Photographs

While cleaning up my apartment in New Jersey recently, I came across an old cracked black and white photograph of my mother and father, shortly after they were married in Dublin. The photo got me thinking about my own passion for photography.
I love photography but in particular I love my own photographs. I am an amateur photographer who wants to be a professional. I am unique in that respect!
Before digital cameras, amateur photographers like me were limited to film and its associated costs. Before photo sharing websites like Flickr, an amateur photographer had limited exposure; mostly family and friends.
However, today, thanks to the digital cameras and web sharing software like Flickr, I can take as many photographs as I like and expose myself (figuratively) to the whole world. Flickr acts like a collective reservoir for photographers who want to share their photography with the world.
I began posting my photographs to Flickr after I bought my first digital camera, a Canon Rebel XT, five years ago. I became a compulsive shutterbug ever since. Some people are Facebook fans, others are besotted by MySpace – I am fascinated by Flickr. I took thousands of photographs over the years and uploaded the best of the best to my Flickr webpage - 20Major. To date, I have posted 466 photos to my Flickr account. Over the years, I photographed everything from celebrities to clowns; fires and family.
At night, I spend hours looking at my own photographs on Flickr. I watch them drift by in a slideshow one by one, as black and white turns to color. It’s like watching a documentary of my life slide by, one photo at a time – photo - pause - photo again.
Despite the fact that I like looking at my own photographs, I get an even bigger kick when anonymous Flickr users, with handles like C-U-B-B-I-E and ‘snapdragon,’ view my photographs.
Each visitor to my Flickr page registers as a hit. I have over 700 hits. I especially like when they comment on a photograph. An anonymous comment from complete stranger is like anonymous sex with a complete stranger, not exactly ideal but satisfying all the same. I monitor my Flickr account like a doctor monitors a patient’s cardiogram. I am constantly on the look out for spikes in my digital counter. When I see that counter rise, it’s like a shot of caffeine in the morning.
Not surprisingly, celebrity photos attract the most attention. I have a photograph of the actress, Cobie Smulders, from the CBS sitcom, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ that attracted over 361 hits. Fourteen Flickr photographers choose my photographs as their so called ‘favorite.’ One visitor described a photograph of my niece and her father as – ‘brilliant.’ Another called a photograph of a trapeze artist as ‘great’. It is euphemisms like these that keep me going.
My colorful, digitally enhanced photographs are not my mother’s photographs. Photographs were personal for my mother - a repository of family memories.
Despite all my protestations, photographs are a commodity to me. They are an entertaining distraction at best. My mum’s photographs weren’t disposable like the digital photos of today – delete and they’re gone. Every photograph my mum took captured a memory. They marked moments in time, as opposed to my photographs which mark a waste of time!!! Mum’s photographs were a barometer of the family fortunes, with all its ups and downs. In the beginning, mum took black and white photographs with a Brownie and ended up taking uneven color photographs with a Polaroid Classic.
I saw myself grow from a black and white baby to a colorful teenager with long hair. In the beginning, my mum took cheesy family photos – photographs arranged in order of height or birthday. I remember mum would wait expectantly on the film which took a week to process at a camera shop. Then, along came the ‘Polaroid Instant’ camera with its promise of immediate gratification, and soon the house was full of square color photographs with large white borders.
My mother passed on some time ago, but hundreds of her family photographs sit in an old biscuit tin in the garage of my childhood home in Dublin. The biscuit tin contains a treasure trove of family history; everything from my parents black and white wedding, to the last color photographs of my mum with her grandchildren.
My mom was no Martha Stewart. She didn’t feel the need to put the photographs in albums or create collages. The tin box was fine. When I was growing up, I would catch a glimpse of my melancholic mother smiling to herself, as she went through her tin box of photographs late at night. I wonder what she would have made of sharing photographs on Flickr. My guess is she would rather keep her memories to herself, in a biscuit tin.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25478784@N03/

New York Post Protests

Spike Lee joined the Rev. Al Sharpton on the picket line outside the News Corp. building in Manhattan on Friday (02/20), to protest a New York Post cartoon that critics believe depicts President Obama as a chimpanzee.

The New York Post cartoon depicts two police officers shooting a chimpanzee, with the caption, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

About one hundred supporters marched in circles outside the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdock’s News Corp.) headquarters on Sixth Ave., holding signs calling for a boycott of the tabloid.

