Love the folksy Trail Name

I’m not traditionally a nature-as-scenery photographer.  I prefer animals and humans.  But on a recent hike through a trail in Papatsco State Park, I took my camera along and captured some of the lightly forested trail.

People love to mess up trees just to leave their mark

The view above in some of the more heavily forested parts

Fallen trees were abundant, but most of them were off the trail

The wife and I went hiking to get away from technology for a while and get some nature. Stuff like this kinda ruined the mood.

What lies around the bend? More trees....

I definitely prefer for photographs like these to have animals.  It looks so empty and desolate.  But this may just be a consequence of being a suburbanite raised on the Discovery channel.  It’d be pretty boring if they didn’t cut all the footage they had of jungles and savannahs devoid of animals.

A slight incline near the end.

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Last year was Dina’s graduation Tiki Party.  This year it was Daniel’s turn.  We arrived the night before (no hospital visits this time) and so we had plenty of time to help cook and set up.

Dina's interpretation of how the party would go

The party seemed a lot less crowded, but I’m not sure if that’s due to setup (all the tables were off to the side), people coming and going in waves (there wasn’t really anyone who was there from beginning to end other than those who lived there), or just less people being invited.  It was also a lot less sprawling, being limited to Dan’s back area instead of spilling over to their neighbor’s area.  I also happened to shoot a lot fewer photos this time.  This pretty much came from me knowing a lot more people this time around.  I spent more time talking to people than taking photos of strangers.

Dan teaches the girls how to do The Lambada

I ended up having much more fun as a result, even though it left me with less photographic memories.

Related posts:

1. Dina’s Tiki Party 2009
2. My Grandfather’s 70th Birthday Party
3. Otakon 2010

#2 5241

#3 2325

#4 2231

#5 2159

#6 2086

#7 2023

#8 1991

#9 1876

#10 1789

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Last time I mentioned my Franka Solida III, I had just had my first roll in my Yashica developed. I mentioned being a bit worried about the fact that I couldn’t tell what was in focus by looking through the viewfinder. Turns out that my fear was founded as I originally thought the units on the lens were ft when they were in fact meters. The results show:

For my first photo shoot with the camera, I took it to Coney Island at night. I think the results came out amazing considering that I was hand-holding the camera (no tripod) and have not been able to achieve the same effects with my dSLR.

Overall, it’s a very nice piece of kit. Unfortunately, its 1 second exposure is a bit broken, so I lost a couple exposures on that (a lot on a 12 exposure roll) and some other shots were at the wrong focus setting. I’m a little iffy about using it in situations where I can’t just focus to infinity, but I’ll probably give it another shot next time I order another roll of film.

Related posts:

1. Results from my First Yashica-A Roll
2. Actually, Size DOES Matter
3. Results of a Plastic Point of View

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Ensemble groups are always fun to photograph. I loved this Street Fighter group, especially E. Honda.

Yay for Half Life Cosplay. Although perhaps a bit out of place at an anime convention?

This poor guy was standing there patiently for 15 to 20 minutes as people photographed him.

It's been nearly 20 years and there are still Final Fantasy VII Cosplayers at every convention.

Yes, there is a huge overlap in anime fans and Dr Who fans, but I think the Dr Who cosplay was most out of place at an anime convention.

Great cosplay from Kill Bill

Another video game cosplay. This time Bioshock.

I don't know what anime or video game she's from, but she attracted a lot of popularity.

As I mentioned last year, I love seeing Ranma 1/2 cosplay because the anime is pretty old.

More Final Fantasy cosplay; this time from Final Fantasy IX

An amazing costume from Tim Burton's Alice and Wonderland.

Some Bayonetta cosplay.

There's also huge overlap with steam punk fans and this steam punk group was pretty impressive.

Sometimes people combine genres to get new, unique costumes like this Steam Punk Sailor Moon cosplay.

Good Faye Valentine cosplay - just needs to have hair that's a bit more purple.

Looking back over these shots as I selected the ones to include in this post, I realized that, for an anime convention, there were a lot of video game cosplayers. Yes, they were Japanese video games – which often have anime-inspired character models, but it’s still a bit odd.

Dan also went with me and got some different photos based on anime and video games he’s familiar with.

You can see more of my Otakon 2010 photos here.

Related posts:

1. Otakon 2009
2. Cosplay
3. Warcraft Fashion Show

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1. Late Apr to Early May Photojojo Time Capsule
2. My Late March/Early April Photojojo Time Capsule
3. Photojojo Time Capsule from Early Sept

Aug 2010 - Desktop background for Square Monitors

Aug 2010 - Desktop background for Widescreen Monitor

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2. March Background Calendar
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When I first walked into the exhibition space, I was initially disappointed to read that this exhibit was focusing not on his paintings, but rather his pencil and printmaking works. After going through the exhibit I was very happy to have seen this side of his art that I had never experienced before. A good part of one room was dedicated to his series featuring a minotaur representing lust and the id side of sexuality.

