90ish days of summer

As I have previously mentioned, Jeff and I escaped the clutches of the greater D.C. area to spend three days in New York City in the beginning of August.

Strawberry Fields in Central Park on Friday, Aug. 7.

We spent those three days seeing the sights, mostly in Manhattan and mostly through our camera viewfinders. Jeff had his D700; I had my 30D and Olympus OM-1.

Here’s the conundrum: I shot on black-and-white film. Which means I have color photos (from my 30D) as well as black-and-white. The color photos are wonderfully vibrant, whereas the black-and-white photos lend a more old-fashioned look at the city. Because of the different moods they present, I’ll post the color photos separately from the black-and-white photos.

But today, I’m starting out with a bit of each.

Our bus from D.C. arrived two blocks from the New York Times building. So of course we stopped by the NYT before doing anything else.

We arrived via bus in Manhattan on Thursday evening. After swinging by the New York Times building — no longer in Times Square — we dropped off our luggage at my uncle’s apartment in the Upper East Side and ate dinner at a small, nearby diner. Where I had homemade ravioli for the first time ever. It was incredible.

By the way, here’s a photo of fellow Review staffers and me at the New York Times building in 2004, back when it was still in Times Square. Did you know Times Square was named after The New York Times?

From left to right: Andrew (future business manager), Armin (future sports editor and managing editor), Mrs. van der Pol (adviser), me (future features editor and EIC), Chanel (future news editor), Morgan (future scrivener, features editor and managing editor) and Anna. As staff of our high school newspaper, we spent spring break in the city for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference.

Jeff and I started out the next morning (Friday, Aug. 7) at Central Park, which was only a few blocks from my uncle’s apartment. We didn’t spend that much time there, though — lower Manhattan and Brooklyn were calling our name. But of course we took some photos.

Panoramic view from the north end of the lake in Central Park West.

This will probably be the only entry with both color and black-and-white photos. I’ll be posting more photos over the next week or so. Stay tuned!