Focusing And Refocusing: Views From An Evolving Life

Nearly Full Moon in Riverside Park

Well, if you play around long enough on a nearly-full-moon night, you sometimes get the moon to cooperate even if your mastery of shutter speed adjustment takes a nosedive. Software helps too.

This looks nothing like I'd wanted it to, so chalk it up to another night of at least going through some of the motions. Kind of like base miles.

Today was the coldest commute so far, at least in the morning. Wore the new Lake winter cycling boots. I think it was a mistake to wear two pairs of socks with them in the morning. Made everything too tight and cut off circulation to the toes, resulting in ... cold toes.

This time around I clipped in and out much more easily. But the combination of thick boot and different cleat placement makes the whole thing feel odd, sort of like learning clipless all over again. It throws off my equilibrium a bit. I assume I'll get used to it.

Couldn't deal with traffic tonight, so with the advantage of a nearly-full-moon-lit sky, I decided to do the Greenway the whole way.  Turns out the parts I was most nervous about are, for the most part, reasonably well lit.  The big problem is the mile-long Cherry Walk, where there's no lighting on the trail and at the same time you get blinded by the oncoming Henry Hudson Parkway traffic. 

I've begun formulating my risk assessment formula in the whole Riverside/Fort Washington/Broadway/Greenway internal debate. Details to come.

Hudson River Greenway on Election Day

Wow, coming to work in the middle of the afternoon for Election Night means I get to see the Greenway in all of its fall colors. It also means I get to see some contrasts that I don't see in the morning or evening.

Like this one. I liked the railing against the rock against the trees.

Time for election duties ...

Loving Standard Time!

I never fully appreciated Standard Time until launching the fall/winter bike commute routine. Today I celebrate the return of a little lightness to my morning commute, and therefore a return to the Hudson River Greenway at least for a few more weeks in the morning. (The evening was already on the dark side by the time I leave work, so a little more darkness, coming earlier, makes no big difference.)

Got some more practice in getting the tripod set up quickly today. The fact that it wasn't cold (about 43 degrees) helped immeasurably.

Using a tripod is supposed to, among many other things, force you to be more measured and disciplined in framing shots. That's another thing I didn't fully appreciate until this morning. The thing is a pain in the butt to move quickly, especially when its feet are in wet leaves.  That coupled with the prime lens and my lack of experience limited my ability to frame with agility. After all, I was trying to get it done quickly before the sun rose!!  So I didn't want to spend undue amounts of time on this.

I'll use those things as my excuse for the fact that the GWB seems to have grown a building.  Oh well. Add that to my list of things to watch for, though this one should have been obvious.  But I was too focused on the water reflections to notice the building.

I don't know which exposure I like better: The above one, which has cool colors, or the below one, in which I tried to parallel the golden leaves of the tree with the golden reflections. Also, believe it or not, I intentionally included the bottom left bit of the concrete wall as a design element. I have no formal name for what I was trying to do, but it was on purpose. For better or worse.

Abstract Art and Broadway Bashing

None of what I tried to do today came remotely close to turning out, so how about this as abstract art. It's a version of the below -- before I fished out the remote from my bag. I have to say, this one's a lot more interesting with a little camera shake ...

And why was I taking a landscape photo from across the street and through a chain-link fence? Because that's the kind of day it's been.

THE PHOTO LEARNING PROCESS:

Getting acquainted with the tripod in 28 degree windchills, as I did this morning, is not a fun thing. Far too much time spent setting up, twisting, turning, tilting, tightening ... and then being unable to UNTIGHTEN because with part of the tripod, unbeknownst to me at the time, Lefty Loosey does not apply. How can that BE, when that's the only mechanical rule I ever learned?!  And during this ordeal I was afraid to twist to the Right, because I didn't want it any more Tighty.  So there I was, fingers completely numb from the cold, unable to twist the tripod all the way down and therefore unable to fit it in the pannier. So I had to stick it at medium length horizontally under my waist pack attached to my back, making me one wide and dangerous load as I rode along.

THE COMMUTE:

Very chilly and breezy this morning, made worse by time spent stopping and trying to do this photo thing. And I underdressed.