Year of the Ox, New York City Parade

New York City Chinese celebrated the year of the Ox with a parade in Chinatown, New York. Red dancing dragons delighted the enthusiastic crowd, on a mild and bright day. The thousands of spectators that lined the parade route were treated to martial arts demonstrations and traditional Chinese music.

Inauguration Day, Harlem, NYC, 2009

Inauguration Day was cold on 125th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, and even though the country is gripped by an economic crises, not seen since the great depression, some supporters arrived early and sat in front of the large JumboTron wrapped in Barack Obama blankets. One supporter, wearing her 2009 New Year’s Eve glasses, with an Obama pin on the front of her hat, took time off work to see the first black president sworn in on the big screen.


There was a near equal mix of blacks and whites gathered in front of the Adam Clayton Powell building, no doubt a testament to the new more affluent Harlem tenants.

The mood was festive among the 200 or so people gathered to cheer on the first black president of the United States, as he took the oath of office. At noon, Obama placed his hand on Lincoln's bible and was sworn in as president. The crowd erupted, waving small American flags and hugging one another. I was tears roll down one woman's eyes.

The Obama supporters kept their loudest outburst for when Obama was sworn in as president. I saw tears rolling down one woman’s face, while moms hugged their young daughters. Everybody appeared to wave small American flags.

The crowd fell deadly silent when President Obama gave his inaugural speech urging responsibility, hard work, and change. After Obama's inauguration speech, the crowd slipped silently away without any fuss - headed back to work - as if the enormity of the crisis facing the US just set in.

Flight 1549 Ready for Removal from the Hudson River

On Friday, US Airlines 1549 still sat in the frozen brown Hudson River where a huge red and white crane was poised ready to haul it out of the water. The plane was supposed to have been taken from the water earlier in the day; placed on a barge and taken to a secret location. However, as of 8.30 p.m. the plane was still frozen in place.
The Airbus A320 has been tethered to pier17 in Battery Park City ever since it landed in the Hudson on Wednesday afternoon. Kitty Higgins from the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters that the right engine was still attached to the wing of the plane - it was feared that both engines were sheared off in the crash. Federal Aviation officials will need the engines to confirm if a flock of geese were responsible for the accident.
The only people milling around Battery Park City this afternoon were New York City Police officers who oversaw the numerous television reporters and cameramen on hand. Some tourists turned up to take photographs of the plane’s white wing tip as it stuck out of the water, like a drowning man’s hand.

Miracle Flight 1549

US Airlines flight 1549 sits in the Hudson River at the bottom of Manhattan, hidden behind trees and protected by police yellow tape, as Federal Aviation officials begin their investigation into why a flock of birds brought down the flight.

The white tip of the wing from the miracle flight can be seen sticking out of the brown, freezing water, like the hand of a drowning man reaching out for help. Police blocked off the area with yellow tape and fire fighters sit in their red trucks, out of the cold air. Red Cross workers handed out sandwiches and coffee to the fire fighters as they wait.

Earlier in the day, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg paid tribute to the ferry workers who rushed to save the passengers and crew. He called Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the hero of flight 1549, an “incredibly brave” man and promised to give the Captain and his crew the keys to New York City.

Miracle on the Hudson, the Crash of US Airlines 1549

US Airlines flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River after colliding with a flock of birds causing both engines to fail.

The Airbus A320 was taking off from La Guardia Airport for Charlotte, North Carolina, when the pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger III, 57, told the control tower he needed to make an emergency landing, but not long after that call Sullenberger crash landed in the Hudson River.

A flotilla of river ferries descended on the crashed aircraft and helped evacuate all 148 passengers from the frigid waters. Passengers were seen lining up on the wing of the plane as New York water ferries lined up to pluck them from the downed aircrafts wing. All passengers and crew were safely evacuated from the plane, with no serious injuries.

The US Airlines pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger III is being hailed a hero for landing the aircraft and evacuating the passengers and crew without any injuries. New York Governor, David Paterson, called the accident a “miracle on the Hudson.” In a news conference, Paterson said, "we had miracle on 34th Street," refering to the movie, "now we have miracle on the Hudson."

I live a block from the Hudson River, in Hoboken, New Jersey. As soon as I heard about the crash, I grabbed my camera, ran to the pier, and shot these photographs. You can see the tail fin with the US Airlines logo just above the water level.