PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: I call a shot that under half-way decent lighting conditions sets itself up so naturally and so easily that one must be blind to miss it "a postcard shot.” It is an instant cliché. Many lie undiscovered, but others are known everywhere - are made into real postcards. The visitor center at Mt. Rushmore is so placed that, through all kinds of weather, every tourist with a camera owns the shot while photographers look hard to see something more.
The view from Liberty Park is similar. It is so placed that if one knows where to look, one can see from the mouth of the East River and Battery Park to the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan to the Empire State Building on 34th Street, the Met Life and Chrysler Buildings on 42nd Street, to the suddenly famous, “pencil thin,” apartment tower on 57th Street, and including any new towers that sprout. Liberty Park offers, arguably, the ultimate NYC “postcard shot” - New York’s ultimate cliché? That didn’t stop me from standing in awe and then adding my own photographic moment to the river of such images.
A happy Fourth of July to all.
2 comments:
But because of it's near-letterbox crop, Ted, it's the kind of postcard many would love to send to their family and friends. Have you thought about submitting it for sale?
Do people still send postcards in the age of tweets?
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