Summer skies

Summer is the best time to capture the sky in any scenic picture you take. My boyfriend always bugs me that I never take any pictures of people (or me with the people), but ever since summer of '06 when I first lived in the city, I've had a thing for the sky.

Summer skies are the best. They are almost always blue and clear. Cloudy is a good thing, because then you have some texture and contrast.

I was looking through some of my recent photos from June up to now, and I noticed one common element, thanks to my love for photographing buildings and anything else that touches the sky...

Here are some of the skies I've seen this summer:

Calm skies

Clear skies

High contrast skies

Orange skies

Museum skies

(the Met)

Reflective skies

Pink skies

Long skies

Cloudy skies

White fluffy skies

Skies through bus windows

Scary skies

Perfect skies

: )

The view from Pier 1

I was out on the newly opened pier in Brooklyn Bridge Park last Thursday for the Movies With a View event. They were showing The Big Lebowski, which I'd never seen before even though it's only from 1998. Apparently it is one of those 90's cult movies. I guess for me that was the movie Clueless—I can recite all of the lines, I used to dress up as the characters, and can watch it over and over again, etc.

Anyway, from there you could see the Statue of Liberty, downtown Manhattan's skyline and the South Street Seaport.

Is this considered 'dusk' or 'twilight'?

The crowd on the lawn, waiting for the movie to start around 8:30 pm.

Lavender NYC sky

The sky really caught my eye one evening above the Manhattan skyline. I went out to Dumbo, Brooklyn for an Etsy craft party and stopped by the Brooklyn Bridge Park to relax and take in the view of the Brooklyn Bridge and the buildings of downtown Manhattan. I got there kind of early and stayed a while, watching the sky go from blue, to lavender, to orange, but left before it went black.

Astor Place and EV

One of my favorite places in the city to spend time in other than Union Square and the Flat Iron District/Madison Square Park is Astor Place. Since it is a trendy college neighborhood and on the edge of the East Village, there aren't many skyscrapers or corporate businesses, but there are a few architectural treats!

Building on Lafayette and Astor Place (near 8th street)

tile-covered lamppost in Astor Place

The Cooper Union building on 3rd Avenue

Skyscraper in pink

This skyscraper in Midtown is pretty in pink and I bet a lot of businessmen work here!

View from Lexington and 55th

Up but not away...

Back on a warm-turned cold day in February, I had nothing to do so I wandered into and through Central Park hoping to see something special and unusual. Actually, I was hoping to see some colorful balloons somewhere at some point, and I did! It's weird; rarely when you know exactly what you're looking for do you find it - unless you're shopping at Wal-mart.

So on a warm-ish winter afternoon I walked up through Poets (Literary) Walk to Bethesda Terrace then back down to the beginning of Central Park so that I could get the heck out of there because like I said, it turned really cold! And while shivering and shaking (I almost just wrote 'shiveraking') I spotted these balloons tied to a pole near hot dog stand that was next to a Merry-go-Round and other kid-related activities and information booths.


You can see the Time Warner buildings of Columbus Circle in the background



You can see that the air is smoky from the hot dogs

You can't paint this kind of stuff

I'm always blown away by what I see when I look out at New Jersey—and it's not New Jersey itself, but the way the sun sets over the Hudson River and causes the sky to look like something not even Van Gogh or Gericault could pull off!