May 12: I saw this poster across the street on Fifth Avenue while walking with Dorette Kerian to the Metropolitan Museum of Art during our recent trip to New York. “Albertine” rang a bell, so on our way back, I looked more closely. As I suspected, “’Albertine” referred to a major character in Marcel Proust’s massive novel, “In Search of Lost Time “ (1,267,069 words on 3,031 pages in seven volumes).
May 11: “Sleepwalker,” photographed April 26 on “The High Line,” a 1.45-mile park built on a stretch of former elevated railroad track in New York’s Chelsea and Meatpacking neighborhoods. No, this is NOT an actual person — it’s a life-sized sculpture by the artist Tony Matelli. Nearby is the Whitney Museum of American Art.
May 10: Horror in Central Park? Well, not really, but it WAS a WEIRD sight on our recent trip to New York: An old-fashioned carousel spinning madly with no riders and no nearby human attendants. I chose a slow shutter speed and shallow depth of field with my Canon 5DMark III to capture the, well, the strangeness of it all.
May 10: The Statue of Liberty, photographed April 27, 2016. My uncle (and namesake) David Vogel told me he and his fellow Navy sailors cheered as they passed it on the way to the Brooklyn Navy Yard at the end of World War II.
May 9: After checking in to our hotel in New York on April 25, our first stop was the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street. Its motto remains, “If you can finish your meal, we’ve done something wrong.” True, Starbucks is within sight these days, but the joint itself hasn’t changed much over the years. According to our receipt, Dorette Kerian and I shared a corned beef sandwich (guaranteed to have at least a pound of meat), coleslaw and strawberry cheesecake. The tab: $43.52.
May 7: New York City’s Central Park reminds me of another favorite — the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris — because both seem consciously designed to appeal to children. This is the Bethesda Fountain during our recent visit to NYC. Photographed with a Canon 5D Mark III with a 50 mm f/1.2 lens.
May 6: Grand Central Station, photographed during our recent trip to New York. I’ve stopped in several times over the years.
May 5: Last week, Dorette Kerian and I visited our favorite paintings in four of New York’s art museums: The Guggenheim, Whitney, Museum of Modern Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. The works seemed to greet me like old friends, especially this one at the Met I first saw as a college kid in 1964: Renoir’s “Madame Charpentier and her children.”
May 4: Helicopter over New York Harbor, photographed last week from the Staten Island Ferry with a Canon 5D Mark III DSLR and a 50mm f/1.2 lens.
May 3: Dorette and I felt safe in New York during our recent visit. We walked mostly (I logged 44 miles on my iPhone over four days), with just a few rides on the subway. I took this photo of well-armed NYC police in Times Square. According to the latest FBI statistics, New York had fewer violent crimes per 100,000 of population than did Philadelphia, Houston and Chicago, among other big cities.
May 2: Washington Square Park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, not far from where Bob Dylan lived as he began his career. When I first saw it in 1964 as college kid, Bob had already moved on. He’s a year older than me, so when Dorette Kerian took this picture of me on April 28, 2016, I was in his absence the most elderly guy there.
May 1: The weather in New York City last week was cool with some sun, frequent cloudiness, and, as in this picture, shot with a Canon 5D Mark III with a 50 mm f/1.2 lens, occasional light rain.
April 30: The Empire State Building, looking toward lower Manhattan, photographed from Rockefeller Center on Thursday, with a Canon 5D Mark III and 50mm lens.
April 29: The subway train last night to JFK airport, on our way home from New York City. Four great days ― my iPhone app says we walked 44.10 miles. The photos I’ve posted so far were shot with the phone; in coming days, I’ll put up a few taken with my digital DSLR.
April 28: We didn’t have the opportunity in NYC to see the musical “Hamilton” but did pay our respects yesterday at the grave of the actual Alexander Hamilton in the cemetery of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan.
April 26: A great second day in New York City despite a bit of rain in the afternoon. More than 12 miles of strolling according to my iPhone, two art museums and tonight a play, “An American in Paris.”
April 25: I first visited New York City as a college kid. Although I’ve returned many times on business or vacation, today was the first time in eight years. It’s a different place now, and I will need a while to sort it all out. This afternoon, after gorging ourselves at the Carnegie Deli, we spent much of our time in Central Park. There I had a “Proustian” moment remembering my strong reaction to The Lake and its model sailing boats when I first saw them back in 1964: “Hey, that’s where Dick and Jane played in those stories I read in the first grade back in North Dakota!”
