Personal Project; Here Is New York

I’ve shamelessly borrowed the title of E.B. White’s classic 1949 essay, and I’ve done it because my first views of Lindsay Silverman’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos of New York made me think of White, wandering the city, constantly re-examining its continuing spectacle in the hope that he could put it on paper.

42nd Street
All Photos © 2010, Lindsay Silverman, All Rights Reserved

Lindsay’s put it in photographs.

He’s walked the city, taking pictures that often play a part in his job—he’s a senior product manager for Nikon—and feed his passion for photography, his love of New York, and his restless curiosity about images that are surely around the next corner. He’s learned what all good photographers learn: a familiar place isn’t familiar at all. There are surprises ahead; there is the continuing spectacle.

In HDR photography Lindsay’s found what might be the perfect way to depict the varying natures of New York. With it he can see into the shadows, accentuate the tones and textures, even out the light, and capture the shifting moods of city life. His evocative images range from the bright dazzle of Times Square to the empty silence of Ellis Island’s Great Hall to the melancholy approach of fall on a downtown street.

In City Hall Park

Avenue Of The Americas

Chinatown

He often previsualizes the scene. “I imagine what it will look like when I perhaps increase or decrease color saturation or fine-tune specific areas of the image, maybe sharpen just a section, or change the relationship of a shadow to a highlight.” But sometimes he’s surprised by what he gets. “It’s not what I imagined when I took it; often it’s a lot better than what I imagined.”

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