November 9th, 2023.
As I’ve written about here Third & Forty-Eighth and here Covers of Strand I visited New York City in November of 2023.
On the first night, after logging off of work I had time to kill. Since my office was right near it, I spontaneously decided to visit the top of the Empire State Building!
I made it to the top of the building and began watching how the sunset would play out. It was slow to start and end, but with colors that didn’t really ignite.
After taking a few warm up shots I began to look at the scene more clinically. I was testing out a new lens TTArtisan 23mm ƒ/1.4, and wanted to put it through it’s paces.
This is a manual focus lens which I was mainly attracted to for the tiny form factor and the great maximum aperture of ƒ/1.4. While I had it I tried shooting many different scenes with it but this was the only one that produced results I was satisfied with.
As I was walking around, I kept noticing the reflections the city was having on the fencing. Those crossbars would become the subject of my most “artistic” shot of the night. The chrome finish offers a wonderful shade of dark and harsh tonality to the scene. Disrupting the otherwise bright and soft tones the city far below offers.
While the aperture worked in my favor here – frankly many of the images that I took with the lens ended up not being as sharp as they should have been and I ultimately decided to return the lens.