Archive for the 'photos' Category
London Calling, cassette tape on canvas, 2009 — By Erika Iris Simmons
Two things that I really love about this illustration by Erika Iris Simmons:
- It’s the iconic image from the cover of The Clash’s masterpiece London Calling.
- It’s rendered with casette tape!
View it at the largest size to see the detail.
Victoria Bergsman, DJing at The Bell House in Brooklyn.
Nedward: Victoria Bergsman (formerly of The Concretes) is DJing at The Bell House, much to my delight. Waiting for Camera Obscura!
As big a fan of Camera Obscura as I am, the more interesting bit Tuesday night was a special guest DJ, Victoria Bergsman. A lot of people know her voice as the female counterpoint in Young Folks, the Peter Bjorn and John sing-along hit from a couple of years ago. But she was also the singer in one of my favorite bands, The Concretes. (Camera Obscura fans should check out their eponymous debut album.) She has since left the band, and formed a solo project under the name Taken By Trees, (also a great debut).
Anyhow, I might have been the only person in the crowd that had any idea who she was – or cared – so Lisa encouraged me to say hello. But, I’m just not one of those people who walks up to a famous person, and just gushes in their face. Call it shyness, call it fear of disappointment… the bottom line is that I chickened out.
To make matters worse, Lisa went over to the DJ booth without me, and told Ms. Bergsman that “her friend was a big fan,” but that he “didn’t want to bother her.” Nice. So now I’m shy, and embarrassed.
I don’t really regret it that much, but I would’ve liked to show off some dance moves from The Concretes’ On The Radio video. I’d like to think that she would’ve laughed.
Continue reading ‘Camera Obscura & DJ Victoria Bergsman, at the Bell House’
My photo from the 21st floor of the New York Times Building, in midtown.
From City Room:
A USAirways plane that took off at 3:26 p.m. from La Guardia Airport landed in the Hudson River five minutes later, where it remains mostly submerged. Ferries and other boats converged to help with a rescue effort, as the plane drifted south. There was no immediate information about the 151 people on board.
According to Channel 4 television news, the plane, USAirways flight 1549, took off from LaGuardia Airport at 3:26 p.m. was bound for Charlotte, N.C. and had 146 passengers and 5 crew members. The plane, according to the news report, may have hit a flock of birds. The pilot tried to return to the airport when the plane fell into the Hudson.
Photo of the rescue, posted by Janis Krums on Twitter/Twitpic.
I watched from the 21st floor of the Times Building, as the plan drifted south with the tide. I believe that the rescue operation completed before it came into view, and it has since drifted out of view.
The plane did not break up on impact; divers, commuter ferries and a lot of emergency personnel are assisting with rescue operations. Everyone is reported to have survived the crash and rescue, as of this moment, but there are injuries. CNN is currently interviewing passengers, live on-air.
UPDATE: I don’t know how the Graphics team put this together so quickly and so elegantly, but NYTimes.com has an interactive piece today, that tracks the plane’s path.
Also, CNN has been running a Google Earth animation of the flight, which is less pretty, but kind of cool.
Make your own Obamicon:
Your image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey’s iconic poster. Regardless of your candidate of choice in the 2008 election, here’s your chance to sound-off.
From the folks at Paste, via Sean.
Aron Pilhofer, Andrew DeVigal, Steve Duenes, Matthew Ericson, and Gabriel Dance.
Photo courtesy NY Mag / Mike McGregor
Election Day Word Train »
Faces of the Dead »
Pogue-o-matic »
Sure there’s been a lot of recent bad news about the New York Times Company, and newspapers coast-to-coast are pulling back coverage, filing for bankruptcy and closing. But there is also another story to tell.
New York Magazine has a piece in this week’s issue on the Times Multimedia, Graphics, Interactive Tech and R&D groups, titled The New Journalism: Goosing the Gray Lady. It details some of the organizational steps taken by the Times, in order to position itself for the day when the online product eclipses the print edition in reach, revenue and relevance.
Continue reading ‘NY Magazine on Innovation at the Times’
Love Is All performing at the Bowery Ballroom, in Manhattan.
It was not as legendary as their first show at the Knitting Factory, or the sweat-dripped set at Market Hotel in Bushwick this past summer, but Love Is All still knows how to bring it. They played a mix of songs from the new album A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night as well as from their debut, and even mixed in their Flock of Seagulls cover.
UPDATE: My Photos on Flickr » | NYCTaper’s Audio From the Show
Photo Credit: Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesA photo of downtown Buffalo.
The Times had a great piece yesterday on Buffalo’s architectural legacy, and recent attempts to save historic buildings:
Buffalo is home to some of the greatest American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with major architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright building marvels here. Together they shaped one of the grandest early visions of the democratic American city.
