wanting to buy an 8 x 10 of animal entrails.  It took a lot of will power to not throw up when photographing it. I have posted it on this blog though, because I know you are just dying to see it.

As the sun started to rise higher in the sky more and more people began to appeared on the beach and it started to resemble the old summer time Coney Island that one sees in most of the photos. I walked onto the pier and took some wide angle iconic shots of the Wonder Wheel, the Cyclone and the Parachute Jump all now historic landmarks thanks to the efforts of an organization called Save Coney Island .  Once off the pier I crawled back under it to capture a few more shots of the waves and a humungus metal pipe embedded in a huge chunk of concrete and surprisingly an exposed but unused roll of film. Interesting stuff under that pier. The waves were just spectacular when they rolled up and smashed into the pylons which created ghostly figures when captured by the fast speed of the camera.

The sun was getting stronger and brighter and I stopped to take a few close up shots of the Wonder Wheel and the Steeple Chase before heading to the Stillwell Avenue station and the N train back to Queens. It was a truly terrific day at the beach and I just love Coney Island.

You can view many more images of Saturday’s adventures by clicking here.

One of my favorite places to take photos in Battery Park City is North Cove Marina with its many sail boats and large pleasure craft moored there surrounded by the World Financial Center buildings and facing the Winter Gardens. It is very easy to forget that  you are in a big city like Manhattan, as you stand on the dock with cool breezes from the water listening to the sounds of creaking boat masts and the piercing cry of a  swooping gull overhead.

My second favorite place along the river is Pier 25 in Hudson River Park.  I had a terrific time with the tug boat Lilac and a wonderful old red barge called the Lehigh Valley # 79 which is the Waterfront Museum and also houses the Pirate School! How’s that me matey’s?

Recently, I looked at an old ariel photo of lower Manhattan’s waterfront from the 1930′s and was struck by the hundreds of piers sticking out from and outlining the entire tip of the island. All of them have either a container vessel, tug or an ocean liner docked in them.  What was once the home of a thriving shipping industry is now the home to green spacious parks and a playground for people of all ages. Gone are the old wooden piers wreaking of creosote and oil, now they have been replaced by new sturdy concrete piers that are extensions of the park’s open spaces. These modern piers are made for people to take in the views, sit, read, play ball, do yoga, walk, take a nap, fish or do absolutely nothing except enjoy the moment.  I could walk along the Hudson River from the tip of Battery Park all the way up to Chelsea Piers and never tire of the scenery,  the many outdoor activities, museums, restaurants and all the fun this area provides to anyone who enjoys the great outdoors in a great City like New York.

I have many more photos of Battery Park City and the Hudson River on my website at www.photobycate.com. Enjoy.

A  few weeks ago a friend of mine told me of the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City so, that was my photo taking goal for the day.  I took the #2 to Chambers Street and when I exited I stopped to take a few more photos of the ongoing construction of the new World Trade Center buildings still in progress to add to my WTC gallery. I then commenced to make my way to Battery Park City and the memorial.  There was much activity in the park as the day was so beautiful and as I walked north through Robert Wagner Park I took shots of flowers, boats, people painting and water falls. These images  I will present to you in a another blog post later this week along with images of the Hudson River Conservancy Park.

Not exactly sure where this memorial was situated, I walked past the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal on the river promenade and looked to my right and finally spotted a silvery overhang and behind it what looked like a pile of rocks. This I surmised, must be the place.  I walked under the overhang and through a small tunnel that led to the front entrance  of a little Irish stone cottage. I was completely enchanted having never seen the like of this before and ruminating on how it must have been to live in a home made from rocks. From the history I read on line this cottage was designed by the artist Brian Tolle and the house is composed of stones from 32 counties in Ireland. This work of art is to commemorate those who died or were forced to leave Ireland and strive for a better life in America, due to the great potato famine in 1845, an Gorta Mór. 

The beauty and tranquility of  the Irish country side is captured perfectly in the placement and design of this archaic structure.  The natural color and texture of the rocks, the  green grasses sprinkled with tiny purple and pink flowers surrounding the cottage and the ivy gracefully hanging from the roof or lintels of the door ways. What completed the picture was the deeply scarred stone marker with a celtic cross carved in the center,  grown over with coarse green bushes,  sitting at a jaunty angle like it had been there for a hundred of years.  For a brief moment this site nestled in busy lower Manhattan made you feel that you were indeed in Ireland, a land someday I hope to visit.  Enjoy the images below and I hope they will inspire you to make a visit to Battery Park City and this little bit of Ireland.

