Shots from the Blackout

FM2 w/ 28mm 2.8 AIS<div></div>

Nikon FM2 w/ 180mm 2.8 AIS ED<div></div>

A friend in N.Y.C. works near the WTC site and lives in Midtown. He and a coworker started walking home (3.5 miles?) some time after 4 p.m. the day of the blackout and he arrived home at midnight. The fact that he and his walking buddy stopped repeatedly to buy and drink beers on the street didn't hasten their progress uptown.

 

He isn't a native New Yorker and, having been blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11, was pleasently surprised at how laid back most people were regarding this non-lethal fiasco. He described the mood as mostly festive.

 

If living through these events wasn't enough, my poor friend is in Chicago this week and was at a Cubs game Saturday to hear Ozzie and Sharon Ozbourn sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. If you haven't seen the video of this blow to our national pasttime, let me just say that no one who was in Mannhattan on 9/11 should have to live through Ozzie's singing in person.

Blackouts, terrorists, subway strikes, garbage strikes -- I think I feel more comfortable with hurricanes and alligators.

 

All and all, your photo seems to show a good way to wait through a blackout, though.

During the blackout I was hit with the pleasant realization, "Hey all of my SLRs still

work". Oddly enough this made me feel better.

 

I think I'll be involved with film (silver

halide and E-6) at least for the next 25 years.

 

Sincerely,

Hi Robert,

 

Interesting, somewhat unusual Byrd photographs than the usual!!!!

Jason,

 

Just after the blackout began, the battery on my watch went down--in sympathy, I suppose. I not only swore to keep using mechanical cameras, but also to get a windup watch!

 

The street above is Second Avenue, in Manhattan. On 9/11, the pedestrian traffic was exactly like this, as Wall Street workers moved uptown to seek transportation. The people that day, if anything, looked calmer than the people on blackout day. Some even looked cheerful. Shock? Glad to have escaped? Who knows? I certainly won't forget all the people walking uptown as this huge column of smoke boiled into the sky just over the horizon. I kept thinking of Sodom and Gomorroh. I took no photographs that day, or afterwards, of anything connected with 9/11. I just couldn't.

I have to bring my blackout rolls in to be developed. I just happened to have my camera on me, but no tripod & 1 spare roll of film. I live in NJ & got home around midnight. I was in no rush though & waited things out in Bryant Park. Had some fresh pizza (that drew a crowd) and relaxed until about 1 hour after they announced buses going to NJ. No fuss, no muss.

 

 

I used to work in the WTC, but I was midtown when 9/11 happened. I have taken some post 9/11 ground zero pics, but it was months after & the pics are rather sterile, much like ground zero is now. The days after, I went downtown a lot looking to help & dropping off socks & stuff at the Salvation Army. I kind of migrated to Union Square daily. At the time, I wanted to be close to everyting as I waited for word about my former work mates, but at the time, taking pictures was a no-go for me personally. I just couldn't do it. Then when things below Canal St started opening back up, I couldn't bring myself to go down there. I waited months before I ventured to the Financial district. I waited until things were kind of dulled down & the rebuilding had started.

Hi all,

Recent Nikon D100 owner. Spent all the money

on digital body so stuck with 28-200 Nikkor

and Tamron 20-40 zooms. Doing it backwards. </p>

Was a Minolta Dimage 7 (5Mpixel 28-200 zoom camera) user.</p>>

 

http://homepage.mac.com/ew928/NYC-Dark/ <br>

Link to second page at top right of page.</p>

 

Really impressed with how clean the D100 performed

when pushed to ASA1600. Dimage 7 would puke confetti

all over the image at ASA400. <br>

Was trying to make it home from NJ to NYcity. <br>

Only had my 28-200 f/3.5-5.6 with me.

It's nice the D100 has such a long lasting battery.

No power to recharge for 1 whole day. </p>

 

Ernest in NY

FM2; 28mm 2.8 AIS<div></div>

As the sun dipped, the pace picked up.<div></div>

Second Avenue at 48 Street<div></div>

Free Air Conditioning<div></div>

Nice shots, Robert. I got mine back and did get some decent shots of Times Sq and some of people partying on Second Ave on the UES. Unfortunately I don't have a tripod but did have the tail of a roll of Astia (err), a roll of Velvia (doh), a roll of Gold 400, Gold 100, and managed to buy another roll of 400 late in the night. I wish I had a scanner to share some shots, but I think my next purchase will be the 18-35 so I can get wide in the city. I agree about shooting the WTC site. I couldn't even visit until long after. Btw, have you shot the towers of light? I know it's been done (I've never cared; I haven't shot it) but I want to shoot this and they'll be lit up on 9/11.

I shot the towers of light when they first were lit, but did my bracketing too weakly in one direction. So I will probably try again this time. The clearest shot at that display is from the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, but from that angle the two lights merge into one.

Robert - I noticed that in a few of your pictures here, the sky is grey. By this I mean that even though it has no detail, it's not fully white, and in fact it is DARKER than other things in the picture. It doesn't look like a graduated ND filter, and I'm curious how (and maybe why) you did this. Thanks.

From outer space, but I don't think they used a Nikon ...<div></div>

Now that is simply freaky.

I love those freaky satellite images, like the overhead views of the Los Alamos wildfire:

 

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=3119

Hmm...looks like the lights were out in virtually all of Canada and Baja California. Howcum nobody made a big fuss over that?

Who knew Canada and Baja (I think the Mexicans own it now) had electricity to begin with?

...or about one-third of the Southwestern U.S. either...

Terran, that is just fast and sloppy PS work. To kill the glare in a white sky, I use the burn-in tool. If there is no residual color in the area, the result is gray.

Is it just me, or are the lights in the central states all laid out in nice neat rows and colums?

"Is it just me, or are the lights in the central states all laid out in nice neat rows and colums?"

 

It isn't just you. "Central states," like Illinois, Kansas, etc. are mostly flat. This allowed land parcels to be mostly laid out out in nice, square or rectangular patterns on a N to S/E to W axis. And the lighting mostly follows these patterns.

 

This is demonstrated by looking at a map of Chicago. While there are diagonal streets, and odd parcels dictated by waterways and railroads, the city is mostly a grid:

 

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?city=Chicago&state=IL

 

This is somewhat different from an Eastern city like Washington, D.C. that was laid out with a number of wheel spokes to provide for the city's defense (placing one canon in the center of the wheel that could control a path down the length of the street). In fact, the District of Columbia is a square turned on end:

 

http://obfi.washingtondc.gov/emergencies/shelters_imap.shtm