old toys revisited

i get bored with things as quickly as i am excited by them. its a problem and a beautiful one. while it can be annoying to loose that spark of inspiration on an idea, project, or anything really - its also nice because it allows me the constant search and exploration of things. ive played nearly every sport one would typically play in childhood. ive tried different instruments. i have tried my hand at drawing, film making/editing, photography, music, etc. its been fruitful in the sense that in the unending search for inspiration and enjoyment i have tried many things.

last year i asked for a camera for my birthday as i have always loved photography and wanted to do it myself. since then its been used in serious efforts only a handful of times. today sparked a reemergence in photography. i broke out my camera finally decided to start understanding it. not allowing myself to use any preset settings like Portrait or Macro I put the camera on manual and manual focus and worked at, in a dimly lit room with no flash - trying to get the right shutter speed, aperature, etc to result in a decent photograph. thanks to the patience of my roommates/alex i was able to try this out on them as they played rock band (which made for long shutter exposure pictures to be a blur of color). below are some of the pictures that i kept that are decent at best but came at the hand of self discovery through adjusting settings and nothing automatic or preset.

thus:

the wonders of a trail left behind

i got a package from home today delivered. i found out that even if it isnt fedex the delivery man will buzz up and see if anyone is home to retrieve it. on the positive side - it was successfully delivered. on the negative side i still dont know what happens if no one is here to receive it. hmm.

more classes, more beatles rock band. had to fight the urge to follow the twitter feed and run from LC to 42nd street for an advanced and free screening of Zombieland. instead i sat in a 2.5 hour lecture on the history of trauma. im proud of me too.

finally - theres a place called The High Line. I guess its not so much a place as it is an old rail line that runs from below the numbered streets to 34th street around 10th ave (aka the west side) It was no longer being used and in jeopardy of being removed/knocked down - how ever you want to phrase it and people spoke up saying it could be used for other things - and that meant less costs for the city. In June of this year it was reopened as sort of a walking park.

I originally thought that the reopening combined the overgrowth and decay of the railroad with some new construction and planting, but I was wrong. Looking at photos they actually cleared the entire track and reconstructed it to look like, loosely, like an overgrown railway. While it is partially upsetting that the original track and the natural overgrowth was all removed, it is probably due to the lack of safety that probably existed with using a naturally decaying place as a park.

Info on the place can be found at The HighLine. There is an Images tab that I suggest you check out - documents in thumbnails different eras of the train: when it ran, from 1999-2006 in a gallery documenting the remnants and natural overgrowth taking place on an abandoned area an then the documentation of the clearing, construction, painting, etc of the new park. This is a place to visit for me before the weather makes it less desirable to walk around in the city for long periods of time.

the sun is up, the sky is blue

that was pretty much it today.