This weekend I noticed clusters of brown and gold mushrooms or fungus growing in the moist warm spring soil around a tree right outside my apartment.  Patches of deep green clover studded with white stringy flowers, spotted with tiny rain drops lined the sidewalks up and down Ditmars Boulevard and adjacent streets.  This urban beauty is hardly ever noticed by the hundreds of people who walk these streets everyday but I find them fascinating subjects to photograph. A block and a half from my apartment is a postage-stamp sized park (say that three times fast after eating peanut butter) with a few tables set up for chess and surrounded by wild flowers. I’ve never seen anyone in there. I ventured in and was delighted to see brightly colored butterflies flitting around from flower to flower or sitting on the ground drying their moist wings in the warm sun when it came out from behind a cloud.

There isn’t a garden in this neighborhood that doesn’t have at least one type of rose growing in it no matter how big or small.  After I left the butterflies I was going to take the train up to the Bronx Botanical Gardens to take photos of the roses when, I remembered the beautiful roses that I have been seeing all week in the gardens in my neighborhood.  Now, do not think that I take a liberty and tresspass on anyone’s property. I keep myself on the sidewalk and take my photos over, under, through and around the fences and if I can’t get close enough I zoom in tight. Sometimes, the home owners will come out to chat and allow me access to their gardens. A nice way to meet neighbors and make new friends.  And speaking of friends, walking along the path in the grassy court-yard behind my apartment I met two feral cats that I named Delilah and Sam. They graciously allowed me to take their photos and I have included their wild alley cat portraits in the photos below.

P.S. You’ll notice an image of a black rose. That is an image of a red rose converted to black and white with the green color kept in the leaves. Not natural, but pretty cool looking.

When I enter Astoria Park it is usually from the corner of Ditmars and Shore Boulevards walking south along the shore line of the East River and stop when I get to the heart of the park near the running track. This time I walked down to the end of  Shore Boulevard to Astoria Park South, where the park technically ends. I always thought that was the furthest you could go but I noticed an opening in the fencing that marks off the park from the Shore Tower apartment complex. There was no sign that said “keep off or private property” so I ventured in and found myself on a wide expanse of a concrete promenade with unobstructed views of the East River north and south, Randall’s/Wards Island and Manhattan to the west.

What intrigued me the most being an urban industrial photographer were the old and decaying wooden pylons left over from a time when there must have been a boardwalk or pier running along the shore line. The pylons were worn, splintered and tired looking from years of seasonal mayhem and salt water and just fired my imagination, wondering what they were doing there.  I’m assuming it had to have been an industrial pier, because there was also the shell of an old warehouse and factory that I could only view from this vantage point; the entrance to the old warehouse was closed off to the public much to my dismay. This area is known as Ravenswood which is a residential and commercial area and has been since the mid 1800′s.

I spent a few hours in the wind and sun taking shot after shot of the abandoned warehouse’s ivy and weed covered facade, cracked windows and two lovely old brick and mosaic tipped factory smoke stacks. I wonder if they were from the old Terra Cotta company? The aged wooden pylons provided an interesting foreground to these photos, a reminder of an old era of commerce and industry in this once productive neighborhood. On the very edge of this portion of the shoreline were  school buses parked there for reasons I do not know but added  a needed touch of bright yellow to the image composition.

The East River that morning was very busy with maritime traffic. Walking north along the shore line I would stop and takes shots of the busy burly tug boats pushing container barges up towards the Long Island Sound or down to Lower Manhattan passing under the Hellgate and Triboro bridges.  Fortunately, the tide was low so I was able to get striking images of the rocky sandy shore line with large protruding boulders that are usually hidden under the rushing turbulent waters of this tidal strait. A fun and productive day along the shore of the East River.

Enjoy the images below.

At one point it really started to pour and I sat up and looked out the window watching the water rushing down the street along the curb like a tiny wild river. The view outside, framed by my window was peaceful and natural and very, very green. It was time for a few photos.

My favorite place to take photos from my apartment is in the kitchen. The kitchen window is a little wider than the living room windows and the sill a little deeper which allows me to rest my elbows as I kneel on the floor in front of the open window. The first thing I see from this window is my trusty little red fire hydrant that has been my model on several occasions when nature has made it impossible to go outside to shoot. Today it was glistening with moisture sitting on the curb watching all manner of vehicles pass it as they  hurried to homes warm and dry.

I zoomed up into the trees as the heavy rains streamed down and poured off the leaves. As the lighting changed so did the colors of the leaves changing from a deep blue-green to a bright yellow-green. I slowed the shutter speed to show the rain drops in long stretched white streaks.  I pointed my camera down to the grass under my windows to capture the clear crystal drops of rain sitting on the clover between the blades of grass.

I enjoyed this April shower and the beautiful photos is helped me to create and I hope you enjoy them too!

The other day as I was walking back home along Ditmars Boulevard the sun was shinning brightly and sliding down towards two o’clock. I noticed the perfect silhouettes of the black wrought iron fences in front of the homes that line this long winding thoroughfare ahead of me.  It looked like the sidewalk had been tattooed in wonderful black and white designs.  Once my attention was drawn down to the sidewalk I looked to the side at more dark shadows on the asphalt of the street from the trees, bushes, street lights and signs.