My favorite photo from the series. I just love the playful style and the audacity of the image.

I found this series to be both playful (because of the art style) and highly symbolic. Unlike the extreme abstract art we sometimes see with post-modern art, Picasso’s symbols were clear. Before I read the caption explaining the series, it was quite obvious to me that the minotaur represented unrestrained sexuality. I enjoyed being able to understand the art pieces without having to first read about what the heck it was I was looking at.

One of the most interesting aspects of this exhibit is that it showcased most of Picasso’s least surreal/cubist/etc artwork. It was often pretty obvious what it was you were looking at. The following sentiment will probably reveal my boorishness when it comes to art, but frankly anyone can create cubist art. It seems to simply require forgetting everything you know about 3D and putting the back and front of an object on display at the same time. Kids often do this when they’re learning how to draw. (this is not to take away from the skill required to properly paint it) But to see this artwork showed that Picasso was a master artist. His drawings reveal that he could draw and paint normally if he wanted to. That is, of course, how I define art – knowing the rules before you break them. So, a kid scribbling on paper is not art. But an artist scribbling on a canvas with a purpose will have the same result as a kid, but it is art. So to know that Picasso was not drawing weird simply because he didn’t know how to properly draw a face made me see him as an even greater artist.

On display were also a bunch of portrait drawings of each of his mistresses. Apparently each woman with whom he became involved sexually also became one of his muses. He made dozens of sketches of each of these women and they also appear in other works of art where they are not the only focus or maybe even not the primary focus. As I observed these, my mind wandered from the art to real life. What would it be like for his wife to have him not only involved with all these women, but sketching them and incorporating them into his art. Would she feel sad that she could not provide him all the inspiration he needed? Did she feel it was so brazen for him to create art from his mistresses?

And what of these other women. When they could no longer provide him with inspiration and he tossed them aside for another, did they feel spurned? Did they feel used as they became part of his art and he earned money from their likenesses? I also wondered how they felt about his portraits. While some of the portraits were drawn in the traditional manner, many of them are cubist or surreal. I know, from the captions at the museum, that at least one of these women was a surrealist artist. She would have appreciated the distortion in his work, but what of the others? Did they find it weird or grotesque to be depicted in this manner?

Above I mentioned the playfulness on display in some of the art from this exhibit. Another series which exemplified that spirit of play (but which I did not photograph) was a series of drawings of a bull. This series is Picasso playing a reductionist game to see how basic he can make a bull with us still recognizing it as a bull. Each successive work has less and less detail. (by analogy, the end result is similar to a stick figure as representative of a person) This is playful on an intellectual level and it tickled my brain to see it. But what I found extra funny was that amongst the details Picasso deemed essential to know it was a bull (horns, almond head, large body) were large testicles and a penis.

As I ascended the stairs to my final destination on the sixth floor, I stopped to see a photographic exhibit consisting entirely of female photographers. The first impression I got while walking around the exhibit was that there appeared to be no inherent difference between having a male or female behind the lens. In other words, there was nothing on the surface that screamed out, “This was taken by a woman!” On closer inspection I found a few threads that ran through the exhibit, but, at least in the way this exhibit was curated, they were only the faintest of threads. One such thread was an examination of the female condition — using the photograph to show others what it means to be a woman. Often this was very subtle, although there was one piece by an artist featuring a series of self-portraits that appeared to document her life in an abusive relationship. The images were brutal without being overly graphic and it made me hope that it was staged and not photodocumentary.
Another thread, again, very faint as it only encompassed a few of the photographs on display, was that of motherhood. The piece that stood out to me here was a series of portraits of the photographer’s daughter — one per year (only a subset of these were on display). Each was taken on a chair by a window. It was interesting to see the expression on the face go from childlike happiness to “ugh, I have to do this again!” to appreciation of the effort as she grew. The most profound was the last photograph chosen for this exhibit in which the daughter is now pregnant — presumably with a daughter of her own.

As expected, there were far fewer images of the female form than in a male photographic exhibit. Although there have been exceptions, throughout photographic history most images of the female form have been by male photographers. (As was the case with painting) Nor were there many images of the male form — it appears to be more off limits — perhaps exposing an undercurrent of sexism in the art world? In my surveys of photographic history and in what I’ve seen of paintings in museums, males have seldom been depicted nude. Far more likely has been the depiction of the nude or semi-nude female form. In fact, masculinity often is masked, as in the case of Picasso above, in the form of a minotaur, centaur, or other mythological half-man create. Part of this appears to be changing — at least from what I can tell on flickr. If females are not taking more portraits of the female form with other models, there is a proliferation of self-portraiture of the female form on flickr. This may, however, simply be a symptom of our narcissistic culture colliding with our voyeuristic culture. The female form will attract a much greater audience to someone’s photostream. Still, it removes at least one layer of exploitation to have the woman photographing the naked woman. But, as in other fields (pornography, music videos, film, etc) a case can be made that the woman is simply still functioning in the same world under the same pressures even if it is for a female master. Suffice to say, it’s a complicated issue and one that will not be explored any further in this post.

