Manhattan

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This week I am presenting a poster at the SEED 2019 conference. Outside of the conference I had some time to explore the city. As soon as I landed I went to Central Park (the only bit of nature near the city). The park is pretty, and it is easy to get lost in its winding trails. Central Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, a landscape architect who also designed spaces at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In general the city was beautiful and energizing when considered as a whole/at a distance, but lost its magic when in the thick of things. The more abstact the city was the more beautiful it was. The glitter, the hustle, the energy, the scale is all inspiring and attractive, but it was overshadowed by the ugly. The whole city is crowded and dirty. It smells like urine and hot trash. The city traps heat during the day and radiates it into the night. Cool breezes are rare. It takes forever to get anywhere (by subway, car, or walking). It is not for me but fun to visit.

The Met

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Though New York does not have any nature you cannot fault it for that. I wanted to see things I could not elsewhere, so I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I was lucky enough to stumble across two of my favorite paintings, Ancient Rome and Modern Rome by Giovanni Paolo Panini. Both paintings are laid out with the painter and commissioner of the painting in a large hall surrounded by paintings of either Ancient or Modern Roman architecture. 

I have been fortunate enough to see many of the structures in the paintings including St. Peter's Basilica, the Via Sacra, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, and Trevi Fountain.

Bike and Hike

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Yesterday, my friend and I biked Cades Cove loop to the Gregory Bald trailhead, hiked to Gregory Bald to see the flame azaleas, then finished biking the loop. It was 25 miles total with 4452 feet of climbing (14.5 miles and 1500 feet of climbing on the bike and 11.3 miles and 3482 feet of climbing during the hike).

We had great weather. Biking the loop is the way to go. Before 10am on Saturday, the loop is closed to cars. The wild life seemed more relaxed in the morning too. We saw horses close to the road, biked right past a dear standing on the side of the road, and watched a black bear eating termites from an old log just off the road.

Gregory Bald was beautiful. Warm sun, airish breeze. The flame azaleas were very pretty. There were colors ranging from white to yellow, orange, and red. We had lunch and took a nap. A couple had ridden horses to the peak. The humidity was low so the views were great. I walked around taking photos of Cades Cove and other peaks with the azaleas in the foreground. Though it wasn’t picked up in my pictures, I could see a distant ridge on the horizon (possibly Stout Knob, 66 miles away).

Riding a mountain bike was much more fun than my road bike. My road bike is stiff and twitchy, but the mountain bike was smooth and stable. On the bike back we saw more deer and bears. We rode on the shoulder and passed all the cars stuck in traffic. I only took photos on film, though I brought both cameras.

Old Gray Cemetery

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This is the Old Gray Cemetery in North Knoxville. The first photo is a little over exposed. I set the ASA knob to 100 while using 200 ISO film. I wanted to see if this would give better colors. Someone at the local camera store said this would result in a “deeper” negative. I took this to mean richer colors, but I now think it means the blacks are not as crushed. However, I do not mind missing out on details in the shadows. I think the higher contrast gives photos a comic book feel where the colors are saturated and the blacks are true black. I think I will stick with the recommended ISO for now. The colors I’ve gotten are so beautiful. Either way the cemetery’s many sculptures and tombstones are pretty in the sunlight. The second photo was taken with my new 75-150mm f/3.5 Nikon E series telephoto lens. The angel in the center of the image is a little out of focus and I do not think there are enough foreground elements to really get a good depth of field. Much of the image does look pretty sharp though.

f/1.4

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One of the reasons I was excited to get the Nikon FM and 50mm f1.4 lens was to see how the bokeh compared to my NEX-3N with its 16-50mm f/3.5-f/5.6 zoom lens. Here is a shot with a neutral density filter and polarization filter so that I can use the f1.4 aperture. This image doesn’t work for a few reasons. First, the in-focus subjects are too close in color, shape, brightness, and location to the just out of focus elements behind them. Second, the background has many of the same colors as the subject. Third, the film I used, Kodak Gold 200, has a larger grain, so the subjects are not perfectly sharp. A finer grain film would make the background even smoother than it already is. To further improve the image I could also use a tripod to steady the camera and remove any concern over camera shake.