When I was growing up in New York City, one of the great charms was the beauty of the city at night.  Where I grew up there was a spectacular view of the Empire State Building, which is gorgeously lit in various colors to celebrate specific holidays.  I posted a while back some images that I took of the City at night in the rain. But something that was really technically unthinkable back then was night time aerial photography, by which I mean from a moving plane or helicopter.  Films were just plain to slow to produce anything but a streaky blur.

Today I came across some truly spectacular aerial images of NYC taken from a helicopter by photographer Vincent Laforet. So here is a great example of better living through technology: high speed lenses, high ISO digital camera settings, and gyroscopic mounts.  Did I mention the part about hanging by a harness out of an open helicopter window at 7500 feet. And what I truly love is the mixture of street lights (sodium vapor lamps casting an intense yellow light) and other lights creating wonderful iridescent, pastel blues and purples.  These are truly magical photographs. And yes, I even found an image with a view of the apartment that I grew up in.  I like the series that I linked above because I think these images look best against a black background – a personal preference.  But if you want to see more of Laforet’s images, I recommend a visit to his website, which has the added advantage that you can see his other work as well.  Bravo!

If you are looking for the ultimate apocalyptic image be sure to check out this week’s image by Shah Marai/AFP showing Afghan children selling water and searching for customers at the Kart-e-Sakhi cemetery in Kabul, Afghanistan.  This image operates beautifully and creepily at so many different levels, as to be genius.  There is the dusty lifelessness of the graves, the children not just as water bearers in a literal sense but in a mythically sense as well – libation bearers to offer quench the unquenchable thirst of the dead.  Yikes! And if that isn’t enough, look at what the boy in the foreground is wearing.  Is that Santa Claus on his sweatshirt?

Yesterday I spoke about braving the cold of January.  I guess that this segues nicely into the theme of those who take it all in stride,  those who realish the cold, those who embrace January’s icy grip with a New Year’s Day plunge into a lake, river, or ocean.  The Northern Hemisphere abounds with such intrepid lunatics, and NBC News has assembled a wonderful series of this years plungers.

I love all of these images.  But special mention has to go to Charles Mcquillan of Getty Images from his photograph of superwoman Angela McClements in mid dive into the harbor of Carnlough, Northern Ireland. This is an annual event in support of Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus charities.

A while back I wrote about what I like and don’t like about Facebook photography user groups. A couple of months ago someone on one of these group suggested that I take a look at www.youpic.com. In youpic you get a page of your own (this link will take you to mine)and then you build up your portfolio. Youpic is based on the tweeter: tweet and retweet model. You post an image and people can look at it, they can like it, and they can repic it onto their page. And if they like your stuff a lot they can follow you. So once again, we have the sorry theme that popularity breeds success. Oh and you get awards as you build you popularity – boring – since it would appear that it is only a matter of time as long as you keep posting.

That said, the number of people looking at your images is huge. And part of that relates to the home page approach and part of that relates to the fact that as people discover you they go through your portfolio. What I do is look at who likes my images and then explore their images. I like what I like and if I find that I consistently like them, I follow that person. And in this was I discover lots and lots of images that I love. Fill your day with beautiful images. Life can be beautiful!

There is a place to comment, but I don’t find it to be all that active and my biggest problem with youpic is that I have not figured out either how to edit a mistake once posted or even how to remove an image. We should all complain about that as soon as we figure out how.

But as I said, if your goal is to add photographic beauty to your life, this site is for you. I have discovered an important corollary statistic. 80% of the people whose photographs I admire on youpic have posted photographs of their cats! This speaks to a deep inner beauty and sensitivity.

Before the Ghost of Christmas past have passed us by, and this past Christmas has become a faded memory, I wanted to draw everyone’s attention to a very clever photoshopping piece by Peter Macdiarmid of Getty Images/ Hudson/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive. Mr. Macdiarmid has carefully merged antique images of Christmas with contemporary ones taken at the same location.  The piece raises the very significant point that in place there is both timelessness and change.  And of course, the whole concept turns itself around, when you realize that today is (or will someday) be in the past.

Some years ago I went to Rome, and we purchased this little souvenir book that had photographs of the ancient sights.  Overlaying each of these was a plastic sheet which was a painting that took the site back two thousand years to ancient Roman times. I was struck both by the ambiguity of the ephemeral and the permanent nature of things – of human experience and vision.  We tend to think of change as transition, but as these images the ones in my guidebook and the ones created by Peter Macdiarmid, illustrate change is in a sense a diffusive or random process, a brick is removed, a brick remains. On a dark winter’s day people still bustle in Trafalgar Square under the watchful eye of London policemen.

