Bryant park

Knowing when to walk away

The other day I decided to take advantage of some time I had before my first meeting to head out and shoot some photos. I was in Manhattan before sunrise and wanted to head out to Bryant Park to snap some sunrise photos.

This park is usually beautiful early in the morning but as I was walking I realized that the sky was a boring light blue with zero character. Not a cloud in the sky. Not only that but there were chairs scattered about the lawn and brick walkways and a large piece of construction equipment near the fountain. Everywhere I walked seemed like a boring shot. So I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a few pictures of this Gertrude Stein sculpture.

At first I was a little depressed that I didn't get any great photos but I realize that this was an incredible learning experience. I knew when to walk away. As I walked back I thought I must be maturing in my ability to see what is worthy of photographing if I didn't take any photos. Last year I might've snapped 30 or 40 different photos of random trees and park benches only to be pissed that I wasted space on an SD card.

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Overcast skies afford better photos

The sky looked great today on my way to the train station. Typically I'd be dealing with Summer blue skies which make photos fairly boring, but today the sky looked ominous. I stopped off at Bryant Park and snapped a few photos using just my iPhone 4S.

I shot them using Camera Plus and simply used the clarity filter. Does anyone know of an app that would fix the horizon line? It's especially noticeable in the second photo.

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