A Glimpse of Autumn

First Post from our Autumn Cruise

We’ve recently returned from a holiday, primarily a cruise along the Atlantic Seaboard, departing from New York City and terminating in Montréal. Along the way we made nine stops, three in New England, four in Atlantic Canada and two in Quebec.

Our ship, the Seven Seas Mariner conveyed us and the crew entertained us for the eleven days of our journey. This picture was taken while berthed in Boston, our second stop after leaving New York.

I’ve also included a photograph from the interior of the ship, the circular staircase descending from the eleventh deck to the fifth. This image includes the section of the stairway from the 5th to the 7th deck levels, “Stairway to Seven”.

The remainder of today’s photographs were taken during our brief stay in the “Big Apple” before the cruise. They are not intended to document our visit. Rather they are a small selection of some of my favourites, chosen from the many pictures I took in New York. Big city photography is a challenge, one that I found both frustrating and satisfying at the same time. The height of the skyscrapers and their proximity to one another makes capturing them in a single photograph difficult. At ground level, the congestion of people and vehicles makes it difficult to avoid including them.

This picture captures a small portion of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I focused my attention on the ornate detail of the church’s exterior and framed the building to show its metropolitan surroundings. This is an example of the limits of my camera’s ability to capture anything more.

The next two photographs were taken in the always busy Times Square, a prominent area of midtown New York.

This scene, also in Times Square was photographed from the upper level of a sightseeing bus, making it much easier to capture the street level, without people and vehicles passing through the shot unexpectedly.

This picture was taken from the same “Big Bus” sightseeing bus as we traveled along 5th Avenue toward Lower Manhattan. I’m not interested in what’s on the ground along the way, as I attempt to take in the forest of skyscrapers, around and above me. I’m quite happy with the shot, despite the wide angle distortion bending the outer buildings inward.

This church , located close to our hotel was much easier to photograph. From the opposite corner of the broad Park Avenue, I was sufficiently distant to get it all in. Normally, I would hope to do this picture without all the vehicles. In this circumstance their presence lends authenticity to the scene.

That’s all for New York. As you can imagine, the number of photographs I have for his city far outnumbers the blog time and space I have available.

I hope to post 2-3 more blogs, sharing pictures from the remainder of our trip.