NYSE 

How can I explain or describe my feelings when I got off the subway and opened my eyes for the first time in the financial district? I can hardly find the words. You have to figure out it was my first morning in the US, my first morning in New York. New York… a dream, I always wanted to go to New York : the City of Woody Allen, the place where Harry and Sally became friends, where King-Kong climbed on the Empire State Building,… Manhattan, Harlem, West Side Story. And suddenly you are in the middle of the place you ever wanted to see… It was early morning, almost 6AM as we left the Nassau Subway station. It was raining. The kind of rain that does not hit your face (that came later), no just small tiny drops. Huge buildings that seemed lost their heads into the clouds. I was…, all I was able to do was to look all around me without saying a single word… Ulli was searching for our standing point on her city map. A guy came straight to her and helped us. Actually we were looking for an other subway station. And off we go, going down the street, turning right and left and BING ! We stood right in front of the New York Stock Exchange. It hit me. The economical (recovering or agonising) heart of the world : 1929, 2009, subprimes… From this moment on, New York became real, in my reality. In my life. Before that one moment, that was outside my life, now it is in. I could see the building I already knew only thru the papers. Wow! Welcome in New York!


Just a few words about the picture I have made. I used 2 cameras (D40x and D80) with my sigma 17/75mm and my nikkor fisheye10,5mm. The weather conditions were very bad : no contrast, no strong colours. Once I found the interesting angle, I needed some guys in order to make it more alive. I made a few trials, the one with the woman with her umbrella is OK. Maybe the second woman – see down right - is not so well. Hum… The pictures where a little to dark with a pronounced blue hue. Photoshop helped a lot : more yellow, more contrast, I enhanced the reds. The sky looked sadly white. I cleared it and made a new one. This part was actually the most difficult job, it had to look natural. In the meanwhile I practiced a lot and have some good results at it. I am pretty satisfied with the B&W version for which I used the channel mixer.

NYSE, New York, June 2009