The Collections: New Additions, part II

My continued travels this fall have granted me the opportunity to add to the collections.  Please use the links to your right to browse at your convenience for the latest from Mannek Photography.

View of turkey vultures circling from Licklog Ridge Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway

The Tips: Rethink the Mundane

Anything can be interesting if you look closely enough.

Fall leaf; UNC-Chapel Hill campus

There is a beauty in simplicity, in the things we see every day and either take for granted or ignore completely.  As the seasons change, they bring new temperatures and warrant new wardrobes.  Fall arrives and we marvel at the spectacular color of the trees that paint the landscape in shades of red, orange, and gold.  Once the leaves descend from the branches, they seem to disappear from our line of sight, suddenly becoming just a nuisance, merely something to clear from our yards.  Yet against the faded bricks of a cobblestone walkway, the vibrant colors still cling to a shadow of their former selves, as if begging to be noticed one final time before being scooped into a yard waste collection bag.  


Take a moment to see the simple and small things around you: not every shot needs to be a sweeping landscape or sparkling skyline.  For example, as I sit here writing, I am looking at the crown molding and how it comes together in the corners of my living room.  I'm now thinking about corners: molding, baseboards, bricks and mortar, wood planks...the purpose of a corner is to bring things together.  
Now my mind is running with the concept: how many other corners do I encounter on a daily basis without ever having noticed them as anything other than something to pass on my way to somewhere else?  A potential series is forming - interiors, exteriors, ceilings, floors...all because I paused for a moment while staring at the wall. 


Stare at your walls.  Look more closely at the trees after a rainshower.  Take a moment to ponder the bright spark of curiosity in your cat's eyes as she follows a glint of sunlight across the floor.   Embrace the banality of your surroundings.  You may find your own corners to be quite interesting.

The Collections: New Additions

New shots have been added to Architecture, Fauna, Flora, People, and Place.  Please use the links to the right to explore the latest.

The Shot: Thundercloud and Moonlight

During a particularly stormy week, I sat out on the deck one evening, watching lightning flash in the thunderclouds in the distance.  Every now and again, the weather radio would chirp a warning for the area: flooding, straightline winds, downed trees and power lines, the usual accompaniments to this sort of weather.  The worst of the storms stayed to the north and east; my area of town had barely received any rain and only the occasional wind gust.  The frogs continued to sing in the creek below; the bats continued to hunt, flying within feet of where I was sitting.

Moonlight in clouds

The storms marched across the sky and what had previously been just a glow of lightning now became the occasional streaks in the clouds.   Off to the southeast, the moon had also risen, glowing from behind a break in the clouds.  It was one day from full, so it was quite bright, casting a odd glow on the rest of the sky.  

I retrieved the camera and tripod from inside, setting up on the deck.  My vantage point allowed me to capture a building thunderhead to the east and well-developed anvil to the northeast.  I experimented with the night settings, adjusting the shutter speed in an attempt to capture some of the streaks in the clouds.  The glow of the moonlight added another dimension to the scene, eventually resulting in this:

Thundercloud and Moonlight

[Disclaimer: Always be aware of your own safety when shooting, particularly in potentially severe weather.  No shot is worth life and/or limb.]

The Sites: New York City - Lower Manhattan and Staten Island Ferry

Despite countless trips through the airports of New York on my way to other places, I'd never explored the city itself.  With a friend living in Queens playing the gracious host, I covered four boroughs in five days; ate my way through countless restaurants, cafes, diners, and street carts; covered both "tourist" ground and places off the beaten path; and tried to take in as much of the place as I could.

Liberty Island

The Staten Island Ferry afforded two views that literally brought tears to my eyes.  My father's family came to this country through Ellis Island from what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and what is now the Czech Republic.  Despite the wind and the spotty rain, I stood on the outer deck as we passed Liberty Island.  The idea that I was standing there because my great-grandparents had once stood there nearly a century ago was over-whelming and incredible.  It made me - in a word - grateful.

Lower Manhattan from Staten Island Ferry

Before the combination of dusk and mist became too much, I looked back at the receding skyline.  The angle of the ferry leaving Lower Manhattan aligned just right to present a view of the gaping hole still left from 9/11.  On my last day, we went to Ground Zero - something I felt I needed to do, having watched the events of that day unfold on live television from my college campus.  It made me - in a word and all politics aside - angry.  The memory of what happened there was palpable in the air, moreso than the thin veil that seemed to hang over the rest of the city.  

Liberty Island from Battery Park

We didn't stay long and we continued on to Battery Park, where the shadow of memory seemed to lift enough to begin to remember what makes this city so great: its cultural icons, its stunning architecture, its delectable food, and above all, its people.