On the Avenue I'm taking you to, 42nd Street

Maybe I like reflections because they abstract themselves. This is a new building going up on 42nd Street, so the glass panes are still clean and don't add more noise to my photos.  Zoomed in like this, it's all blue and brown waves, reflections of nothing much.

But shrink it down and suddenly you can make out the windows and balconies of Manhattan Plaza across the street, see the brown bricks and white panels. And where the blue comes from -- this building, reflected back at itself, maybe -- remains a mystery.

Abstract

Not an abstraction so much as a jumble maybe -- a small piece of a very large scaffolding on Tenth Avenue where yet another Hell's Kitchen high-rise is going up.  Even though half a dozen towers have gone up in the past several years, there's so much new construction that almost every photo I take of window reflections in the neighborhood has flashes of orange.

I have measured out my life with conference rooms

How many hours and days of my life have been spent in conference rooms is not something I would ever dwell on. Let's just say that the number of those hours that have been spent productively is far smaller.

Most of our conference rooms are on the same side of the building, so the view through the windows is similar: our building, reflected in the windows of the building across the street. And perhaps my fascination with reflections stems in part from how much time I have spent staring at those windows while another painful meeting drags on and on.

The picture above is a variation on the same old patterns I've been looking at for so many years, as seen at the right. Rotate the picture and suddenly it's not so obvious what you're seeing. Those wavy walls are now horizontal. Is that a roof? A grid? Some kind of stadium seating where something interesting is about to happen? Suddenly there are possibilities, something that is alas in short supply in most conference room gatherings.

Easter Parade

I'd never been to the Easter Parade before. I'd seen some of the participants, in passing, while I was rushing off somewhere else, but really going to the Easter Parade means dressing up and sashaying down Fifth Avenue, and most importantly, wearing a really significant hat. So last Tuesday when my friend Michael suggested that we should go this year, it left a mere five days for hat-making. That is a lot more time than they ever get on Project Runway when they have to make a red carpet gown out of old newspapers and actual red carpets, but I could have used another week or two. (I did have to go to work and my job does not include millinery breaks.) On Sunday morning, an hour before we were supposed to leave, I was still gluing Easter eggs and fixing petals.

But the hats were good enough to attract many smiles and more compliments, and literally hundreds of photographers. It was a little bit like being, well, on the red carpet.

Here is my hat in repose, after a strenuous afternoon spent posing for photographs.

Geometries

Nothing special about the view from my rear windows -- I seldom observe any murders or romances or, for that matter, humans -- except the way that the angle of the sun sometimes makes these odd geometries out of the fire escapes and their shadows.

Digital abstracts

Part of the great fun of digital photography is the ability to turn images into something else by cropping and rotating and distorting. I often end up deleting 90% of an image and keeping only a face, an object, a corner.

So this picture from last weekend becomes a splash of color I'd love to be able to paint on a canvas but lack the skills to create. And I spend yet another afternoon lost in Photoshop instead of doing my chores.























The source: the reflected rear end of a Canada goose swimming in Central Park.

Bird Blogging

Here's another picture from the park Sunday, a common grackle showing off its most uncommon coloring amid the wintry neutrals, like Lady Gaga at an Amish prayer meeting.

I love the names of birds almost as much as I love the birds themselves: kestrels, towhees, vireos. No one borrows those names for anything else; they mean what they mean. Their birds own them.

And then there are grackles. Grackle. It sounds like a symptom that you'd describe to your doctor: "And when I wake up in the morning I have this awful grackle." Or a new product at Home Depot, a combination of grout and spackle, something that you'd want to be very careful not to inhale or get on your bare skin. But it means a beautiful iridescent blackbird, and that's all it means, and it's such a blunt lumpy name I don't think anyone will ever be rushing to borrow it.

Spring Break, Manhattan style

No one really believes that winter is over. Just because it's officially the first weekend of spring and it's sunny and warm doesn't mean that two or three more mean blizzards aren't heading our way.

I thought I ought to spend the afternoon in Central Park conducting a more thorough investigation.

Robins? Check.

Crocuses? Check.

White winter skin uncovered and on display? Check.

Since it was only in the sixties -- nice for strolling in the park with several million of your friends and neighbors, but not exactly sunbathing weather -- I think the crowds and the bathing suits were just a reflection of what a miserable cold winter it's been. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to want to be outside.

Arroyo Seco, 1981 (Another Travel Flashback)

Because I so wish I were there, or somewhere like it, today.

Spring must be coming after all

You would think my apartment was dark and cool enough to make any root vegetable happy, but apparently this onion that was on my kitchen counter (maybe for a week, I swear) couldn't resist the urge to sprout anyway.

Another picture not taken in Cozumel

In case there were any doubts.

March supposedly comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb. How about if it comes in like a reindeer?

Manhattan on Acid, Part 2

Another set of reflections from the Trump International Hotel.

I especially love the blue and brown panes on the right. It would make a beautiful quilt.