Another shot from my New York trip recently. We intended going out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island for a tour as some of the group were never there. Unfortunately we left it too late the day we went to catch the ferry, (5 minutes too late!) They have increased security (even since 2009) for visitors going out to liberty Island, JFK wouldn’t have a patch on them and the last boat leaves Battery Park at 4pm. I would advise anyone intending to visit the Statue, head down there first thing in the morning.

As does always seem to happen when in New York there was an alternative, the Staten Island ferry, and an added bonus was its free! This was my first time on the Staten Island ferry and you get the same views of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, though none of Ellis Island but good views of Brooklyn Bridge.

Lower Manhattan skyline.

Lower Manhattan skyline.

Photo: f/10, 1/320 sec, ISO-400, @20 mm.

One of the problems that I had in New York was that walking everywhere in Manhattan so as to soak up all the atmosphere and sights, I would not be able to bring all my kit as it would break your back with the weight! I had to limit myself to one lens on the camera and maybe the flashgun. I settled on my Sigma 10-20 f/4 wide-angle, and use my feet to “zoom in” The photo above I was a bit limited in taking, waiting for the ferry to do the zooming for me. Although it was a calm day there was still a lot of movement in the waves, I had to raise the ISO to 400 to get a fast enough shutter speed. The tall building on the left is newly built on the site of Ground Zero. It is also the building where I took photos of Ground Zero when I was there in 2009, I could not get access to the building this time to re-create those photos.

View up the East river, Brooklyn bridge.

View up the East River, Brooklyn Bridge.

Photo: f/10, 1/200 sec, ISO-400, @20 mm.

Photo above is a view up the East River under Brooklyn Bridge with Brooklyn on the right.

Brooklyn Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge (cropped)

Michael Maye
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