NYC Photography Tips

Friday, June 15, 2018

I woke up at around seven in the morning to take out the trash. Then, after breakfast, I decided work on retouching. By 4 pm, I decided to get ready for a photo meetup. I left at 5 pm because I needed to drop by the gas station first. As I drove in my neighborhood, I noticed a couple of girls wearing UCI cap and gown, and I realized UCI had their graduation ceremony today, probably around noon. There was a lot of traffic in the area, and a traffic jam at the intersection between the university and the street I live on. The gas station was also crowded. I finally found an available gas dispenser, but when I parked by it, I realized my gas tank is on the other side. So, I was laughing with the girl in the car behind me, and I decided find another available dispenser on the correct side. By 5:30 pm, I drove slowly to the meetup up, on a hot June afternoon. There was traffic but I wasn’t in a hurry because it wasn’t far away. There was after work rush hour as well as it was a busy Friday evening.

I arrived at 6 pm, and no one was here. There usually is a line already forming before I arrive because most people arrive before me. The photographer Gary Hershorn and another man arrived, and they entered right away. I looked down and noticed a lizard. I decided to do an iPhone photo shoot. It did a good job posing for me because it was still for a long time. I enlarge me screen to get close-up body shots. I tried to put my iPhone close to the lizard in order to get a head shot, but it got scared and left. I got enough photos anyway. By 6:30 pm, other people started to arrive.

The 7 pm workshop is about NYC photography. The photographer, Gary Hershorn, displayed his creative photographs of landmarks in NYC. I enjoyed it because I wanted to get some new ideas for taking interesting local pictures, but I live in a suburb, and the landmarks in Irvine include UC Irvine, Spectrum Centrum, town centers, parks, hiking trails, arcade, and bowling alley. His NYC photos included city buildings, sunsets, sunrises, moon sets, moon rises, downtown environment, skyline, night scenes, and daylight photos.

• Layering involves having a subject in the foreground, in the middle section, and the background to give it a three-dimensional detailed description.
• Add people and crowds in the scene, but in silhouettes.
• Create a graphic element by shooting in a line.
• Use a Weather APP for detailed weather descriptions in order to photograph scenes with the right natural lighting, which allows you to create interesting effects. Go on Google and search TPE. Click on The Photographer’s Ephemeris. Click on the TPE Web APP because it is free. It shows detailed information about moon rising, moon setting, sunrise, sunset, full moons, supermoon, eclipse, weather predictions, storms, and rainy days, cloudy days, rainbows, etc.
• Take a photograph of lightning when there is no rain.
• Famous landmarks in NYC include Statue of Liberty, bridges, Empire State Building, and the city is currently building many new buildings.
• Birds, snow in NYC, rainbows, fireworks, sunset after snowstorm, reflections, and events.
• The Blue Hour is the hour that the sun goes below the horizon.
• The moon setting and moon rising effects:  the lower the moon, the better its color. It changes color from yellow to red.
• Between 9th and 6th Avenue, inside the underground subway tunnel, there are often fashion shoots, wedding shoots, and even hipsters hanging out at 3 am.
• The Oculus is a new train station in NYC, which has a mall. This sounds similar to underground subways in Europe. But I haven’t been to NYC since august 1980 when I was 15. So, I am sure NYC has changed a lot since then.
• Manhattanhenge occurs two days in May and two days in June. For a couple days afterwards, the sun will be higher, in which is also a good time to take some interesting snapshots. A good place to take a photograph is from the bridge by 42nd Street.
• I noticed other interesting photographs of Queens, Battery Park, New Jersey, parades, New Year’s Eve confetti, 1 woman wear a red coat amidst the white building of the Oculus, 1 person holding a red umbrella, moon rising, eclipse, supermoon, light shows, Highline, Hudson Yards, clock tower amidst fog in the wintertime, central park, yellow high moon, and red low moon.
• I need to write out a list of local landmarks in my area so I can take create photographs for each place. There isn’t much in Irvine, but I would like to do it for fun.
• He prefers to use JPEG photographs instead of raw photographs.