Football in the snow, #4
Image by Ed Yourdon
In case you're wondering: yes, these guys really were playing football out here in the middle of deep snow, on the Great Lawn, with flurries of cold snow coming down all around them.
Note: this photo was published in an undated (Jan 3, 2011) Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10024." And it was published in a Jul 31, 2011 Football Hobbygator blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page.
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This is an artificially created single-image HDR photo, created simply by invoking the PhotoMatix program on the original RAW image. The results are a little less impressive than if I had gone through the more tedious process of creating three separate RAW copies of the original image, and bumping the exposure of one of the copies up by one f-stop, and one of the other copies down by one f-stop. But it's close enough, and I was feeling lazy...
Note: I chose this one as my "photo of the day" for Jan 2, 2011 because I liked the surrealistic "ghosty" effect created by the thick snow, with the crowd of guys in the background. Actually, it wasn't snowing at all in the literal sense of the word: it was a bright, sunny day and the snowfall had stopped several hours earlier. But there was a strong, gusty wind in Central Park's Great Lawn, and it was blowing the fine, freshly-fallen snow into big swirls in the air -- and that's what I captured here.
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A year from now, nobody will remember (or care about) the details -- but if you happened to live anywhere on the East Coast of the U.S. when these pictures were taken, then you surely know that we've just been hit by the first major snowstorm of the 2010-2011 winter season. Of course, upstate New York and the Midwest have already been hit by multiple storms, and they've gotten far larger accumulations of snow than we'll probably end up with ... but since a few of the nation's major TV headquarters and newspapers are based in New York, we tend to get a disproportionate amount of attention when we're hit with a major storm.
When I took the first few pictures in this set, it was too early to tell whether it really would be a major storm. But it snowed all night, and throughout the evening, we heard that some 1,400 flights in and out of New York's three airports had been canceled, and that the Amtrak/Acela train service from New York to Boston had been suspended. And when we got up the next morning and found that the airports were still closed, and that 13 inches of white stuff had fallen in Central Park, we decided that it really was a significant storm.
At lunch-time on the day after the storm, I ventured out towards Central Park, with my Olympus E-P2 "micro four-thirds" camera and my Canon G-12 compact digital camera; with the blustery wind blowing snow flurries in all directions, I wasn't willing to risk getting my Nikon D700 wet. I used a combination of slow-running subways and buses to get to the 86th Street entrance to Central Park, and then walked over to the Great Lawn, where I was fairly confident I would see people doing all kinds of interesting things -- including a very energetic game of football! -- on the large, snow-filled lawn.
And indeed, I saw not only the football players, but also people with skis and snow-shoes and sleds, as well as people jogging(!), walking their dogs, building snowmen, and just enjoying themselves as they walked through the winter wonderland.
The most amazing part of the day was the sight of quasi-snow-flurries kicked up by the gusting wind. If I didn't know any better, I might well have thought I was at the North Pole; but the skyline view of skyscrapers and apartment towers all around was a constant reminder that I was still in New York.
Other parts of Central Park were probably equally photogenic, and equally filled with people taking advantage of the fresh snow ... but after a couple of hours of wandering around and taking a few hundred photos, my feet were too numb to continue. If I have enough energy, maybe I'll venture back out to the park during the next couple days; if not, you'll just have to make do with these photos that I've uploaded.
Football in the snow, #5
Image by Ed Yourdon
In case you're wondering: yes, these guys really were playing football out here in the middle of deep snow, on the Great Lawn, with flurries of cold snow coming down all around them.
Note: this photo was published in an undated (Jan 3, 2011) Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10024." It was also published in a Jun 9, 2011 Manhattan Tumblr blog, titled "I left my heart in Manhattan."
***********************
This is an artificially created single-image HDR photo, created simply by invoking the PhotoMatix program on the original RAW image. The results are a little less impressive than if I had gone through the more tedious process of creating three separate RAW copies of the original image, and bumping the exposure of one of the copies up by one f-stop, and one of the other copies down by one f-stop. But it's close enough, and I was feeling lazy...
***************************************
A year from now, nobody will remember (or care about) the details -- but if you happened to live anywhere on the East Coast of the U.S. when these pictures were taken, then you surely know that we've just been hit by the first major snowstorm of the 2010-2011 winter season. Of course, upstate New York and the Midwest have already been hit by multiple storms, and they've gotten far larger accumulations of snow than we'll probably end up with ... but since a few of the nation's major TV headquarters and newspapers are based in New York, we tend to get a disproportionate amount of attention when we're hit with a major storm.
When I took the first few pictures in this set, it was too early to tell whether it really would be a major storm. But it snowed all night, and throughout the evening, we heard that some 1,400 flights in and out of New York's three airports had been canceled, and that the Amtrak/Acela train service from New York to Boston had been suspended. And when we got up the next morning and found that the airports were still closed, and that 13 inches of white stuff had fallen in Central Park, we decided that it really was a significant storm.
At lunch-time on the day after the storm, I ventured out towards Central Park, with my Olympus E-P2 "micro four-thirds" camera and my Canon G-12 compact digital camera; with the blustery wind blowing snow flurries in all directions, I wasn't willing to risk getting my Nikon D700 wet. I used a combination of slow-running subways and buses to get to the 86th Street entrance to Central Park, and then walked over to the Great Lawn, where I was fairly confident I would see people doing all kinds of interesting things -- including a very energetic game of football! -- on the large, snow-filled lawn.
And indeed, I saw not only the football players, but also people with skis and snow-shoes and sleds, as well as people jogging(!), walking their dogs, building snowmen, and just enjoying themselves as they walked through the winter wonderland.
The most amazing part of the day was the sight of quasi-snow-flurries kicked up by the gusting wind. If I didn't know any better, I might well have thought I was at the North Pole; but the skyline view of skyscrapers and apartment towers all around was a constant reminder that I was still in New York.
Other parts of Central Park were probably equally photogenic, and equally filled with people taking advantage of the fresh snow ... but after a couple of hours of wandering around and taking a few hundred photos, my feet were too numb to continue. If I have enough energy, maybe I'll venture back out to the park during the next couple days; if not, you'll just have to make do with these photos that I've uploaded.
Kennard Banks plays good defense but he comes up just short of the ball on this Army TD pass
Image by GoIowaState
Patrick Neal played well in place of the injured Rashawn Parker
Image by GoIowaState
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