Papal Visit – Part 1

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This is the first of two posts on the Pope Francis’s visit to New York City in September, 2015. Part 2 can be found here.

As soon as my wife heard that NY City was offering tickets by lottery to see Pope Francis in Central Park she put her name in. She wasn’t expecting much so it was a pleasant surprise for her when she received a email informing her that she was to receive two tickets. Not being all that religious at first I wasn’t going to go, but then I eventually decided that I couldn’t let her go alone – and I thought “who knows? It might be interesting”. So we took the train down to Grand Central, the Shuttle across to Times Square and the Broadway Local to Columbus Circle. All told this part of the journey took us about two hours.

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When we came out of the subway at Columbus Circle we we directed North to 62nd street and then east. Things started to slow down as we reached Central Park West. The line went down to 60th, then turned up to 66th and then turned back down to 60th where we reached security. A solid mass of people spanning about fourteen blocks. This part of the journey took about four hours.

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Our tickets said that if we weren’t at security by 3:30pm we weren’t going to get in. We reached that point about two and a quarter hours into our four hour wait. At that point I was wondering if this was the only Pope we were going to see. Thankfully the 3:30pm deadline seems to have been meaningless because we didn’t actually get there until around 5:00pm and there were still lots of people behind us.

NY Air Show – US Military Academy, West Point Black Knights

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The US Military Academy, West Point Black Knights opened the show with a display of parachute jumping. The Air Show Website describes them as follows:

The West Point Parachute Team, The Black Knights, is the United States Military Academy’s Freefall demonstration and competition team. The Black Knights showcase the unique skills and opportunities available to the cadets by providing precision freefall demonstrations in support of Army Athletics, Cadet Reviews, and much more.

The all-cadet team also provides the chance for cadets to train their more junior Teammates as they progress from students to fully-licensed jumpers while operating in an in extremis context – the closest cadets will come to simulating the stress of combat at West Point. The Black Knights also compete in annual National Collegiate Parachuting Championships, representing West Point as they take on teams from the United States Air Force Academy, the United States Naval Academy, and many others.

The mission of the West Point Parachute Team is to educate, train, and inspire cadets to develop leadership skills and build self-confidence in an in extremis context. We will accomplish this by providing cadets the opportunity to work towards three specific and challenging goals: train freefall students, conduct precision freefall demonstrations, and compete and win at the national level.

The West Point Parachute Team will kick off the New York Air Show each day jumping in the American Flag for the National Anthem. For more the latest updates on the team’s participation in the New York Air Show follow our Facebook page.

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North Beach

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North beach is one of the five beaches around our lake. I was out walking the dog early tonight and took these pictures around 6:15pm just as the sun was going down. By the time we’d walked back to the house it was practically dark.

I don’t usually go for High Dynamic Range (HDR) too much. It’s too easily overdone. In this case though I didn’t really have much choice. The foreground was in fairly deep shade and even though the sun was going down the background was comparatively bright. I wasn’t going to be able to get them both exposed properly. So I thought I’d try out the RX100’s HDR capabilities. I don’t usually shoot .jpg either, preferring RAW but in this case again I had no alternative as the RX100’s HDR mode does not support RAW.

For those unfamiliar with HDR Imaging Resource describes it as follow in it’s review of the RX100:

The Sony RX100 HDR mode takes three images in rapid succession, one nominally exposed , one underexposed, and one overexposed, then combines them into one high dynamic range JPEG automatically. Lighter areas from the underexposed image are combined in-camera with darker areas from the overexposed image to produce an image with increased dynamic range. The overlaid images are micro-aligned by the camera, but it can only correct for so much movement. If it can’t micro-align successfully, an icon indicating HDR capture failed will appear. For best results, the subject should be static or there could be “ghost” images, though the RX100 seems to do a good job at avoiding them. There is also a manual mode where you can select 1 EV (“weak”) to 6 EV (“strong”) difference in exposures…the effect can be quite subtle with no difference between some of the settings, however the Auto setting did a pretty good job at boosting shadows, reducing highlights, while still retaining enough contrast.

I used the manual mode and tried a variety of settings. On reviewing the pictures I preferred this one (unfortunately I don’t recall which manual setting this was – other than that it was one of the lower ones).

All things considered I’m pleased with the result. It doesn’t look too over-processed – I hope.

Drooping Roses

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I usually take pictures of flowers because a) they’re convenient – we have lots of them in the garden thanks to my wife’s never ending ministrations; b) my wife likes me taking pictures of her flowers; c) I like the bright colors – they cheer me up. However, because of the above I’ve been taking a lot of flower pictures of late and I’m getting a bit bored with taking flower pictures. So I thought I’d see what a black and white conversion would do to one of them. I was interested in seeing what/if the picture would lose something if the colors were taken away. I quite like the result.

Taken with a Sony NEX 5n and Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f2 Biotar (Exakta mount) in our garden at the Lake House.