New York, New York (Pictures Day 14)

In summary: New York City had a life of it’s own in my head. In early August 2016, I visited there for the first time. On the first afternoon we visited Central Park and were there for hours, despite the jet lag. Day One started with a tour of the Intrepid and the Space Shuttle Enterprise, followed by the full two and a half hour cruise around Manhattan – south down the Hudson River into the Upper Harbor, up the East River under the “BMW” bridges, past Midtown and the UN, into the Harlem River, back south into the Hudson River, underneath the George Washington Bridge, past Grant’s Tomb, and finally back into port. To finish Day Two we had a death march to find a cab, went to the Mets game, left early only to miss the best part, and inadvertently stiffed a nice cab driver. Bright & early on Day Three we headed out toward Liberty Island.

Since we didn’t have tickets to go up into the base of the Statue or up to the crown, we did a walk around the island to see Miss Liberty.

It’s not that big of an island. We did the whole thing in about forty minutes and we were taking it slow and steady because: A) the heat and humidity were killers, and; B) I of course was taking pictures about every ten feet with five different cameras.

See those people up there on that next level up? They knew to get tickets a few weeks in advance.

Imagine what it was like for immigrants in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to come into New York Harbor and see this. There’s no wonder that it’s such an iconic symbol of our country and what we stand for.

Without getting too political (that’s for my other site), if we want to continue to be the society that we’ve worked for the last four hundred years to become, we need to continue to stand for those things.

I don’t know that it’s possible to take a bad picture with this subject matter.

I think the worst that would happen would be people saying, “What a lousy photographer, he must have worked hard to take a picture this bad – but jeez, doesn’t that Statue look gorgeous? Wow!”

While it was hotter than hell and twice as muggy, the clouds made for a perfect backdrop.

Nice lens flare, I like it.

The Statue of Liberty doesn’t have a bad side. Period.