Grand Central Station

I am going to sneak a non-vacation picture post in here.....


This weekend I had the opportunity to take a class at the International Center of Photography, here in NYC. It's a photography museum and school here in NYC that has been a great help to me figuring out how to use my camera. The class was all about getting the right exposure "in the moment". Which is quite difficult when you are shooting in manual mode. In my point-and-shoot, on automatic, my camera guessed at what the right settings would be - and was right....sometimes. But it's nice to be able to set the 4 components of exposure by yourself. It allows for much better photographs in the end. 


What are the 4 components of exposure? Well, I am glad that you asked! They are:
1. ISO (Sensitivity of the Sensor)
2. Aperture (how bright the light is striking the sensor)
3. Shutter Speed (how long the light strikes the sensor)
4. Depth of Field (the result of aperture, distance from your focal point, lens focal length and sensor size)


Yep - takes lots of practice. 


The teacher we had was a professional photographer named Lester Lefkowitz. Amazing photographer and great teacher. He managed to get permission for our class to photograph inside Grand Central Station. Which, by itself is not prohibited - but it is with Tripods! We got tripod passes! Very cool. So I got to try out my tripod in Grand Central Station. Grand Central Station is very majestic, and very old (by U.S. standards!) It's a favorite tourist destination. Believe it or not, at one point they were going to tear it down. Thankfully, they decided to restore it instead. Here are the results of my morning of photographing:




Early Morning

Chandelier and Skylight

Ghosts in the Passage Way (not really ghosts, just used a shutter opening of 4 seconds. Because I could.

More Ghosts

Carvings on the ceiling

The ceiling is painted this amazing turquoise blue and has constellations painted on it, in gold. Its very striking

Then I wandered down to the lower concourse, and found this grill that was carved out of marble

There is also a famous restaurant called the Oyster Bar on the concourse. I won't go near the stuff - but its easy to find the restaurant, if that's your thing....

I found this bank of phones. I have not seen such shiny clean public phones in NYC for ages. No one was using them, they practically begged me to take their picture....

I said good-bye to the lonely phones...and went back out to the main hall

It was getting busy - so I tried some more long shutter-speed shots. Why not?

The last thing I photographed before we headed back to class was some carved marble I found in the Vanderbilt Hall. The light was very cooperative.

So that was my field trip to Grand Central. Thank You for humoring me. I am processing the next batch of pictures from our trip. 
The Tomb of the Christian is up next....

xoxo
Umm Nidal