Not quite the hell's forecourt -- but almost | On the Buses If you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk | Visuals of 2005 NOT QUITE THE HELL'S FORECOURT -- BUT ALMOST STARTED 6 MAY 2005, IN AN AIR FRANCE BOEING 777 TOWARDS JFK, JUST PAST THE NORMANDY COAST (and completed six months later): Phew. Having just made the NY-bound transfer through Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) was, contrary to what I had feared, not the hellish experience of queuing through a smoke-filled concrete maze, with little time to spare. Well, the last item was to be unfortunately true on both directions, but mainly due to the airport's main carrier, about which later on. The airport itself seemed to be rather effective and even somewhat sleek,although the style of the building seemed a bit dated with its travertine floors and beton brut aesthetic. On the other hand, that's a somewhat welcome change from the almost clichéd universal steel and glass that the modern and modernized airports seem to be all about. Of course, such eccentricities as exiting the airside through the tight luggage caroussel space and -- most infuriatingly -- the heavy reliance on airport buses and faraway aprons seriously deduct points. Also the lack of security checkpoints could lead to delays during heavy through-traffic. And as for the experience with Air France... I wrote a comment for the Skytrax.com after the trip, to join other verdicts of CDG, many of which -- given my experience -- seemed rather harsh, or maybe I was lucky. That is, if "lucky" means getting one's luggage delayed both ways after transfer and missing only one of the connections out of CDG... The Skytrax were apparently unhappy with the poster personal information I provided and didn't post the text on the site. As the posting is a one-off, as compared to Usenet postings where identification continuity is important, I frankly didn't see it relevant in any way in the worldwide context or making the views any more believable per se if I provide my name and e-mail. It'd be polite, yes. But irrelevant. I had a right to refuse and they had a right to refuse. Anyway, here's the long-ish verdict about CDG and AF, if anyone's interested. ON THE BUSES The delayed luggage on the arrival to NYC meant that I lost the chance to check the Friday NYC Industrial club scene, dressed in the totally utilitarian casual cr*p and sneakers as I was. Now that's a great start. One of the reasons to take the trip in the first place struck out. And the time it took to wait for all the luggage to be unloaded, get the advice and finally file for baggage loss meant that the rush hour was properly underway by the time I got out. On the way from the JFK to Manhattan in the airport bus, a filthy-ish and at times urine-stinking tin tube (a good reason to avoid taking the return trip on these) the rush-hour traffic jam gave a plenty of time to enjoy the ambience, including highway concrete walls and a guy on the bus who was making a loud, ominously pedophilic-sounding marathon call to someone (these are nicely picturesque pieces, not?). And on arrival to Manhattan, the bus driver managed first to severely deform the side of a upper-scale Merc driving on the left side as he cut the corner turning from the Midtown Tunnel entrance -- and then got well and truly gridlocked as he was late in turning onto Third Avenue. All within a block. Welcome to NYC. (As for the more positive NYC traffic mementos, I got to examine a parked Ducati 996 motorcycle near Park Avenue and on the way back to JFK, I couldn't help noticing how handy an m/c is in commuting -- and hoped I was on my RC30 instead of that freakin' minivan filled with surly travellers who were constantly asking the driver when they'd arrive at the JFK and that their flight leaves at yadda yadda... And yes, we arrived at the JFK with time to spare for everyone.) But most importantly, the guy sitting in front of me on the bus from JFK had an iPAQ H63xx-series PDA/phone. Used mainy for playing solitaire it seemed, but the moment he received an incoming call, my fate was sealed. I have had PDAs since 1998, but so far there didn't seem to be any "killer-use" for it. But here was a PDA with phone, most importantly with a cool, simplistic true-retro "old phone" ringtone. Needless to say, the gadget haunted me so, that a couple of months later I had purchased an H6340 that now does almost everything except writes these d*rn web site complaints. Excellent value, hav'ta say. The PDA has come of age. IF YOU HAVE TO SHOOT, SHOOT, DON'T TALK Had the luggage delayed even more, I by all means would have been able to carry out the next day's shoots as I had all the photo gear except one with me in the carry-ons. The one being of course the infamous tripod. Without which, of course again, the whole trip would have turned very dodgy indeed, as the photo composition and bracketing of exposure would have been much more difficult -- and a nuisance. But the luggage arrived at night and the photo shoot was on. If one discounts the fact that the brand new cable release mysteriously fell apart just as I was preparing to shoot the UN Secretariat (not a big deal, in the end, as releasing the shutter by hand in fact helped to stabilize the camera on the tripod) and that I lost the string for balancing the camera "monopod-like" when not using the tripod (why, how could there be situations one cannot use a tripod in NYC? [sarcasm]). It had served me through one London/Oxford and three earlier NYC trips (and of course Cologne and the Nürburgring Nordschleife racetrack, the holiest of holies) and then it just got lost. Luckily, I could combine the two nylon belts I had for tying the tripod bag to act as a makeshift stabilizer cord. It was also handy during the last afternoon's shooting, after I'd checked out and left all the luggage except the camera bag, camera and spotmeter to the deposit. And yep, as for tripods and guards: as luck would have it, on the second morning, only a few minutes after I'd been thinking that perhaps on this trip there'd be no run-ins with guards, the good old one, Chase@Park Ave. didn't disappoint. At best, there were two guards making sure that the dangerous tripod on a deserted Sunday morning at the Madison side plaza would not be used. With the stabilizer cord, the shot of the Tower 49 nevertheless came out right. Rockefeller is always another surefire thing: Both the Time-Warner and RKO were swiftly curbed tripodwise. In the latter, by the time the guard had given the company line about no tripods being allowed within the plot, I would have finished metering the exposure and taken the shots. Tripod to the curbside, outside Center perimeter and start again. And as before, these and other fascinating monotonies are available once I get the background notes done. Which I haven't even started. And there are 66 new shots to be commented on. Oh dear. But the shots came out wonderfully, at least. VISUALS OF 2005 In a photographic sense, the trip was as much about reshooting old ones as getting photos of new or future entries. As noted in the Photo notes, the chosen method of "falling back" to shooting film and using a spot meter for exposure metering turned out to work even better than expected. Add to that the (more or less) successful introduction of the perspective correction lens and a new way (or rather, old) of doing things has been found.

ENTRANCE    CONTENTS    INTRODUCTION    ALPHABETICAL LIST

EARLY CENTURY I  &  II    ART DECO ERA I  &  II  &  III

INTERNATIONAL STYLE I  &  II  &  III    POST-MODERNISM I  &  II   

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© e t dankwa posted 17 November 2005