Yet Buffalo is more commonly identified with the crumbling infrastructure, abandoned homes and dwindling jobs that have defined the Rust Belt for the past 50 years. And for decades its architecture has seemed strangely frozen in time.
There is also an accompanying slide show, from which the photo above was taken.
Full disclosure: I’m originally from Buffalo.
Today’s edition of the New York Times.
I count myself lucky today, for scoring a copy of the paper before they ran out. Apparently, the situation is the same throughout the city, (though I’ve heard rumors of another 50,000 copy run).
In fact, there are a hundred or so people standing on line outside the Times headquarters, waiting for a fresh delivery of news, printed on dead trees.
A hundred or so people, waiting on line for today’s paper, in front of the Times headquarters in midtown.
From Gawker:
Everybody wants a souvenir of Obama’s victory, and you know what makes a great souvenir? That’s right, a newspaper. This is a photo of a line outside the NYT building on 40th Street of people waiting—for a newspaper!
I hope that people still come to the Times for more than just a souvenir.
Equipment and officials from some government agency that I’ve never heard of, in the lobby of the New York Times Building in midtown.
The lobby of The New York Times Building, where I work, was closed this past Wednesday, after an employee on the 13th floor opened an envelope that contained a powdery substance. (The 13th floor is where the editorial board and some columnists have offices.)
It turned out to be a hoax, but for several hours the building was in near lock-down mode. Unfortunately, I decided to disregard warnings and went out to meet Lisa for lunch. When I returned, I was locked out for almost an hour, as the police had roped off the building’s entrances. Peering through the windows on the 8th Avenue side of the building, I saw a huge curtain stretched across one of the elevator banks. Some firemen went in with a stretcher, and the broadcast news media started converging on the street. (Apologies to the very friendly NY1 camerawoman, for refusing to talk to her on camera.)
All I could do was to take some photos, and wait to be let in. After about an hour, I received word from a colleague inside that they were letting employees back in through the freight elevators in the loading dock down 40th st. That was about all the fun I could handle for one day… back to work.
More Photos below the jump.
Me, standing in, as lighting is set for a David Pogue shoot.
Today, myself and a few colleagues helped Zach Wise set up and shoot some green screen video of New York Times Technology Columnist and near-Broadway performer David Pogue. The video will be integrated into a multimedia piece that Zach and I are working on, which should be done before Thanksgiving.
This is the first real video shoot that I’ve worked on, (having in the past done a lot of voice-over work with sound engineers). What’s scary is that we did this largely by ourselves – Zach found a studio at the nearby CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, we hung the green fabric, and we set up the lighting with a little help from their engineer.
David Pogue came in a short while later, I grabbed a boom mic, and we were off to the races. It was a lot of fun, and Pogue nailed the takes – I have no idea how he did it without a teleprompter, but he had us all laughing several times. And he was very patient and friendly throughout the shoot, even when we had to embarrassingly scramble back to the office for more P2 cards.
So, that was the hard part – now we have to design and build this thing.
Twin beams of the Tribute in Light in lower Manhattan, as seen from the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights.
Upload a photo of yourself, and they’ll take it from there – 1970, 1976, and 1986 respectively.
I had a lot of fun playing with Yearbook Yourself, a site that will take your boring headshot and turn it into embarrassing yearbook photos that never were.
The truly amazing thing is that the 1970 composite (left) is a dead-ringer for my Dad around that time. This is what my mom kind of looked like in the early 60s.
Lucy chomping on a bone at Abilene, during Happy Hour.
We’re dogsitting for Liz this weekend, and it’s been a blast.
While I definitely prefer the independence of cats in general, I’ve really enjoyed spending time with Lucy – she’s a really good dog.
Barriers erected outside the Carroll Street MTA entrance at 2nd Place and Smith Street, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
Looks like the 360 Smith luxury condo development is going to shut down my subway entrance, and severely mess up the nice plaza in front:
Because the safety of our customers is of utmost concern, this closure will be in effect on a 24-hour, 7 days per week basis for 6-8 months (subject to the progress of the construction project)…
See outside.in for more history of this controversial development.
Workmen remove a flyer left behind by David Malone, who climbed the New York Times Building several hours before.
For the third time in five weeks, someone has scaled the outside of The New York Times Headquarters. This time, however, it was over and done before most of us got out of bed:
Unlike the two previous climbers, this one — identified later as David Malone, a 29-year-old activist from West Hartford, Conn., who studies Al Qaeda — did not attempt to make his way to the roof. Instead, he unfurled a banner around the fifth floor of the 52-story building, before climbing a few more stories.