I captured a few of these dark shadows with my camera and present them to you  as a  sample of nature’s street art.

Enjoy and stay in focus,

Cate

On Saturday morning I took the #7 train to the Vernon and Jackson Avenue stop and walked towards Gantry Plaza State Park  in Long Island City to take photos of the spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline and those big bold Gantries.

The views of Manhattan are the real draw to this park along with the well maintained promenade and piers. Here you can spend hours lounging on the large spacious wooden deck chairs and wide benches soaking up the sun and watching the boats and barges lazily sailing up and down the river. Take a nice long leisurely walk or ride your bike along the promenade.  You can put a quarter in the large free-standing binoculars and take in a close up view of Manhattan, Roosevelt Island and the 59th Street Bridge. Or spend the day fishing off the fishing pier complete with a stainless steel table for filleting the catch of the day.  There is a sense of peace and calm here in this urban oasis which at one time was a busy  industrial dock facility with the huge Gantries lifting  goods from rail cars to cargo vessels.

There was an Easter Egg hunt going on with hundreds of excited children running pell-mell across the soft green lawns, filling their baskets with as many eggs as they could find. Taking advantage of the crowds being busy with the egg hunt I had the piers to my self and took as many shots of the Gantries as I could, without anyone wandering in front of them, and artistic wide angle shots of the piers. The Empire State and Chrysler buildings looked just gorgeous in the changing morning light. And my favorite image is an iconic one of the United Nations flanked by these two New York City skyline veterans.

Around noon the sun was at it brightest and time for me to have lunch and head home. I stopped at Dorian’s Cafe on the corner of 50th Avenue and Vernon Blvd. and had an omelet and the biggest cup of delicious coffee I ever had. You could have done laps inside that cup it was so big.

I hope you all had a beautiful weekend and enjoy the images below.

I took the N to Queensboro Plaza in Long Island City Queens and started my sojourn there ending the day in Queensbridge Park on Vernon Blvd. along the shore of the East River.

Long Island City is going through a wonderful and much needed transformation with construction going on all over. The landscape is a contrast of the young robust framework of new buildings going up and the effete skeletons of abandoned houses with all the fabulous photographic detritus that surrounds both sites.

The first images are from the walkway arching above the streets of the “new” Queensboro Plaza. This is still a work in progress but the make-over so far has transformed the streets leading to the access of the 59th Street Bridge into a tiny oasis for bikers and walkers. From the vantage point of the walkway I was able to capture the N & Q trains slithering up from and going down into the bowels of New York City like gigantic silver centipedes with the 59th Street Bridge looming large in the background.

The #7 train tracks are also undergoing a needed renovation and expansion and I wandered over to Court House Square for a brief time capturing reflections of construction signs in a muddy puddle of water beneath the elevated train. From there I walked over to Vernon Blvd. stopping along the way and photographing a set of rusty steps leading down to an unwonted cellar, some old tires against a backdrop of creeping vines, a broken window with the shards of glass frozen in wire, painfully sharp razor wire, and lots of goodies like that.

Once on Vernon Blvd. I gravitated toward the newly painted and proud Queensboro Bridge a.k.a. the 59th Street Bridge. This being a Sunday and an industrial area the neighborhood was desolate with only an occasional biker zooming by enabling me to stand in the middle of the street to get the shots I wanted without becoming road kill.  This is the first time that I have photographed this bridge from the Queens side. The 59th Street Bridge connects Long Island City Queens to Midtown Manhattan spanning over the East River and Roosevelt Island and is the daily commute for many Queens residents.

As I was walking and mentally composing shots of the bridge I was distracted by a brick wall completely covered in dried up vines with a solitary screaming orange Home Depot shopping cart standing next to it. The perfect abstract shot. Smothered under the vines was an old rusted “no parking loading zone” sign that could not be passed up.

My next stop was Queensbridge Park which until that day I had never heard of and happily wandered in to see what awaited my creative imagination. The first thing I saw was what must have been a park concession stand now boarded up with weeds growing through it. I fell in love with it immediately and walked all around it forming a shot that would accentuate the years of neglect.  The landscape of the park was of grass and ball fields surrounded on one side by the river and the bridge, and on the other side,  apartment buildings and industrial stacks that looked especially tall and menacing against the dark clouds rolling in.

My final stop was as I was walking back toward Queensboro Plaza and 21st Street to catch the bus home when I spotted a totally trashed car enclosed by worn tires and tons of garbage. Now, you know I could not let that pass without a few photos as well as shots of the N & Q trains whooshing passed over head.

All in all this was a very fun day for me and I have spent the entire week going through the hundreds of photos that I took to present you, my faithful viewers with an exciting selection of the eclectic urban grit, grime and grunge of Long Island City. Enjoy and Stay in Focus.