Martin's photo review of 2012

Introduction

When I started out doing serious photography a few years ago I was entirely focused on photographing birds in the wild. Having spent many a vacation birdwatching through the '80s and '90s (from the Isles of Scilly to Orkney) and always having a more than passing interest in photography, the two became fused in 2006 when I purchased a Canon EF 100-400 lens. I had a lot of fun with the old push-me-pull-you but it soon became apparent that it just did not have the image quality I was looking for (or indeed others were able to achieve with prime lenses).

In 2009 I blew my annual bonus (and some...) and purchased an EF 500 f/4; I have never looked back. My first club success came in winning the Natural History Competition at Ashford Photographic Society with the shot of a female kestrel, taken at Oare Marshes near Faversham.

Buoyed by this success I continued my bird photography, capturing some great images and having a lot of fun along the way.

Wonky horizons

 

One of the great things about joining a photographic club is that you start to network with like-minded people and, when you start to take notice of what they are doing photographically, you begin to realise how little you know and to appreciate the many other photographic opportunities that exist.

As Anthony has mentioned in his end of year post, we have all broadened our photographic horizons and will no doubt continue to do so. And for me, 2012 has been about diversity: landscape; portrait; portraiture; still life. None of these I'd really toyed with seriously before but I've really enjoyed the challenges that each of these bring.

So here's a slice through my 2012 photographic pie:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

[If the slideshow fails please visit the flickr one]

Lessons from 2012

• Starting with the future in mind and reducing the number of variables I have to contend with
• A better understanding of light
• Slow down
• Everything is easy until you try it yourself!
• The power of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (4)
• I need to get better at mono processing

Looking ahead to 2013

 

In order to diversify I had pretty much sacrificed my wildlife photography in 2012 (apart from the orchid season) and I feel the urge to get back to my roots and capture some bird action.

I have seen some great landscape work this year; none better than the images of Paul Sansome, who gave a talk at the Ashford club this season. I think landscape will be a slow burn for me but I do aspire to get better at it. My success in winning the Rural Landscape trophy at Ashford this season (with the shot below) has also given me the added drive to do some more.

Late evening high tide, Trebarwith Strand

I've promised my wife I'll take her to Venice in the spring and, yes, she does know she'll be sharing me with my camera.

For a whole raft of reasons we have not had many Wonky trips this year, something for Anthony, Philip and me to address at our next committee meeting.

New Year Message

Anthony's 2012 Favourites, pt 1

I thought that this year I should separate my favourites into two separate posts, one for my general photography, and one for my aviation photography. So, here is the first of those - the non-aviation photography.

I've got them down to 16 - an arbitrary selection that could easily have been different on another day. I think the simplest way to post them is as a set on Flickr, with the set of contacts above as a flavour of them (they're heavily cropped into shape).


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
If you're on an iPad or similar device that does not support Flash, here's a link to the Flickr set

New things I've enjoyed? I've never previously photographed orchids in the wild: thanks to Martin for introducing me to that, and I'll definitely try to get back out to them next year. Martin and our friend Ian Macey also introduced me to photographing the British Superbikes: I loved it! I've never been much of a motorsport fan, but the bikes were fantastic.

I didn't do so much landscape photography this year, but I'll try to make up for that a bit over the next year. One picture in my favourites that I've not posted here before is the one shown in the contacts, bottom row second from the right. We had the first snow of the winter here at the beginning of December, and the picture shows a group of trees on the North Downs near Molash, surrounded by the snow.

Here's to 2013!

Best of the year

Its the time of year to look back , I thought it would be a good opportunity to post some of my personal favourite images, I hope you will enjoy them too.

d

Heavy breathing in Nikon land

My old 135mm f/2.8  AI-S lens: still working, despite being breathed on

There has been much harrumphing on the forums this week in the wake of some technical advice from Nikon about cleaning lenses that was unearthed and posted on Petapixel. The advice was quickly reposted on several other blogs and forums, including Nikon Rumours, Photography Bay and DPreview. It runs ran as follows*:

How do I clean the camera lens?