In the current Business Week, there is an interesting profile of Deborah Kenny, the founder Harlem Village Academies:
Kenny has applied a business management style to running her schools, focusing on attracting smart teachers, nurturing talent, using reams of data to improve performance, and putting a huge emphasis on rewarding results.
Kenny also happens to be Lisa’s boss.
NYTimes.com isn’t the only NYT property that’s doing interesting things with blogs these days – Boston.com launched a different kind of photo blog earlier this month, The Big Picture. With its oversized photos, minimal ads, and hardly a promo to other site content, the presentation is clear and striking – and praise is pouring in.
Firefighters work to contain the Humboldt fire which started Wednesday, had grown to 19,000 acres and threatened more than 5,000 structures. (AP Photo/Jason Halley – Chico Enterprise-Record)
Another interesting facet about the blog is that it not written by a Globe photographer or photo editor, but by one of their website developers. Andy Baio posted a great interview with the blog’s creator and author, Alan Taylor, where he discusses his inspiration, methodology, and what it’s like being a web developer working in a journalist’s world. When asked why more newspaper sites haven’t done this before, he replied:
“Even some of my favorite photo sites are often limited to ‘Photo of the Day’ or ‘24 Hours in Pictures’ features. That’s interesting, and you can find some mind-blowing images there, but I always felt like it lacked context, depth, story.”
Brandon Smith carries his two cats, Fry and Bender, to dry land from their flooded and evacuated home on June 12, 2008 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Photo by David Greedy/Getty Images)
As we move to an age where motion graphics and video regularly enhance our traditional news presentation, it’s interesting to take a step back and consider the power still photography has to tell a story. And working online without the space constraint of print, news organizations have an opportunity to bring more depth and context to readers, through excellent photojournalism.
Never a dull moment here at the Times… Today, we witnessed Alain Robert climb the New York Times Building on 8th Avenue facing 41st street. I took this with my iPhone on the 21st floor:
He scaled up the ceramic rods that are affixed to the outside of the building, attracting hundreds of onlookers inside the building, as well as down the street.
City Room has more about Alain and this stunt, including the news that he was arrested by NYPD after reaching the roof – 52 floors up from the street.
Continue reading ‘Alain Robert, climbing the New York Times Building’
Cupcakes! – Photo by Villafranca.
This week, the nytimes.com Design group says farewell to two really talented colleagues – Sean Villafranca and Louise Ma. Sean is leaving to become Design Director at time.com, and Louise is going to freelance, full-time.
I’m still new around these parts, but Sean and Louise made me feel at home. We’re going to miss you guys! (But, we are hiring…)
Volvo, somewhere in Williamsburg between Berry and Wythe.
Lisa and I spent a good chunk of the weekend furniture shopping, and spring cleaning. On Saturday, we ventured deep into Connecticut to go to an estate sale, in pursuit of what turned out to be an American-made Danish “style” dining set, which was just too big and ugly to buy. From there, we drove over to Beacon, NY, which has a couple of nice stores with mid-century furniture, (Anna found some amazing stuff there). We had some coffee (photo below the fold), but left empty-handed.
Sabres trade Brian Campbell to Sharks for right wing Steve Bernier
“Don’t boo me when I come back,” the defenseman said this afternoon shortly after being traded to the San Jose Sharks.
It’s tough being a small-market sports fan, especially when the sport in question is hockey. For all the talk of parity in the NHL, it’s clear that there are two classes of teams – those willing to spend money to acquire and retain top talent, and the Buffalo Sabres.
The Sabres suffered losing their two top centermen to free agency last off-season, after posting the best record in the NHL and their second Eastern Conference Championship loss in a row. One can argue about front office mistakes in not signing Briere and Drury, but in the end, it was their turn to cash in on a big contract, and Buffalo was unwilling or could not afford to pay. (Let us not forget also that the Sabres were up against the salary cap all of last season.)
And now we have a home-grown NHL superstar in Brian Campbell – two-time All Star, spin-o-rama skater, and open-ice hitter of R.J. Umberger – now due his big pay day at the end of this season, as he becomes eligible for free agency. What are the Sabres to do?
Well, the only move is to trade him. The Sabres could not risk losing him for nothing, and Campbell and his agent seemed luke warm about signing something before the trade deadline. I certainly can’t blame either party.
But, I can feel sad. Being a fan of a small-market team is tough, and I’d be lying if I weren’t a little jealous that the Rangers or Ducks can just go buy whomever they want every year. In Buffalo, we have to make our own stars.
After the jump, some highlights from Soupy’s career in Buffalo, including some of his hilariously horrible local television commercials.
Tonight there was a Lunar Eclipse, the last one ’til 2010. Check out shadowandsubstance.com for more information, or see if others have better photos on Flickr.
Taken on 4th Place in Carroll Gardens, with my trusty (and shaky) SD750.
