ABC Wednesday: I is for the Interior of Metropolitan Museum of Art

I have seen photograph of Great Hall of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and would like to photograph it myself.  But when I arrived at the museum with my sister during our second day of photo safari at New York City, I was so preoccupied of rushing to  get the tickets and went in to see different exhibitions and I did not raise my eye to see how impressive the Great Hall is.

It was only at end of our tour when we were ready to leave, I raised my head and saw the magnificent roof of the Great Hall.

This is the Grand Staircase of the Great Hall leading to the 19th century art gallery.

One of the main photographic objective for the tour of Met is to photograph the glass enclosed court yard.  Here is the American Wing.

Here is the Greek and Roman Art Gallery.

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ABC Wednesday: H is for City Hall Park

When my sister and I took the express underground from the World Trade Center to Grand Central Station, there is only one stop in between, which is City Hall Park and Brooklyn Bridge.  That peaked my interest.  After we took a break at Grand Central Station and took some pictures, we headed back to the City Hall Park.  Coming out from the underground, the view is typical New York, tall impressive buildings lining two sides of the street.  There is no where to look but up.  Here is a view on Chambers Street towards the Manhattan Municipal Building.  The Tweed Court House is on the right and City Hall Library is on the left.

A closer look of the Manhattan Municipal Building.

A very impressive Tweed Court House.

 Every where we looked we could see these highly ornate structures on top of the buildings.

Here is a detail view outside of City Hall Library.

What is this building?  100 Centre Street, the infamous New York Criminal Courts Building.

The weather was so nice that day.  There were hundreds of people, locals and tourists alike, walking on the Bridge.

I have seen the photographs of this bridge many times and was glade to be able to photograph it myself.

Well everything about the Brooklyn bridge, at least for photographer, are the lines!

We had a marvelous day of photo safari of New York City.  We would visit Metropolitan Museum of Art and Central Park the next day.

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ABC Wednesday: G is for Grand Central Station

Following our trip to the World Financial Center and World Trade Center, My sister and I took the subway to visit the Grand Central Station.

I have often heard of this New York landmark but have never visited.  For this trip to New York, I was determined to make a visit to the site and be a real tourist.

After taking my first photographe of the Main Concourse and got my postcard perfect picture, I was wondering what else I could photograph.  Well, there are many many interesting opportunities.

 We stayed all of our time in the main concourse, not knowing that there are two levels underneath us, all underground.  the Upper level has 41 tracks and the lower level has 26.  It is the world largest train station in terms of the number of platforms.   It covers an area of 48 acres.

The Grand Central Station were to be demolished in 1968 if not for the opposition from general public and celebrities such as Jacqueline Kennedy.  The case went all the way to the supreme court.  We are lucky that the Grand Central Station has been preserved and now completely restored.

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ABC Wednesday: F is for World Financial Center and World Trade Center

This is the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center of New York.  My sister and I took a ferry from the Exchange Place at Jersey City, New Jersey across the Hudson River and arrived at the World Financial Center.  It has office buildings, food court and shopping center.

This is a full view of the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center.  When we turned around at this spot, we then facing the observation deck of the World Trade Center Site.

This is the 1 World Trade Center now under construction.  The 911 memorial will be finished this year and will open to the public on September 11 this year.

Coming out from the World Financial Center, looking up, we can see the 1 World Trade Center at the left and the 7 World Trade Center at the right.  7 World Trade Center also collapsed following the collapsing of the twin tower in 911.  The reconstruction was finished in 2008.

Here is the 1 WTC and 7 WTC as seen at night.

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ABC Wednesday: E is for Exchange Place

Exchange Place is a district of Downtown Jersey City, New Jersey.  It is directly across the Hudson River from Downtown Manhattan.  When I stayed with my sister at New Jersey last week, we went to visit a young friend at Exchange Place.  Here is the Goldmen Sachs Tower.

A detail view of the Goldmen Sachs Tower.

Here is a panoramic view of the Exchange Place.  Our young friend worked in one of the three smaller buildings in the waterfront.

From the Exchange Place, we can have a fantastic view of the lower Manhattan.  The building in the center which is under construction (with two cranes at the top of the building) is the new 1 World Trade Center.

We took a ferry across the Hudson River from the Exchange Place to New York City.  Here is a view from the ferry port to the midtown with the Empire State Building in the center.