The best way to clean a lens is to use a piece of lint free lens cleaning tissue and a small amount of Lens Cleaning solution. Do not use anything containing abrasives or  solvents, only use Lens Cleaning Solution.
First we recommend taking a small blower brush to blow off or brush away loose dust or debris.
Next, place a drop or two of cleaner on the tissue (never directly onto the lens) and then wipe the lens in a circular motion, beginning in the center and working your way outward, removing any marks or smear.
If the above supplies are not available a clean, dry, soft, lint free cloth can be used to clean the lens. Do not breathe on the lens to fog it for cleaning. There are harmful acids in breath that can damage lens coatings. Just use the blower bulb, then brush, and wipe the lens in a circular spiral from the center outward.
The same method can be used to clean the viewfinder eyepiece of Nikon cameras.

Read more on NikonRumors.com: http://nikonrumors.com/2012/12/07/nikon-support-do-not-breathe-on-your-lens-to-clean-it-your-breath-contains-harmful-acids-that-could-damage-the-lens-coating.aspx/#ixzz2EmKDsDB2
This leaves me in a bit of a conundrum. First of all, I've been using the "breathe on lens and wipe it carefully with soft lens cloth" technique for cleaning lenses for longer than I can remember, and certainly for more than two decades. When I first bought an SLR, I started to use lens cleaning fluid – much as recommended in this advice – and found it tended to leave smearing. In fact, the cure was often worse than the condition. I quickly went over to gently breathing on the lens, and using the condensate with gentle wiping: this has been much more satisfactory, and is my standard method to this day.

The second point is that far from being acid, I've always been led to believe that exhaled breath is actually slightly alkaline. (In case you've forgotten, pH 7.0 is neutral, lower numbers are acid, and higher numbers are alkaline. Wikipedia explains it clearly.)  A quick PubMed search confirmed this. Almost all breath from healthy people is slightly alkaline. There are some disease conditions in which the breath becomes acid (e.g. some infectious and inflammatory diseases), but most healthy people don't have acid breath.

One caution though is that before measuring the pH, samples are usually flushed with argon to blow off any dissolved carbon dioxide. So, in principle, there could be some variable amounts of carbonic acid in anybody's breath.

The thing is though, that dissolved carbon dioxide is a characteristic of any normal watery sample. So if your lens ever gets any condensation on it (e.g. bringing it back into the house after a walk on a cold morning), it could in principle be exposed to carbonic acid. Worse still would be rainwater, which usually has a pH somewhere between 5.0 and 5.6, but may get down as low as 2.0 ("acid rain").

Traditionally, lens coatings have been based on components such as magnesium fluoride and silica. These are pretty inert compounds, and it takes something like nitric acid (a strong acid) to dissolve magnesium fluoride. Carbonic acid (pKa ~ 6.4) is a weak acid. Now, I have no idea what Nikon use in their latest Nano-Crystal coating, but I would be amazed if it was any less inert than these kind of compounds.

So what to do? In general, I always try to go with the manufacturer's recommendations for any product. They're the ones who have spent time and money developing the best methods. But just for once, in this instance I am going to carry on doing what I've done for decades. It's probably true that a professional photographer with a medical condition that gives acidic breath, who needs to clean a lens several times a day, may progressively degrade it with the heavy breathing method. However, my experience over decades has been that moderate amounts of exhaled condensate are sufficiently safe for me to carry on as usual. Nevertheless - breathe on your lens at your own risk!



~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Update 11 Dec 2012, evening: the underlined bold advice on the support page has now disappeared. The acid prohibition has now gone! I wonder why?

Photographing aircraft at night

Spitfires at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar

Modern digital SLRs lend themselves to photography not just during the day time: given the astonishing ability of current sensors to convert just a few photons into a good image, the prospect of photographing anything – even flying aircraft  – at night has become a reality. Not only that but the ability to chimp on the back screen to check exposures means that shooting at night has become easier and much less hit and miss. This blog piece is about photographing aircraft in twilight, or after dark, and relates primarily to photographing them static, and with good access to an airfield.

Organisers of aviation-related events are beginning to understand the demand from photographers for pictures that are different from standard air show fare. Once in a while there are opportunities to shoot on an airfield at twilight and after dark, albeit in dim conditions with only the light from hangers to illuminate the aircraft.

As an alternative, if access to an airfield can be arranged, light painting now offers a realistic option of getting views of aircraft that are both dramatic and different from the run of the mill.

At organised nightshoots, the aircraft are usually static with engines switched off. However, sometimes the pilots of propeller aircraft can be persuaded to run their engines, the corresponding slow exposures yield prop circles. Occasionally, it is possible to photograph a helicopter hovering by hangar light.

