giev's photostream  

This is a view of Washington Heights from a viewing balcony in Palisades Interstate Park, NJ, just to the right of the George Washington bridge. It was very cold and a freezing wind made us all shake and dance! Thank goodness, the balcony has railings with a nice, wide, flat top to rest the camera onto, so I was able to get this nice shot.

It's not only the more popular parts of Manhattan that can make beautiful night shots!

View Large on black!

This is my first shot from my recent (end of Oct - start of Nov 2011) trip to New York. It was a business trip and I didn't have much time to devote to shooting, so you won't see many shots, or even extremely good ones.. I hope I repeat the trip soon and get more photographic chances, so I have more to show you from this wonderful, beautiful city!

So, this is the George Washington bridge, as the title says, which according to Wikipedia is the busiest car-traffic bridge in the world! And it shows! Two decks with two-way traffic! It is not particularly beautiful, like the Brooklyn bridge for example, but its structural elements are interesting, its size is impressive, the two decks attract attention and all these together make for very nice night shots! I especially like the cars' lights, the eye-catching yellow-looking light in the lower deck and the purple lights on the main cables.

Shot this with a long-forgotten lens I had thrown somewhere, which I thought was complete crap, because its aperture blades have oil and are sticky. The aperture works, but the blades don't snap, so it's not practically usable at any aperture other than fully open. Which is no bad thing after all, because of the beautiful, creamy bokeh!!

This is a Takumar Bayonet 135mm F2.5 manual lens. It's not a SMC, so it lacks the multi-coating and is prone to flare, but that doesn't mean it can't take nice pictures, far from it!! Even wide open, it's quite sharp across the frame (notice the leaves at the edges), it has that Pentax color and 3D feeling and nice, creamy bokeh! It also has some CAs, but what the heck! Nobody and nothing is perfect! I discovered (with the help of my friend Dimitris) I have a nice and fast tele lens I can use! Great!

I now have this photo as the wallpaper on my GNOME and I like it so much I thought of sharing it, so I uploaded the full-resolution image. Feel free to download and use!

This is a small unknown alley amidst the people-packed popular alleys and small streets in the city of Mykonos. Locals live here and it's in such places that you can get a picture of the real Cycladic way of living: small societies of like-minded people living close to one-another, sharing the same (give or take) problems.

I took this photo because I liked the shape and symmetry of the stairways, but post-processing revealed the nice, vibrant colors too!

This is one of the famous, extremely much-photographed windmills at the south edge of the city of Mykonos. I pointed my Sigma 10-20 straight-up to exaggerate the perspective. I especially like the hair-like top!