The park happens to be a great place for photography.  It’s blessed with a great view of the George Washington Bridge, a commanding view of the Hudson River and the Palisades, beautiful flower gardens and the grounds of The Cloisters.  I made my third trip to the park two weeks ago, leading a group of fellow photographers around the park.

Here are some of the shots that I took there.

If you’re in Manhattan and you are looking for an alternative to Central Park, you can’t do wrong by going to Fort Tryon.

I bought a dozen roses — eleven white and one red.  After arranging them, I took the shot.  I wanted to emphasize the red while downplaying the rest of the picture.  One way I could have done this was by using selective coloring to turn the entire picture black and white and then restoring the color to the red rose.  However, I’m not really a fan of selective coloring, so I decided to try a slightly different approach.

After performing some basic enhancements, I reduced the saturation of the entire photo except for the red rose.  I then bumped up the saturation of the red rose so that it further stood out.

What are your opinions about this shot?  Would you like me to put up a tutorial on how this shot was processed?  If so, please let me know.

Zev

Unfortunately, however, it seems that I lost most of my trip to Macedonia Brook State Park.  This is particularly frustrating because I have an automatic online backup solution, but it seems that it didn’t quite finish backing up those shots.  It also didn’t finish backing up my Ricketts Glen and Central Park photo shoots, but, fortunately, I hadn’t yet deleted those shots off my card, so I was able to recover them (I did lose some of the editing work I had done on those, but I can recover them and, truth to tell, I wasn’t all that happy with the first edits anyway).

At some point in the near future, I’ll write up a post about my computer-crash and data recovery experience and the lessons I’ve learned.  However, for now, I’m here to give you two more pics from Ricketts Glen.

Feel free to enjoy these shots and to share this post.  If you have any questions about these shots, please feel free to ask in the comments.

Zev

I’ll be posting some shots over the next few days from Macedonia State Park and Kent Falls.  Here’s the first one — a shot I titled “The Autumn Walk.”

Today, I’m in Central-Eastern Pennsylvania, hoping to shoot Ricketts Glen and End of the World State Parks.  However, the forecast for today and tomorrow is rainy, so here’s hoping I have some useful shooting time.

Zev

Out of curiosity, I decided to go back and see what I submitted for landscape last year.  Sure enough, it was another shot from Prospect Park.

“A Bridge Into Autumn”

I also had two alternates for this week:

What do you think?  Did I submit the right shot?

My subject was the lulav bundle which Jews use during the festival of Succos (which we are now in the middle of).  During this holiday, Jews bundle together a palm frond with twigs of myrtle and willow.  Together with a citron (think of it like a bumpy lemon), they wave them during synagogue services.

Most people, when seeing the lulav bundle see the plants side by side (myrtle on the right, willow on the left).  I decided to rotate the image ninety degrees, to create a different view of it.

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

Zev

Scheduling note:  I might put up another post today.  However, after that, there will not be any new posts until Sunday at the earliest.  Have a great week, everyone!

A Small Little Slice of Heaven In Prospect Park

Yes, it’s a very small waterfall, but it’s still beautiful, which, in my opinion, is what counts far more than the height or the volume of water.  Fortunately, I had my tripod with me, so I was able to set up and take multiple shots of this little waterfall.  Without my tripod, I could never have captured this image (which is actually blended from seven images captured at different exposures).

This shot was taken at the beginning of October and one of the things I love is that you can just begin to see the changing of the colors of the leaves.  There is just a hint of yellow on some of the leaves, giving a tease of the grand colors that would be there in the week or two that followed.

I knew his advice was spot on because this little piece of advice worked out for me a few years back.  Lisa and I took a vacation to a little spot in Vermont called Quechee.  I’m a sucker for waterfall shots, so I went to photograph a local waterfall and covered bridge.  The shots I got from there were okay, but nothing spectacular.  However, as I was packing up to leave, I turned around and beheld a portion of the Outtaquechee River.

This vision was far prettier than the waterfall and the bridge.  I was so focused on the waterfall, however, that I nearly missed this vista.  This episode taught me to not get locked into “tunnel vision” and make sure to not only photograph my primary subject, but also to take a few minutes to look around and see what else there is to shoot.  You might be very pleasantly surprised.

Zev

From where I stand, I am extremely lucky, blessed and grateful to have a woman like Lisa in my life, so I suppose it’s fitting that the shot should be based on her idea and include her.

The shot was taken with my Canon 7D.  The exposure settings are f/5.6, 1/40 second, ISO 100.  The shot was edited in Lightroom and Photoshop using Topaz Adjust to give my fake grass a really unusual look.

As always, comments, criticisms and critiques are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

Zev