Over the last two or three years I've done quite a bit of night shooting at airfields. There's a few hints and tips that I've worked out over that time that I thought I should share here. But I'll give the quick summary anyway if you haven't got time to read everything below.

Actually, it's really not very hard. 90% of it can be summed up as follows: shoot Raw, at best quality ISO, use a tripod with good technique, check the exposure both on the histogram and the blinkies. Don't use flash, unless you are light painting a static aircraft: flashes are dangerous on airfields as they can damage night adaptation of flight crew's vision. That is really is most of it.

Having said that, I'll expand a bit more detail.

Including people often adds interest. Note also that the exposure range here is quite large: careful metering is required to keep details in the dark and light areas of the picture. Shooting RAW is a big help in this.

Use RAW

Night shooting is one of those occasions when the real benefits of RAW make themselves felt. With RAW images, it's possible to change the white balance in post-processing with minimal compromise to the quality of the image: this is something that is essential in night shoots where you're likely to be dealing with mixed light sources. Equally, the dynamic range of the subject tends to be huge, from brightly lit up top surfaces to deep shadows under wings: recording images at full 14 stop range gives the best chance of revealing the details of both.

Use a tripod

 Clearly, shooting at night means that generally you have to expect very little light even with hangar lights illuminating the subject. To get the highest quality image, it is best to use base ISO (ISO 200 on my Nikon cameras, ISO 100 on many Canon cameras): shadow areas under wings, for instance, can be very dark indeed, and it is in the shadows that noise lurks; using base ISO is the way to minimise shadow noise. In general, exposures tend to be in the range 2-20 seconds, so a good tripod is essential. (I take the Thom Hogan view of buying a tripod: I am amazed at the number of people who bring spindly cheap things along to night shoots and then put expensive DSLRs and heavy lenses on them). If you get a lot of people in a small area at a night shoot, tripods tend as much trip hazard as camera support, but they are essential anyway. And don’t forget to use a remote/cable release for the shutter, and mirror lock up or delay to minimize camera vibrations.

Errr ... not actually a nightshot, but in the evening beforehand. High viz vests and trip hazards abound on this airfield.

... Or don't use a tripod

Having said that, it is now becoming possible to use a camera without a tripod. Some of the Sony DSLRs have a multiple exposure noise reduction mode, where multiple pictures are taken at very high ISO and then averaged to minimise the noise and increase definition. One photographer at a recent shoot standing next to me did everything by hand with his Sony: the camera gave rapid whizz-whizz-whizz sound as it took multiple images. It seemed to work extremely well, judging by pictures he posted afterwards.

Handheld at f/1.4

And there is one other choice too: a fast lens and high ISO. If you are lucky enough to get something like a helicopter hovering by hangar light, the only way to photograph it in flight is to use a reasonably fast shutter speed. At a recent night shoot, I took along my 50 mm f/1.4 lens: I set the D700 to ISO 3200, the aperture wide open, the camera to aperture priority exposure and crossed my fingers. This gave me exposures around 1/40th second which was just about OK for getting hovering helicopters.

Having said that, I still wouldn't recommend anything other than using a tripod to both support the camera and help you with control and composition.

Metering and exposure

It is very easy to lose shadow detail: this Lynx was given +0.67 stops exposure compensation to prevent this

Metering at night can be quite difficult. Ideally, it's good to "expose to the right", i.e. get as much light into the exposure as possible without blowing the highlights. But aircraft often have specular reflections from artificial lights, so these can confuse the evaluation of exposure.

Usually an aircraft is illuminated by something like hangar lights which give a bright foreground, but then the light fades off quickly so that the sky, and any background is dark. Aircraft themselves may be painted anything between white and black, so it's very difficult to establish a general rule for how to choose and exposure.

My general approach is to begin with standard matrix metering and aperture priority exposure mode. I'll start with a preliminary exposure without any compensation, and then look at the histogram and any blinking highlights in the display on the back of the camera. From there, I'll dial in exposure compensation to increase the exposure until the highlight warning starts to blink.  There's often very bright reflections on small parts of the aircraft where any illumination reflects directly at the camera. Usually, it's impossible to do anything about these, so normally I'll accept small areas of blinking highlights on the camera's display, in order to get sufficient exposure that detail is nicely revealed in shadow areas.

Typically, I'll end up with +1-+2 stop exposure compensation.