Then this evening. I'm going to have to do something about this upper Broadway matter. It's not going to be tolerable as an ongoing situtation.

It's my preference not to take the Greenway when it's dark. Because it's ... dark.  With no lighting at all in some stretches, including areas where you really don't want to be stuck in the dark, particularly if you happen to get a flat or some such.

So that leaves Broadway as pretty much the only alternative. There is one particularly miserable stretch of Broadway, just about a half mile but it seems like eternity, from 181st to around Nagle. A very busy commercial area, and one in which double parking is the norm. On a fairly steep downhill. With lots of pedestrians. And trucks and buses and car service cars and cabs. None of which move about in anything resembling an orderly fashion. So it's one long downhill of dodging and burning (ha, get it?) and braking and swerving and door-avoiding and ... just one big nightmare.

I just can't face this night after night. I might do the Greenway in the dark after all.  Or, um, Bennett. Yeah, the wrong way.  Hey, others do it. What's a girl to do??

On top of all of that, I rode with my left foot unclipped for much of the journey. Reasons having to do with different cleat placement and new Lake winter riding shoes. Details later. Enough is enough for tonight.

Here's what the above scene looked like with the remote and no camera shake.  Boring.

Nighttime Pointing and Shooting with Bike-Mounted Gorillapod

THE COMMUTE:

A relief to be back on the bike today, after spending yesterday's downpour on the subway to work and the "express" bus to home. Given the weather -- 41/Feels Like 33, with 15 mph winds gusting to 25mph -- I had to upgrade the clothing to a few more layers of just about everything; details below.

As for yesterday: One helpful thing about yesterday's sitting-still commute: It gave me a chance to thumb through one of my new books: Exposure Photo Workshop by Jeff Wignall.

THE PHOTOS:

The book is very instructive and a joy to read and I'm sure I'll get a lot from it. But one immediate benefit: I noted that several of the night shots in the opening chapters were taken with a point-n-shoot.

Hmm, I thought.

And thus, a compromise on today's photo-and-bike adventure. Given the chill and the wind -- especially the wind -- I really didn't want to deal with the big tripod and DSLR and having to spend excessive time fiddling with them. So I did a revolutionary thing: I actually looked at the manual for my point-n-shoot and figured out how to get to its non-automatic modes as well as how to use the self-timer.

Then I attached the camera to my  Gorillapod and stuck it in the rack trunk so I could just grab it when needed.

Midway through the commute, I found a spot with potential (good sky, cars going by), attached the Gorillapod to the handlebars, aimed the bike at the scene, set the camera to Fireworks Scene and 2-sec self-timer, and waited the action. Then pointed, and shot.

The one on the top is exactly as I took it.  The one on the bottom I played with a bit by darkening the shadows (the buildings) and brightening the sky. Was tempted to saturate it some more, but that seemed too over the top.

THE CLOTHES:

I always over-dress, but especially considering that I have to factor in stopping for photos, in the wind, it seems like not such a bad idea over the course of 12.5 windy miles.

So today: Icebreaker 150 baselayer, Ibex crew middle layer, Icebreaker 320 third layer (all of those wool), Brooks reflective windbreaker fourth (!!) layer; Sugoi skullcap; Gore full-finger gloves; bike shorts, tights, Cannondale wind pants; Smartwool kneehigh socks with Giordana lightweight wool socks on top; Grabber toe warmers.  I think that's it.  It really did the trick well ... I was a little warm going up Bennett, but it was manageable; and it was perfect for the really windy stretches along the river.

 

 

First Try at Using the Tripod in the Early Morning

So, this morning was my first try at using the tripod and the remote. It wasn't exactly a success -- this one's going to take as much practice in the logistics of the setup as in the technicalities of the camera before the muscle memory figures out what's going on and starts to help out.

But that's why I've (more or less) committed to keeping this going through the dark and cold ...
practice practice practice.

I got the tripod set up in reasonable time, but then had some trouble manipulating the camera once it was on the tripod. Plus I again couldn't see the settings in the dark -- and the fact that I'd bought a little flashlight didn't do me much good because I couldn't retrieve the flashlight quickly enough to suit my desires. Plus I when I wanted to swivel and tilt I had to stumble around with twisties and turnies until I found what I needed. Big waste of time.

