A Day in Manhattan: The Flatiron Building

We took advantage of the nice weather this morning while visiting New York to stroll around Manhattan with my editor at B&H, Chris Gampat—who had the day off since the offices are closed for Passover. Chris was a font of knowledge on neighborhood trivia and great places to eat as well as some of the good photo opps. One of my personal favorites is the iconic Flatiron building…

Designed to fit into an oddly shaped triangular wedge of a block the early skyscraper puzzles onlookers who wonder what life in the thin corner rooms must be like. The area in front of the building is now a plant and table filled plaza which was full of New Yorkers enjoying on of the first warm days of this spring.

Unfortunately we’d lost the warm light we’d had earlier in the morning and the sky behind the building had turned an unappealing off-white, but at least the fact that it was backlit from the plaza side would be muted by the clouds. The flatness of the sky is saved because it helps to accentuate the lines of the building and doesn’t detract from the splashes of color in the foreground.

The high overcast also provides an interesting effect—almost like an HDR shot. In fact I did shoot an HDR sequence of the same scene and it wound up looking very similar (although of course it had lots of ghosting from the moving people so the single shot version is much sharper and more realistic in this case)