I normally work in aperture priority mode to ensure that I get the depth of field I want across the subject. Once the exposure was worked out in aperture priority, it can sometimes be useful to go into manual mode and lock in that exposure: artificial lights shouldn't change, so the exposure doesn't need to change.

The Martin-Baker Meteor. How would you meter for this?

For really difficult subjects, like a black-painted aircraft (like the Martin-Baker Meteor), you could spot meter and set the upper fuselage in, say, Zone II: let me know how it goes if you ever try it!

White balance

In general terms, it should be possible to set a fixed white balance to go with the colour temperature of the lights illuminating the subjects. On my first night shoot, I thought I would bring along a grey card and use that to establish a white balance, which could then subsequently be applied to all the pictures. In practice, it has never worked out like that. The lighting always tends to be rather mixed. At some places, the hangar light is pretty close to daylight balanced; but in the background that maybe sodium lamps. This can give rather horrid effects that vary from place to place on an airfield.

It is much simpler to set an auto white balance the camera. Auto white balance these days does amazingly well, and I find it simpler to tweak the white balance in post processing than worry about trying to set an exact white balance at the time.

Choosing shutter speed and aperture

f/11 gave enough depth of field for this Tornado, and it didn't wander off during the 15 sec exposure :-)

 Aircraft have depth to them, and if you're reasonably close to them only to consider and aperture the get some sharp all the way across if that's what you want. Often, it's convenient to work at about f/11, because typically that gives sufficient depth of field, without much in the way of diffraction effects reducing resolution. However, that aperture is a real restriction on the amount of light getting in and even with good lighting, at ISO 100 or 200 and exposure time will be several seconds.

Long exposures are normally not a problem at night shoots. Static aircraft don't get fidgety, so it really doesn't matter how long the exposure is. Not only that, but when aircraft are running their engines, the propellers make attractive circles with long exposures.

The limitation of long exposures is when people are in the image or an aircraft is actually flying. People are really difficult, because a pilot checking out an aircraft, for instance, will never stand still. If you want to freeze the human, there's no option but to open the aperture and increase the ISO.

If you're lucky, 1/10th second exposure can be OK. AgustaWestland AW-109E.

Hovering helicopters also offer a challenge. As long as they are not moving very quickly, exposures around 1/40 are about right and that can be got on most recent cameras simply by turning up the ISO and using the fastest lens you have got.

Framing and composition

This is a matter of personal taste, so I won't comment on this much. However, don't be afraid to include sky in a picture, because that's where aircraft are really meant to be. Even when they're static, it is good to give the impression that they can move forward by leaving space in the picture where they can move into. (It is probably different if you are going to submit your picture to one of the aircraft databases because they like everything cropped very tight; however for most other purposes it's good to give the aircraft room to move).

Night skies, certainly here in the South of England, are rarely completely dark. There's usually a deep orangey-brown glow from reflected street lights in the distance. Not only that, but very often night shoots will actually begin in late evening when there is still light in the sky.

Graduated Neutral density filters for evening shoots

The Kent Spitfire, TA805, in a pool of hangar light as evening falls. the sky was brought out with a 2 stop ND grad. This picture was a UKAR Picture of the Week.

 Evening shoots in particular benefit from bringing out the details of the sky. Aircraft tend to be much darker than the sky, so it's useful to bring the sky down by using a graduated neutral density filter. I often use a 2-3 stop Lee hard grad for this. Shooting Raw means that you have a chance of doing this in post anyhow, but I find that adding an ND grad makes this much easier, with much less fiddling needed in post, and a better range of tones available anyhow.

Things to look for

Flames from a Merlin engine

 Engines, especially on vintage aircraft, often emit blue flames from the exhausts which become visible after dark when they're running. This gives a real sense of drama to the image. Unfortunately, they don't emit these very consistently, say have to be prepared to take multiple exposures, each of which will be several seconds, to ensure getting the blue flames.

Checking over his Alpha: a French pilot inspects his cockpit

Watch out for the activity of aircrews. They will often go out of a plane, check it over, and carry out other activities before getting in. It is often quite possible to capture the activity of crew members in this way, and this gives a bit of extra life to the image.

Typhoon on tow

The same applies to the activity of ground crews. Be prepared for aircraft be towed in and out of hangers: this often provides good opportunities for capturing the life of the airfield. (It scarcely needs saying, but be prepared to get out of the way when an aircraft is towed – don’t wait to be asked – or run over).