My main draw to the museum was a comprehensive exhibit of the work of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. This exhibit occupied all of space on the top floor that was available for public viewing. (Another area was under construction for a new exhibit) This collection of photos was amazingly vast. The space was arranged to take the visitor through Cartier-Bresson’s career in a roughly chronological order. The chronology was broken up a bit in order to divide his photojournalistic work into different categories —mostly on geographical boundaries.

The bulk of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photojournalistic work was accomplished in the 1930s and 1940s. His photographs appeared in all the important photojournalistic magazines of the world at that time. On display were magazine photo essays from American and French magazines. Given that commercial aviation was still a novelty during this time, it is astonishing that Henri travelled to so many places to bring back photographs for his assignments. Photographs on display included locales as diverse as America, England, Communist Russia (one of the first non-communists allowed to photograph there), Shanghai, China before and after the Maoist revolution, and Spain before, during, and after the 1930s civil war. Even today, with all our modern airplanes and relatively cheap flights (especially compared to the 1930s) most people don’t get to visit so many countries. But, back then before the Internet, his photographs (along with other photographers of the time) were all that Americans would get to see and know about places like China. It probably conferred both a great responsibility to properly represent the countries he was photographing and a feeling of great privilege to travel to all these places. In addition to the photojournalism work, he had photographs of some of the most famous people of his time including Jean Paul Sartre. They also had photographs of women and his capture of feminine beauty.

It was interesting to see the photos in a museum setting. For the most part, museums are associated with art (especially when the museum is named the “museum of modern art”). While photojournalism can produce photographs that people would conventionally consider art, I do not believe that 99.9% of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs would fulfill those requirements. They are great photos, often capturing a great moment. Most of the time they also exhibit great technique. To me, this makes them art. But they are not artsy photos. And that is what had my wife feeling a bit disappointed. She was expecting a great art photographer – I had told her nothing about Cartier-Bresson other than that he was a famous and heralded photographer. I guess, when it comes down to it, she found the photos too ordinary. To put it another way, she asked why my similar photographs of NYC life were not on display on the walls at MoMA. What made his photograph of a man in Shanghai haggling at the market different from one a tourist might take today that was of the same technical merits. I could not answer that question. He was, no doubt, a great photographer – as I mentioned, his photographs both capture that special moment and display perfect technique. But in modern times we are inundated with photographers of similar skill on flickr. Who will decide if one of them will end up in MoMA in the future?

That evening I went to dinner at Danielle’s cousin’s house. I was able to get some shots of people interacting with all the kids. They’re all in the 3-6 year range so they make nice, cute subjects. Here are a few photos from the evening.

Finally, we all went to see Toy Story 3 (in 2D) at a 2230 showing. I will discuss this in my next blog post.

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Luna Park, the new section of Coney Island

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I went to NYC over Father’s Day weekend to see the Mermaid Parade. Well, as if that wasn’t crazy enough, I went BACK to Coney Island that night to photograph the new Luna Park. I have been documenting the changes to Coney Island and so I wanted to document the aftermath. I took both of the digital cameras I had used that afternoon and proceeded to take some low light photos. I would have preferred to have gone a little earlier in the evening to take the photos, but we thought it might have been a little crowded. By the time we went, it wasn’t too crowded, but there were still plenty of people still in their mermaid costumes hanging around.

Some participants from the Mermaid Parade enjoy their time in Luna Park

Most, though not all, of the rides were targeted towards young kids. Dino’s has more of the rides that can be ridden by adults as well as the arcade area. There were still some rides being built, but it looks to be mostly complete. I was surprised by how bright it was in the park. I was able to really lower my ISO a lot more than I thought I would be able to. That really excites me for the prospect of doing some low light photography with the Holga at Coney Island.

Kids on the kiddie version of the spinning chair ride

When we were finishing up, Danielle suggested I ride The Cyclone. I’d been talking about riding it ever since I first saw it over seven years ago. To my recollection, I had never ridden a wooden rollercoaster and I knew this was one of the most famous. I wavered a bit over the price – $8 – but eventually decided to go for it.

There it stood, ready to be conquered.

