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For Valentine’s Day this year, Annie and I cooked a nice, romantic meal in the comfort of our own home, without having to deal with reservations, bad service and swooning lovebirds in crowded restaurants. Our homemade dinner was coffee-rubbed ribeye steak, with mashed potatoes ‘n’ gravy, broccoli rabe and some organic sparkling pear juice (because Annie is a lightweight). The highlight of the night was doing the dishes together (although Annie insisted that she did most of them) and…we spent the rest of the evening atop the Empire State Building (on the 86th floor), and joined all the lovebirds we avoided at dinner. It was really, really cold so we periodically ducked back into the enclosed indoor observatory area. I took some decent shots when the wind slowed down. Looking at the glowing city below from this altitude gives you the illusion that you are flying thought the sky.
All photographs were shot in Raw Format with a Canon 50D.
I used the 16mm – 35mm f/2.8 Lens at ISO 400.
Photos of the city were shot using Shutter Speed Priority (TV or S) at 30 seconds.
The portraits were shot using the pop-up flash, set to Shutter Speed Priority (TV or S) at 1/5 of a second.
Flash was set to "2nd Curtain Sync".
I used my DIY pop-up flash diffuser to help control the flash output.
Post processed with Aperture and Photoshop CS4.
This is the view of the Empire State Building from my office window. I thought it was already quite spectacular, until…
…I saw this view of the city from the Empire State Building. Talk about breathtaking.
This is the uptown view from the observatory deck on the 86th floor.
You are looking at some of the city’s taller buildings from NYC’s tallest edifice.
Southside: can you see the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Verrazano bridges?
Here’s another view of the downtown side (south). Don’t they look like little Lego buildings?
On the far left, the brightest street is 5th Avenue, at the junction where it intersects Broadway is
the Flatiron Building.
No visit to any great landmark will be complete without some kind of documented proof of our presence. Here’s Annie’s.
The temperature was in the high 30′s at ground level. Up here, low 20′s with the infamous NYC wind chill factor. It was REALLY cold.
From inside the observatory– where it was very warm.
Here’s my best side.
Playing around with some vintage coloring.
I’m not angry. Just cold.
This picture is the result of someone taking our picture but didn’t know how to use my camera. Sigh…
Tags: 14th, 2nd, 86th, birdseye, breathtaking, Bridge, bridges, Brooklyn, building, buildings, cold, couples, curtain, day, downtown, empire, Empire State Building, ESB, february, flash, flatiron building, floor, high, love, manhattan, metlife building, Night, observatory, Panoramic, promenade, Sky, skyscraper, spectacular, state, stunning, sync, tall, uptown, valentine's, Verrazano, view, windy, winter