When it is raining (or if some water has very kindly been poured onto the ground ☺) It's possible to capture very nice reflections. Watch out reflections, and consider including them in your image.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are always a bit of a problem with night shoots. Very often there are ugly sodium, fluorescent or tungsten lamps that shine brightly across the other side of the airfield. This can be very distracting from the subject. The only thing to do is to watch out for them, both when composing the image initially, and when chimping. You can sometimes move position, or choose a higher or lower angle to conceal the worst behind the subject. It rarely helps to open the aperture wide. Even at f/1.4, given the distance between the subject and the camera, the depth of field is great enough that distant lights still form relatively compact spots rather than disappearing in elegant blur.

Focus-stacked bokehrama of a Typhoon: not a night shot, but in the evening, anyhow :-). 105mm at  f/2.  
5 portrait format images in a row, blended into a pano, and then further rows used in focus stacking to get the intended depth of field across the aircraft. But at the distance used, even at f/2 the background is not very suppressed.

At evening time while there is still light, it is quite tempting to try and blur out background buildings by constructing a bokeh panorama. For instance, I have tried using a 105 mm f/2 lens wide open to take a series of overlapping shots of a Typhoon fairly close up, and then stitch them into a panorama. I had hoped that the restricted depth of field with this lens would blur out the building behind. This method is met with limited success (see picture above). Not only that, but I ended up having to effectively focus stack the images because the nearest wing was not the same focal plane as the fuselage. The result was a perfectly satisfactory record of the aircraft, but scarcely worth the effort.

Making use of high and low angles

Securite Civile, Grumman S-2A/Conair Turbo Firecat. Air stairs allowed a higher viewpoint.

And from a low angle - an HS125. The low angle helps bring out the reflection.

Where possible, try and get above or below the aircraft (okay -- statement of the bleedin' obvious). If you are lucky, something like air stairs will be produced. Make sure you make use of them, and don't be afraid to take your tripod up.

Equally, try getting down as low as your tripod will let you, or even balancing your camera on the ground and propping the lens at a suitable angle with a bean bag or anything you can lay your hands on. This works particularly well with reflections of wet ground.

Details

A Polish Bryza runs its engines

It's usually worth taking a long a telephoto zoom. Even if you're quite close to the aircraft, a zoom will allow you to get details such as the pilots in situ. You are not always obliged to photograph the full, or even nearly full, subject.

Post processing

There's nothing special about processing night shots, so stick with your usual routine. One thing to bear in mind is that the light from, say, a lamp on a hangar high above your head and behind you will fade off into the distance. This means that the aircraft may well be darker than the foreground. It is often useful to put a gradient of negative exposure on the foreground. (Of course, you could do this in camera by putting an inverted ND grad over the foreground, but I somehow never think of this at the time).

Equally as a way of drawing the viewer's attention to the subject, adding a vignette to the image works well. I often find myself using a stronger vignette with night shots that I do in the daytime.

And that's about it...

Night shooting aircraft is huge fun, and I strongly recommend it to anybody who has any interest in aviation photography.

Notes from New Haven and New York: hurricane Sandy edition

Manhattan over the East River at Dawn, from Roosevelt Island

[Just an opening point: I didn't mean this to turn into a diary of my last few days - but one way and another it has. My ramblings simply got longer in the writing. More words than pictures, I'm afraid.]

Preface: Monday October 2012, New York.

I am in the US this week for work. As I write, I am sitting in my hotel room on a Monday afternoon, on the 19th floor of a building on York Avenue just by the East River. Rain is pounding on the window as I look out; hurricane Sandy has come calling.

I flew into JFK last Thursday, and took the subway straight to Grand Central to get the train to New Haven, CT, for a conference at Yale. We were well on the way there, when the guy sitting in the seat next to me started exclaiming about a hurricane coming our way. Being British, and with memories of Michael Fish, I was tempted not to take this too seriously. But he showed me a map on his phone of the track of a hurricane approaching the coast: a 600 mile wide monster trekking up from the Caribbean with a projected landfall somewhere between Washington and Connecticut. The guy felt particularly aggrieved because he had only just moved up here from Florida and thought he'd left all that kind of thing behind!

New Haven: Friday and Saturday

For the two and a half days I was in New Haven, there was no sign of the hurricane; in fact the sun came out for much of the time. That did not stop the local TV stations talking of nothing else: they'd suffered from hurricane Irene previously, and were sensitised to the idea of a repeat. However, with the autumn colours on full display, New Haven looked lovely on peaceful fall days.