PLUS I neglected to remember that I had to change the shooting mode to, well, remote ... which is why I couldn't get the remote to work for awhile.

There were other ordeals but not worth getting into at this point.  Clearly I need to refine a couple of things: For instance, I'll probably resume carrying the trunk rack so I can stash and retrieve needed items quickly. And put the flashlight around my neck before leaving home. And use the bigger pannier -- this one's really a little tight for the tripod.

As for the above, we'll call it art.

I chose this spot in advance, figuring that Central Park was a reasonable place to fiddle with the tripod unmolested, and knowing that there would be semi-fun stuff with the setup for the NYC Marathon. So, the bleachers set up for the marathon finishers, and some early-morning training with less than a week to go.

ISO 200, shade, 1/13, F1.4, 50mm fixed.  Tweaked a bit in Picasa.

A Shadowy George Washington Bridge

I've gotten really spoiled by commuting at 6 in the morning as the sun is rising. There have been so many fascinating colors and shadows at that time.

Today I got a late start (hey, it's Sunday) and didn't leave home until around 7:30a for my monthly on-duty day in the office. No sunrise, no clouds, no sky show -- and as a result, none of the usual spots that catch my eye were even remotely interesting. This is the closest I could come, but I got here just a few minutes too late. In fact, the scene got notably less good in the time it took to stop the bike, turn it around, put it down, get out a camera, and shoot a few shots in from a few feet down.

I should dig up a few of the scenes I shot from the same spot earlier this year, for comparison. But can't do that until I get home ....

The Glory of a Repaved Dyckman

Generally I aim to take pretty pictures on my commute, and generally pictures of streets aren't all that pretty. But in fact, this view of Dyckman is one of the prettiest sights there can possibly be.

Behold the blissfully smooth pavement. Almost like silk. (And only one car sort of in the bike lane, which for Dyckman is a miracle. And maybe he can't really be blamed, since they're not finished with repainting the lane markers yet ...)

But back to the blissfully smooth pavement. You had to have known the former version of Dyckman to truly appreciate the change. It was dreadful before. It's glorious now.

There's been similar repaving up on 230th and that, too, has made a dramatic improvement in my commute.

Now if only they could tackle Seaman _ a popular cyclists' alternative to Broadway, but one pockmarked and pitted particularly at the worst possible spots, like nearing the top of an incline at which you're bound to be boxed in by a couple of double-parked or madly careening cars anyway.  So you hit nirvana with Dyckman (who would have thought?) and then sink back to reality navigating up Seaman.

Still. Repaving of two key parts of my route PLUS the opening of the Harlem Piers part of the Greenway. Pretty good developments in the past month. Now if only they could do something about the wind ...

Hudson River Greenway at West Harlem Piers opens!

As I noted last night, it's a very exciting time on the Hudson River Greenway: the West Harlem Piers connector between around 125th and 135th streets is finally open.

This means no more detouring for 10 blocks to 12th Avenue and the often-crazy traffic around the Fairway -- though that stretch is certainly a whole lot less annoying and less treacherous than, say, the car wash area on Broadway between 218th and the Broadway Bridge. 

But it's delightful to stay on the bike path straight through. And they've done a lovely job with the park and pier area. Of course, all this comes at a time when I won't be on this stretch much -- will be taking the Riverside Drive route when it's dark -- but it's nice to get a week or two of it and it will be truly wonderful when light returns.

 

Hudson River has Structures; Subway Does Not

All sorts of excitement in tonight's bike commute on the West Side Greenway -- some structures gone, several new ones installed, AND the most exciting news of all ... well, I failed miserably in photographing it tonight, so I'll try again tomorrow morning.  For now, just a few more structures.

Speaking of failing miserably, I had absolutely zero success with the camera on Riverside Drive this morning. At least it gives me plenty of room for improvement.

Was talking with a co-worker today about how my enthusiasm for a bike commute had started to wane just a bit as winter approached -- until I thought about spending the same hour on a subway train. She noted that on her subway ride this morning, it seemed just about everyone was loudly, drippily, germily sick, all confined in that yucky little space. While I was out riding merrily along in nature, playing with my camera. It's an easy call.