The fact that it is wooden, combined with its track design, made it one of the most thrilling roller coasters I have ever ridden. (top honors goes to a coaster in Busch Gardens Williamsburg) The drops were great, the speed was perfect and it was done without any loops. The only complaint I had (and probably the reason I’ll never ride it again) is that the rickety nature of the wooden roller coaster left me with a headache. All the bouncing of the train along the tracks transferred up my spine to my neck and then head. The resulting headache was definitely not worth the trip. It may be possible that the headache was worsened by the fact that my neck muscles were probably spasmed from having had all those cameras around my neck all day long. But I’m definitely glad I got it out of the way. One less thing for my lifelong TODO list.

Never again will I wonder what it is like to ride The Cyclone

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1. Bus Graveyard in Coney Island
2. Mermaids on Parade
3. Photos from Brighton Beach’s Boardwalk

We found out where it would start and that it would begin at 1400. So we decided to head out around 1300 and have some lunch on the way there. We ended up getting there at 1330 which was a little later than I wanted, so we didn’t make it all the way to the beginning of the parade. We ended up near the end right before the parade worked its way onto the boardwalk. This ended up being a fortuitous location. At first Danielle asked if we wanted to stay on the boardwalk. But none of the vehicular groups went up onto the boardwalk (of course they couldn’t) so we would have missed out on some of the most impressive floats. We also lucked out that we were kept from crossing the street to join Danielle’s mom because all the floats passed right in front of me — across the (wide) street from her. We had one final bit of luck in that we were amongst the last batch of people able to cross the street into that area. The police were keeping people off of the street for safety reasons.

The parade turned out to be spectacularly long — we were there for 3 hours and we left about a half an hour before it was over. The weather was perfect, if a little hot. I had three cameras with me — the Rebel XTi (400D) , Rebel XT (350D), and Holga 120CN. The Rebel XTi had my Canon EF 28-105mm. USM (discontinued) lens serving as the perfect zoom for 85% of the shots. The Rebel XT had my Sigma 10-20mm lens for those times when we were bum-rushed with dozens of parade people at once and it was impossible to capture them with the longer lens as well as being useful when the mermaids got extra close to me. It turned out to be the perfect lens combination and I didn’t regret the choice at all. Over those three hours I shot nearly 1200 photos combined between the digital cameras. I nearly used up all the memory cards I had — 11 GB total over the whole trip — most of it at the parade. I wasn’t the only one photographing the parade. I was surrounded by other photographers, mostly wielding Canons along with a couple of Nikons and obscure brands. In fact, it was rare to see anyone around me without a camera.

And now… enough naked words. Time for the photo essay.

The Mermaid Parade started off as a Mardi Gras parade and eventually moved to coincide with the summer solstice. This makes for better parade weather in NYC.

Every year some famous people are crowned King and Queen of the Mermaid Parade. They are usually famous New Yorkers. This year it was Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson of The Velvet Underground.

The floats range from extremely elaborate to simple and many groups are actually on foot. On average, most of the floats were small like this one and were pushed or carried. If you follow the link to my Mermaid Parade set (at the end of the post) you can see some of the more elaborate vehicles.

There were tons of performers on stilts. This guy was the most masterful as he ran around in the stilts.

A big feature of any NYC parade, but especially the Mermaid Parade, is cross-dressing. The interesting thing is that a study of festivals throughout history shows that cross-dressing has always been a popular way to subvert the rules of life, even if it's just for a day.

The largest unifying theme of the parade this year was the BP Oil spill.

Lots of participants marched with signs against BP's handling of the gulf coast oil spill.

Sailors were also a major theme of the parade.

This is an example of some of the hand-carried floats.

Although women have had the right to go topless in NYC since 2002, many of the participants stopped at pasties rather than be fully topless.

Yet Another BP Oil Spill themed participant.

There were also a few mergings of pop culture during the parade. But none were as strange as this group's merging of Hello Kitty with Star Wars.

Perhaps because so many people focused on the oil spill, completely original and off the wall costumes like this one weren't as common.

New Yorkers have a reputation for being rude. I've found that most of the time New Yorkers are actually very nice. They simply tend to be impatient and sometimes remind me of online forums. This woman went all along the parade route hugging anyone that allowed her to.

A few of the participants focused on glamour designs, but it wasn't too commons this year.

A large contingent of Andy Warhol themed participants reinterpreted a lot of his artwork in pretty neat ways such as this Campbell's Soup Top

Of course, just as common as sailors in a sea-themed parade were pirates.

Another great example of the huge creativity on display at the parade.

For more (and there are a lot more) photos from the Mermaid Parade, see my flickr Mermaid Parade 2010 set.

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1. The New Coney Island and The Cyclone
2. Review: Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
3. Jen’s Wedding Part 3: The Ceremony

July 2010 Desktop Background for Square Monitors

July 2010 Desktop Background for Widescreen Monitors

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