The conference in New Haven finished at lunchtime on Saturday, which gave me a chance to spend a bit of time exploring some of the open areas of Yale University and the colonial centre of town.

The juxtaposition of the foliage with the stonework of the buildings was very beautiful.

But, then again, some things are the same wherever you are:

On the corner, on the phone

On lunch, on the phone

And as elsewhere, people are on the phone, on the street.

New York: Saturday and Sunday

Satuday evening, I took the train back to Manhattan and made my way to the hotel on East 62nd Street at York Ave. The receptionist greeted me with the wonderful words "... and I'm giving you a complimentary upgrade to a suite." So I now have one television for each eye :-)

The view from the 19th floor is wonderful, even though the skies have been uninterrupted grey: I can see much of the way up York Avenue and over to the East River.

I spent much of Sunday walking. There's something about New York that makes me want to get out and just walk, and look around, and visit favourite haunts. I was motivated to get up before dawn and take the Tram across to Roosevelt Island. Even though the light was very dull – Sandy's influence was extending to us even then – I love walking along the riverfront opposite Manhattan on an early morning.

I took the same panorama of the Eastside from the UN Building up to the 59th St Bridge that I've done more than once previously. Probably the most miserable example in terms of the light, but still one of those things I feel the need to do, and it never looks quite the same twice. The opening picture above shows the resulting pano (a very small version of the original: stitched from 24 D700 Raw images).

Back in Manhattan, a proper breakfast was called for, so I strolled over to Lexington Avenue to Eat Here Now, a diner I've been to for many years, to have a proper breakfast. Sausages and bacon, two eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee. A great breakfast in one of my favourite places.

Sunday morning skating on the Wollman Rink

Looking over the Pond to Central Park South

Then over to Central Park. The colours were in full fall display there too, and like all the other tourists, I took far too many pictures; the fall foliage was too much to resist.

Even after such a good breakfast, by 2.30pm I had walked up another appetite. I took myself off for a late lunch to Neely's Barbeque, a restaurant on First Avenue I had noticed not far from my hotel. I treated myself to a plate of pulled pork: extremely tasty, and all the better for being washed down with a jar of beer (literally a jar: they serve beer in glass containers like large jam jars).

Like all the TV shows that had been on while I was in my room, the TV in the restaurant was dominated by news of the storm. The big news while I was having lunch was that the MTA would shutdown at 7 that evening, so there would be no subways or other transport after that.  Mayor Bloomberg was giving a press conference urging people to take this seriously, and to take precautions to stay safe. In my experience New York does not close for … well … anything; Sandy was threatening something I had not experienced before.

So it came as no surprise that a bit later I found that the shops were shutting early. After lunch, I took myself off to Barnes and Noble, the large bookshop at the base of the Citicorp building. This was another old haunt to revisit: it was one of my daughter's favourite places when we lived just round the corner. There were periodic announcements over the store's PA that it would be shutting at 5pm to let the staff get home safely.

I returned to my hotel room with a couple of books, passing along the way a grocery store that was besieged with people stocking up for the arrival of Sandy. The television had been urging people to lay in supplies of food and drink, as well as flashlights in case the electricity goes out. Clearly, the locals were heeding the advice. City Wines, an off licence (liquor store) by the base of the Tram, was also full to overflowing with customers as the locals took the injunction to lay in drink with appropriate seriousness.

Monday

Early this morning, the storm had not arrived. Looking out of my window first thing, there was no rain and the trees gave no indication of high wind. People were out walking dogs, just as on a normal day. The big difference was the number of cars on the road. York Avenue from well before dawn through the rush-hour is usually solid. Not today: no buses, few private cars, only the occasional yellow taxi. The public school system, as well as the MTA, has been shut down today so the place has the feel of an early Sunday morning.

My colleague, Joelle, is staying in the same hotel, so we made our way up to the lab where we were due to be meeting with others. Arriving at reception, the security guard was surprised to see us: it was essential personnel only. Our host, Mohan, arrived a couple of minutes after us and we made our way to his office. Nobody else in the group had come in, not least because they all rely on the MTA for transport. Before midday, one of the building supervisors arrived and asked us what time we were going to leave. So, shortly after, we left and picked up a couple of sandwiches at the mini-Deli around the corner. One was for lunch, the other for dinner in case we couldn't find anything else.

Hurricane Sandy strikes. (Left) York Avenue behind my windonw (Right) HLN reports the storm.

