More aerials of Central Park in the fall

A couple weeks ago, I did a post called [My Office View!]. It proved to be quite popular. Since I only had a few moments up on that rooftop that day, I didn't take much advantage of the awesome views. I only snapped the one quick photo for myself. Recently I returned to the same roof, which is 62 stories high. This time I wasn't in such a rush and took a few extra photos for myself. Here are a few of them.


This second photo is a close up of the skating rink located in the lower right corner of the photo above.


And in this third photo, I'm zoomed in on the big green area near the upper left corner of the first photo.

Finally, I zoomed in on the sign over the Essex House and the colorful park below it. I'm not sure why that area is so colorful, it's probably painted concrete or rubber. I might have to go investigate!


I love the colors on the leaves. It makes the park a bit more interesting than just seeing a whole lot of green. Soon though, that will all be white with snow. Can't wait.

Time Lapse Photography

This weekend was a very busy one for me. I was running all over Manhattan and Long Island with my girlfriend. We ended up buying a lot of things for our apartment. We got a new couch, which unfortunately won't be arriving for a while. Then we bought some much needed curtains for our windows so we can have some privacy. After that was Dave and Busters (you gotta have a little fun!), followed by a really nice dinner.

Then Sunday (today) was spent running around the city trying to get the curtains cut to size. So you may be wondering how this all applies to photography. Well, I love to try and also learn new things. So I decided a "home improvement" project would make a good subject for learning a little about time lapse. I've never really used this function before, so I just wanted to try it out. I know there's a thousand useful applications for it, so I just wanted to be prepared for when the time comes.

Below are the results followed by the things I learned (Warning: this is slightly boring, haha. It was more of a learning experience for myself. To make it less boring, use the navigation arrows at the bottom of the slideshow to zip through it!).


Time Lapse (trial) - Images by Shawn Lynch

So from tonight's activities, I learned that selecting the proper interval is key. I used an interval of 2 minutes. For this project, I think that was a little slow. I kept on thinking, "Alright, when is the next photo?" It worked well enough, but I probably should have used something like a minute or a minute and a half. I chose 2 minutes though so as not to annoy the heck out of the girlfriend with the constant flash. The other thing I learned, is they are not that difficult to do. Focus is critical as your subject (in this case - me) most likely will be moving around a lot. You don't want the subject falling into and out of focus. Also, you need to make sure that at the end you'll have enough photos to make a meaningful slideshow. I ended up with 89. If you were to view them at one per second, that would end up at just under 1.5 minutes which would be perfect. You don't want to many photos or not enough. Hopefully I'll get to use this technique in a real world, practical application soon!

Camera info:
Nikon D300
Lens: 12-24 mm f/4.0
Focal length: 12 mm
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter speed: varying between 1/80 and 1/30 (I adjusted as the light outside started to fade)
White balance: cloudy
Flash: SB 800 set to 1/2 power and set on camera but bounced off a wall pointing to the right

By the way, if you're wondering about the mannequin dressed in pink, her name is Jessica. She is our newest roommate. Unfortunately she doesn't pay rent, and all she does is take up space! But really, it's something my girlfriend came home from work with one night...that's about all I have to say about her. I she moves out soon!

My office view!

I don't really have an office view, but if I did, this wouldn't be a bad one to have. I work on the road all day every day. Heck even that statement is a little misleading. A lot of the times I work way up on top of buildings like in this photo taken from the rooftop of 152 W 57th St. It was either 60 or 62 stories high (there were two rooftops I was on recently, one was 60 the other 62 and I forget which was which) and had a great view of Central Park. Other time I've been sent to photograph underground in the subway tunnels and other locations strange locations, including once inside the form of a bridge. It's always exciting at my job. It's moments like this that make me love what I do. Enjoy!

Halloween at Dylan Murphy's

Last night I hauled my camera gear and two lights into a bar around the corner from my apartment. I set it up to take pictures of the customers dressed up for Halloween. There were some pretty good costumes and the bar handed out prizes for best and second best costume. It was a fun night. Here is a slideshow of some of the better photos from the evening.


Halloween at Dylan Murphy's - Images by Shawn Lynch

Some of the costumes included: John and Kate, Alvin and the chipmunks, Pebbles from the Flintstones, Wolverine and Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent.

Now on the technical side, one of my lights was off to the side with a grid and a green gel on it. I wanted to add a little mood and color to the lighting. Originally I was going to do one light with a yellow gel, one light with a green gel, and the main light with no gel. I was thinking the green/yellow combo would be good colors for halloween. Orange would have actually been better than yellow, but B&H photo was closed, and I didn't have any orange. I ended up only using two lights though because I think one of the owners of the bar was getting a little worried by the amount of gear I was bringing into his place. The main light was coming from just slightly behind camera left with a small umbrella on it.

I only had a little space to work with, but I think I really worked it. I didn't set up a back drop either and I knew the chords from the lights would be in the background. This was solely meant for fun and I decided to deliberately let those things slide.

Last but not least, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who stepped in front of my lens and to Jack and Blake, the owners of the bar.

Happy Halloween

It's holiday time, so it's a perfect time for a new post. Halloween has so much visual opportunity for photographs and there are plenty to come. Later tonight I'm setting up a photo booth at my local bar to get pictures of people in costume. It's going to be a blast! As for now, I'll leave you with a couple pictures from the other night when I set up two lights and photographed the process of cleaning out and then carving our pumpkin.

I didn't do anything too elaborate. I didn't even use my photo stands. I just placed two lights in places that were secure and they would not fall. I taped one of the chords to the floor for safety reasons (tripping hazard and protection for the light). One of the lights sat up on top of our refrigerator and the other sat on the back of our couch. Both of them were bare bulb, meaning there were no modifiers on the lights to control their direction. I planned on this because we have white walls and the light could bounce all around and provide nice, even fill. This is what that set up looked like. You'll notice I did my best to circle them with red in photoshop. Not easy with the track pad on my lap top.

The first thing I did was cut a hole in the top and Honor scooped out the insides. We saved the seeds to bake them afterward. I meant to photograph that as well, but I forgot. But that's ok because I think we ended up over cooking them just a little bit. Haha! Are they supposed to taste that dry? You'll notice most of these photos are close ups. The girlfriend can be a bit camera shy at times!




This third picture is the sketch I did for our pumpkin. Honor wanted the nose to look like a heart, but you can't have a happy looking pumpkin! So I did my best to make it look heart-shaped but still kind of scary and mean.

After Honor had cleaned out the pumpkin, I gave her a crash course in how to use my camera so she could get some images of me carving it. I drew the face on the pumpkin, and started carving. I drew it a little too small, so I mostly just freehanded the carving. We weren't using the proper knife for this, but it worked. It was just hard to make turns and do detailed work. Good thing I didn't design anything to intricate and complicated. Below is a set up photo of how the first photo at the top of the pumpkin was made.


We did one final fun photo after all was said and done.