very simple

I’m taking a short, three week street photography class just for kicks, and also because it’s a good way to force myself out of the house during this dark, depressing, apocalyptic January.

So of course, the first class was during a bit of a snowstorm, which drove us into the nearest subway station for shelter.

Side view of one of the many mysterious locked call boxes on the platform for fire department and police use. Put in place before anyone could do something like make a cellphone call from several stories below ground (a feat that can be accomplished in every station in NYC as of…nine days ago).

Over the holidays, I found a new hole-in-the-wall coffee spot in my neighborhood. It has only five seats, because it’s so small. But they make really good coffee. It’s also quite photogenic, which is obviously just as important.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice!

But after that, you still need to find this door.

According to Manhattan Block-by-Block by John Tauranac (a great map and guide for anyone living or visiting NYC), while all blocks are of “roughly” equal size, the distance between sixth and seventh avenues is by far the longest distance between avenues. Anyone who has worked in a particular section of midtown west on the 50s has always known about the “secret” passageway through a series of buildings halfway between the two, because it was just too much of a pain in the *** to go all the way to the corner if you had to go from, say, midblock on 53rd to midblock on 56th. So the thoroughfare, cutting through public and semi public spaces including a pedestrian passageway behind the Hilton, City Center, the Parker Meridian hotel (among others), led to a constant stream of people playing frogger with midtown traffic.

A few years ago, the city decided enough was enough. No, they didn’t try to force people to cross at the corners – that would have been asking too much. They turned the entire “secret passageway” into an official street.

By the police, no less. These guys were doing some very mild crowd control, but mostly just letting tourists pet their horses, on the plaza near the Rockefeller center tree. But one of them clearly noticed me trying to take a picture. Oops!

rockefeller center.

As noted before, I didn’t walk up fifth avenue as much this holiday season for…reasons. I did try to brave it once or twice to grab shots of the tree, but didn’t get any post-worthy ones due to the size of the crowds and the traffic that kept getting in the way in unfortunate ways. But I did grab this nice angle of rockefeller center one evening despite the jostling.

Our friends who hosted thanksgiving dinner have a great collection of art and other collected objects. These were a few of my oddball favorites (of a particular theme)

More from thanksgiving in the berkshires. our road, featuring some very old houses.

Just playing around with taking closeups of stuff on the table at Thanksgiving dinner.

From Thanksgiving weekend in the berkshires (yes, I’ve made it to late November in my photo backlog!). My parents have a thing for birdhouses and you’ll find them scattered all over the property.