5.30 pm.  I am in my suite with horizontal rain hurling itself into the windows, and East River is looking both full and choppy. High tide is expected at 8.50 this evening, and a storm surge should raise it to levels that threaten to break the defences. Battery Park and its neighbouring area of the West side are also currently threatened. I've just heard that the crane has partially toppled over on West 57th Street: there is a residential tower being built to over 1000 feet high, and the crane attached to the building has folded in the wind.

The TV is showing places I've known well being hit by the storm. The Chesapeake Bay and Delaware shore have high winds and waves. Kent Island, where my family and I have seen ospreys, looks to have been flooded. The beach at Rehoboth (memories of sunburn from being an idiot and not using sunscreen on a blazing Labor Day weekend) appears to be badly eroded, and the town behind flooded.

As I write, I'm taking Mayor Bloomberg's advice and staying put. Given the many hardships being suffered by residents of the East coast, I'm happy to count my blessings.

This is the same picture I posted in my Quick Update. It shows water overflowing the East River. One carriageway of FDR Drive is underwater, as is E62nd St at the bottom of the picture

Water coming up E 62nd St. Note the police car blocking entrance to the street.

10pm update: the East River has indeed broken its banks. Joelle and I met at 6pm for drinks in the hotel bar by the lobby, and to eat our sandwiches. While we chatted, I could see the trees outside being thrown around in the wind. Leaving the bar about 9.30, there was quite a crowd by the door of the lobby looking out into the storm. Water was lapping up 62nd St: the overflow that had broken the banks of the river was nearly at the door of the hotel. Looking down from my room, I could see the path by the river swamped, and water in the road. A police car blocked access from York Ave via 62nd St to FDR Drive by the East River.

Tuesday

The water has receded from 62nd St with the tide, and all looks pretty normal. A couple of trees have blown over on York Avenue, but apart from that this morning is just like any other windy fall day.

The morning after. A dog walker passes a fallen tree on York Avenue

We've got off lightly.

I joined Joelle for breakfast. We had decided to go just up the way to the Ritz diner, a small place that she had been to previously and liked.

On the way there, it became clear to us that the hotel had been briefly surrounded by water. The basement car park had flooded; one guest I met said he had parked a brand new Cadillac there, and it sounded like a write-off.

The overflowing East River had reached as far as York Avenue. A couple of trees had snapped off, and we could see tiles missing from the apartment building opposite. But overall, the extent of the damage seemed minimal on the scale of things.

Breakfast counter at the Ritz Diner

Couples and the rain

Unsurprisingly, the Ritz was short-staffed, but at least they were open and serving breakfast. They had a process of very strict demand-management in place, so that there was a long line of customers waiting outside even though there were plenty of spaces inside. After waiting for maybe 20 minutes, we were seated. Although the staff were rushed off their feet, we were served pretty quickly. I filled up with an "Irish breakfast" (hash potatoes, sausage, two eggs, toast, coffee, orange juice). Joelle had a much healthier breakfast – oatmeal porridge.

Walking up to the lab past the Rockefeller University on York Avenue we found many small branches and much foliage on the ground, although thankfully few full-grown trees seem to have come down.

The lab itself was pretty much empty. Not even a security guard at the front lobby. So, Mohan, Joelle and I spent the morning talking alternately work and the state of the destruction. Another colleague, Xiuli, arrived later having driven in from Flushing. She left her husband to deal with the roof of the house: Sandy had taken away a third of their roof tiles. She normally takes the subway, but of course that was impossible.

As the day progressed, it became clearer and clearer just how much damage had been done to the fundamental infrastructure of Manhattan. There's no power down in the South end: the big ConEd substation in the East Village that had been built to withstand a record-breaking storm surge had been overwhelmed by the effect of Sandy and exploded, plunging the area below 39th St into darkness. The tunnels in out of Manhattan have been flooded and there is no prospect of the subway trains running in the immediate future, and no word about when they may ever run to capacity again.

Umbrellas by the Park. Incidentally, this looks like full daylight, but it was nearly dark. The D700 has done an amazing job with a tiny amount of light.

In the evening, I went for a walk across to Central Park and down Fifth Avenue. It was still raining, but the wind had abated. The park was closed. A few trees had come down, but certainly the park was not devastated.