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ABC Wednesday: D is for Dragonfly from My Sister's Garden

As I was on my way from Taiwan to Cape Cod.  I stopped by my sister's home in New Jersey for a few days.  The weather was very nice.  I photographed this dragonfly in her garden.  I have not be able to find the scientific name of it yet.

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ABC Wednesday: C is for Cape Cod

 I have not been back to Cape Cod for a while.  I usually will make a trip to our home on the island in Spring or early Summer.  But this year, we could only manage to go back in August.  I came out from Taipei on Monday at 6:35 PM and arrive at Newark airport at 9:25 PM the same day, a not too bad 15 hours flight.  Since I am still hang out with my sister at New Jersey.  I have not yet gotten my pictures of Cape Cod for this year.  Here are the photos from June last year.

What we think of Cape Cod, naturally our mind drifts to the leisure Summer afternoon close by the water, fresh ponds, salt water marsh land and ocean.  Here is an old boat house at the center of the century-old town of Sandwich, Cape Cod.

A beach of a saltwater marsh land, which is only accessible by canoe.

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Skywatch Friday: Southern View from Danshui

ABC Wednesday: A is for Amsterdam

 Grace was at Amsterdam for an international conference in early July.  We transited through the city several times before and I have made an extensive visit about 20 years ago.  This was the first time Grace really visited and stayed in Amsterdam.  This is the famous Dam Square.

 The devil was not asking for Grace's soul, he was asking for money, since Grace took a picture of him.

 I am glad that Grace did not go into the building!!  She only took a picture of it.

 A very interesting wall decoration!

 What a contrast between old and new wall decoration!  Can you see the Picasso's influence in these paintings.  Of course, Amsterdam has a world famous Picasso museum.

Beautiful houses, I think these have neck- or bell- gables.   In the old days, the merchants used the lifts on top of the gables to haul merchandise to the storage at the loft.

What a beautiful ornate archway!

 How can a trip to Amsterdam without a boat tour of the city's famous canal.  How I would also like to have a house boat and cruise on the water with a little boat like this.

 Looking at the beautiful houses along the canal, one cannot not admire the once domination of world ocean by the Dutch merchants.

The sun was down and it was time for Grace to go back to the hotel and pack up for home.

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ABC Wednesday & Camera Critters #171: Z is for Zoo

I cannot imagine that my English vocabulary is soo poor.  All I can think of for "Z" is zoo or zebra!

 I went to Taipei zoo in mid-March, a perfect Spring day to test my ability of using my 80-400 mm lens on the D300.  Its lower ISO performance and the 1.5x factor made the combination much more difficult to use than with D700.  I have to use a very solid tripod and pull out all my skill and trick to get a very sharp image.

A hood crane (Grus monacha), the avery has been closed for renovation.  I could only walk around for the caged birds.


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ABC Wednesday: Y is for Yellow

 We have been absent from the blogosphere for several weeks.  Grace has an intensive traveling schedule that took her away from Taiwan for almost a month.  I was in the meantime moving our house.  Now things are bit settled finally.  Last May, I went to a close-by beach intended to photograph a famous scenery of sea weeds on the beach rock.  The weather was not collaborating.  It was cold and windy with big surfs.  I turned my attention to some local colors.  This is a graffiti of tiles on the sea wall.  The Chinese characters on the wall is the name of the village and the literal translation means "Old Plum".  I think you can see some yellow color on the wall.

Near by there is this very colorful pub.  The owner seems very artistic or he knows that many photographers come to this location to photograph the sea weeds on the rock, thus he makes his restaurant as photogenic as possible.

It is really very interesting structure.  Although it was a very overcast day, I had my tripod with me and be able to get some very clear images.

After turning away from the colorful pub, I saw this house by the beach almost completely put together by the clapboards.

I do not think there is a very romantic story behind this buildings as the colorful pub.  I think the house is at the fringe of the village bordering the beach.  The land owner is prohibited from building a permanent structure.  Thus he put up this temporarily looking house using different clapboards.

Do not ask me what is the round things, I have no idea.

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ABC Wednesday: U is for a Usual Trip to Paris

Several weeks ago, Grace made another of her Usual trip to Paris.  She did her Usual things of seeing her scientific and business advisors.  She went to her Usual restaurants and clothing stores.  One thing a bit Unusual was she took a lot of bracketed shots, which means the same images photographed at different exposures.  I was then given the task of doing the HDR images for these bracketed shots.

She took quite a few pictures from this window.  I tried all kinds of combination using my limited HDR skill.  None of them came out good till I had this one into black and white.  It is so Unusually good, so Parisian.

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