Some years ago I found myself in Tutzing, am Starnberger See, and Munich just before Christmas.  It was a sort of revelation, a transportation into an old world Christmas. And really everything was like a picture postcard.  Particularly memorable was the Christmas Market, walking along in a thin layer of snow, bright lights in the stalls, beautiful Bavarian glass decorations for sale, and lots of yummy things to snack on.  Maybe it was the beer, but the whole scene was magical.

This morning I was sitting down to write today’s post and I was focusing on gloomy things.  It has, as I have said, been a particularly depressing year.  But then I came across this beautiful photoessay by Andy Eckhardt for NBC News on the German Christmas Markets.  I was delighted and cheered by the images particularly by two.  First, there are the children gleefully looking at a display of Christmas cookies. Second, is this attractive smiling Christmas angel walking among the crowd in the Christkindelmarkt in Nuremberg.

So for a few moments this morning, I saw the world through the eyes of a child.  Such is the magic of photographic imagery. It is a world filled with awesome cookies and beautiful smiles.  And while, I know that I will soon wake up to the cold of morning, I find myself wishing that we could bottle these wonderful feelings and maybe ship them out around the world to melt the evil doers. Such is the magic of photography.

If you want to avoid the gruesome in the year’s photographic bests then it’s worth a visit to the National Geographic Photocontest 2014 site.  I am hugely taken by Grand Prize and People Winner “A Node Glows in the Dark” by Brian Yen, taken in the Hong Kong subway.  It speaks of isolation and at the same time connectedness, and certainly reflects on modern social norms.  The glow of the woman’s cell phone pictorially emphasizes her as if to cast a spotlight.  She is occupied at least in some form of social interaction. The other passengers bear the see-through-you stare of well-trained subway riders. And the ethereal blue glow creates a science fiction tone to the image.  Are we in the subway or perhaps on “The Matrix?“ Indeed, the concept of each of us being a node in a massive communication network is the central theme here.  In intimate contact, but all alone.  It is the strange ambivalence of modernity.

It is time to explore not merely the “Best Pictures of the Week” but the “Best Pictures of the Year.”  I spent some time yesterday looking at NBC News’ rendition of the best news photographs of the year, and got to revisit all of the miserable news of the year.  Things do appear to be going to hell “in a hand basket!” What can I tell you. The only good news images seem to involve baby pandas and sports competitions.

A couple of these photographs are really worth mentioning from a photographic view point.  Case in point is the haunting photograph by Justin Sullivan from Getty Images of a protester at a demonstration in Ferguson, Missouri. “Black Lives Matter.” The bright outline of the shadowy figure and the way in which the police cruiser’s lights seem to pass right through him, confirms the fact that this is truly Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”  He is there, but we see through him and are left to wonder whether it is really possible, a hundred and fifty years after emancipation to still live in so dichotomous a society.

Figure 1 – Photograph by Michelle Bogre for the U.S. Information Agency, ca. 1978

I believe that there is an inherent dignity to labor.  And today, labor is underappreciated and under attack.  This afternoon, I came upon a simply amazing online exhibition about American labor from the U.S. National Archives.  Unfortunately, the original exhibition was in 2005, unfortunately because I wish that I could have seen it.  But in these online images there is something truly wonderful and really it is worth a visit to the site  – The Way We Worked: Photographs from the National Archives.  I’ve included a couple of images here.

Figure 1 is a photograph by Michelle Bogre for the U.S. Information Agency showing “Jean Schnelle pulls weeds out of a planter while balancing her six-month-old son, Dwight, on her hip.”  It was taken in Lockwood Missouri, ca. 1978.  When I first saw this it gave me the shudders.  Farming is one of the most dangerous professions.  But really?

And then there are the truly dangerous professions.  Figure 2 comes from the General Records of the U.S. Department of Labor, and was taken by an unknown photographer in an unknown location on May 23, 1958.  It shows nurses being instructed on the use of a respirator for polio victims.  A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking with an intensive care nurse at our local hospital about the hospital’s preparedness for ebola patients and about the degree of her training to deal with such cases.  This photograph reminded me of that conversation.  Some years ago, I saw a documentary about polio, and they interviewed a woman about her experiences with the disease as a young child.  She talked about the terror and about everyone being in white coats and trying not to touch her.  She asked if someone would hold her hand, there was a pause and then a nurse took her hand.  That is the dignity of human labor.

Figure 2 – Nurses being trained in the use of a respirator to treat polio victims, May 23, 1958, photographer unknown. From the archives of the U.S. Department of Labor.