Collapsed crane at 157 W 57th St. Hurricane Sandy caused the crane shown at the top of the picture to buckle over. The structure on top of the skyscraper in the centre of the picture is the crane. This picture was taken from the junction with 5th Ave. W 57th street, usually a very busy thoroughfare, was blocked off, and no-one was allowed near, in case the crane fell to the ground. HDR from 5 originals, shot at 1 stop intervals: the light was much darker than it looks.

The collapsed crane was a magnet for anyone with a camera.

Carrying further on down Fifth Avenue I ended up at the Rockefeller Centre, and wondered if the Top of the Rock was open. Sadly not. Not surprising, but a notice stuck to the entrance said it would not be open in the immediate future because of Sandy.

The TV once I got back to hotel was uniformly full of the devastation wrought by Sandy, to the point that I could watch no more.

Wednesday

This morning, the news reports are still full of devastation. New Jersey has been hit very, very badly. Fires have broken out in Queens and many houses been destroyed. The death toll continues to rise.

Where I am, we have been very, very lucky. Very lucky indeed. We have power, and we did not lose so much as a window from this hotel.

People had driven into Manhattan to get to work in the absence of public transportation. There was total gridlock on 2nd Avenue, with a couple of people screaming at each other after a minor collision between their vehicles.

The slowness of transport became clear when Xiuli appeared at about 1 o'clock. She and her husband had set off from home in Flushing several hours earlier, only to abandon the attempt to drive in to Manhattan before getting to the 59th Street bridge. Her husband turned round and went home, leaving her to walk across the bridge and up to the lab. She arrived with very sore feet. Other stragglers appeared in the lab at similar times, having set off for their normal half to 1 hour commute at 7.30 and arriving not less than four or five hours later.

Nevertheless, in this part of Manhattan at least there is a sense that normality is resumed. Businesses are working again and the only departure from routine here is the lack of public transport. Below 34th Street though it's a different story with power still out and hospitals having to be evacuated as their own internal generators progressively fail.

Thursday morning

I'm due to fly home this evening. I was able to check-in online with Virgin Atlantic on my phone last night in the hotel. I still can't get Internet on my laptop in the hotel, but the AT&T 4G on my phone works just fine.

JFK has reopened, and there's no indication online that there's any problems with my flight (wood firmly touched).

MTA.info has stated that the F subway line has reopened: this will take me out to Kew Gardens, well on the way to JFK, and the Q10 bus will take me from there. Even though it is much longer than my usual E train to the airport,  it is an easy enough route.

The sun has come out, and the weather looks gorgeous. At dawn, a mackerel sky briefly turned red as the sun rose. Light is now reflecting across from the tall buildings.  What a day to be over on Roosevelt Island photographing the dawn again! But I had to pack, and reluctantly missed the light.

Friday

Home again. There's not much more to say except that the flight home was as normal - completely uneventful.

The only point of note is that I didn't take the F train in the end. I tried to get the subway at 63rd/Lexington and could not even get on the platform. It seemed like the whole population of Queens was waiting there: people were saying they'd been there for an hour with no train appearing. I had a plane to catch so there was only one option: try to get a taxi. As it happened that was very easy, and once out of Manhattan, it was one of the quickest rides I've ever had to JFK. Strict car pooling had been introduced to try to ease congestion, i.e. no car is allowed into Manhattan with less than three passengers, and that made an immense difference.

JFK was buried under a mass of people, but fully functional. I think the airlines were laying on as much capacity as possible to get people moving. I had come out on a small aircraft carrying about 260 passengers (I didn't make a note: I think an A330-343), but came back on a much larger aircraft (747-400).

As a final point, I'd just like to note again the amazing resilience of New York and its population. After the worst hurricane damage in living memory, the city began to get back on its feet tremendously quickly. Businesses reopened, and as soon as possible the MTA began to get operational again (even if I didn't get to use it!). The flooded Brooklyn-Battery tunnel is being pumped out with help from the Army engineers, and should be operational again soon. Little touches of self-sufficiency showed through: as a small example, Adorama (a well-known camera shop on W18th St) set up a charging station where people could bring in their battery powered items (cell phones, laptops etc) to get them working again. Small consolation to the people of neighbouring Staten Island, which has been wrecked, but for those who can leave the ruins of their homes to go to work, the Staten Island Ferry is working again.

I'll leave this blog entry at this point.

Boston.com has a terrific compilation of pictures of the devastation Sandy wrought. A Flickr group has been set up to compile pictures from the storm.