Items tagged with 'photos'
Captured Moments at the Albany Institute
A circus parade in Albany during the 1880s.
The Albany Institute opens a new exhibit this weekend -- Captured Moments: 170 Years of Photography from the Albany Institute -- that includes a sampling from the museum's extensive collection of photographs. It's on display through May 21.
We got a quick tour of the exhibit Friday as curators were still putting the finishing touches on the displays. The photos cover a wide range of topics, from portraits, to historical scenes, to cityscapes, to interiors, to workplaces, to travel photos. There's even an photo a seemingly badass bowling club from Arbor Hill. (Nobody rolls like the The Maples!)
Doug McCombs, the Albany Institute's chief curator, said the museum has tens of thousands of photos -- dating back to the 1840s, near the beginning of the medium -- and they're probably its most popular collection. Captured Moments is intended sampling of sorts.
"It's a way to show the breadth of our collection," he said.
Here are a handful of photos of from the exhibit...
Floating above the Rensselaer County landscape
This is like a short midday vacation: Check out this aerial video of autumnal and winter scenes from the Rensselaer County landscape by filmmaker Nate Simms. And the accompanying music by Rosary Beard makes it even dreamier.
You might remember Nate Simms from the documentary Brunswick a few years back.
[via Deanna]
Santa Speedo Sprint 2015 photos
Spoiler alert: She said yes.
Mele Kalikimaka. The weather for this year's Santa Speedo Sprint on Saturday wasn't exactly Hawaii, but at nearly 60 degrees It was a lot less chilly than the Capital Region's swimsuit clad runners are accustom to.
This was the tenth year for the Speedo Sprint, organized by by the Albany Society for the Advancement of Philanthropy as fundraiser for the Albany Damien Center and the HIV/AIDS program at the Albany Medical Center. This year's sprint brought out 250 runners, hundreds of spectators and raised $13,000.
As always, a good time was had by all. But this year's event included a romantic surprise.
Here's a look at the scene...
Santa Speedo Sprint 2014 photos
Saturday's weather was miserable -- cold, rainy, the kind of day when snow might have actually been more welcome.
But there were still plenty of smiles and laughing and cheering at the Santa Speedo Sprint on Lark Street. It was the 9th year for the event organized by by the Albany Society for the Advancement of Philanthropy as fundraiser for the Albany Damien Center and the HIV/AIDS program at the Albany Medical Center. This year's sprint raised $7,000.
It was great to see so many people out there again, having fun and raising money.
Here are a bunch of photos from this year's sprint...
The snowflake photographer: Holly Greene
"We always look for big, giant, flashy things to make us happy, and sometimes it's the small things -- the tiniest beauty."
Holly Greene was having a rough day.
She had been out grocery shopping and was lugging her packages home, trudging back and forth from the car to the house. In the snow. She was tired and frustrated. Then something happened that changed not only her day, but her art, and, a little bit, her world view.
Holly caught a glimpse of a snowflake that had landed on her jacket. A tiny, perfect snowflake.
"It was just so perfectly formed," she says, "that it stopped me in my tracks."
The Saratoga Springs-based photographer grabbed her camera and focused in on it the best she could. The result was the first of many photos for the artist and wedding photographer who now bills herself as The Snowflake Photographer.
Holly tore herself away from last week's November snowstorm to talk about the art, science, and philosophy of the snowflake.
Visions of a Capital Region after us
From John Bulmer's Reclaimed series.
Have you ever wondered what the Capital Region would look like if everyone just disappeared? Whether it was from zombie apocalypse or mass exodus, the landscape would certainly change if we weren't around to mold and maintain it.
Photographer John Bulmer has taken this idea and turned it into two series of remarkable of photo illustrations. His Reclaimed series imagines an abandoned Capital Region landscape after a catastrophic situation. The Dark City series is a little more peaceful, imagining how our region would look at night without artificial light from sources such as buildings and streetlights.
The images in both series are eerily believable.
The Meade Brothers' daguerreian gallery
The Brothers Meade, Charles (left) and Henry.
Photography is so ubiquitous now -- almost everyone carries around some sort of camera in their pocket -- that it's a bit difficult to imagine a time when it was a new and rare. That to be a photographer was to be on the avant garde of art and technology.
As it happens, two of the earliest famous photographers were from Albany: Henry and Charles Meade.
Looking up State Street, almost a century ago
An old view that was once new.
The Albany Institute shared this photo on Twitter this week -- it's a look up State Street in Albany in 1917, from the Delaware & Hudson Railroad Building. (The institute has a bunch of photos from its collection online.)
We always love to gawk at old photos and this one's no different. Three things about it:
+ Construction of the D&H building (now the SUNY central administration building) spanned from 1914 to 1915. So, in some sense, this view had only existed for about two years when the photo was taken. Because before that, there wasn't a tower from which to take the photo.
+ Look down toward the bottom of the photo, on the left side, near where State Street meets Broadway. See that awning and the restaurant sign? That appears to be right where the awning for Jack's is today. Jack's didn't move to that spot until 1937, but it looks like there was a restaurant there even at the time of this photo.
+ The streetcar tracks are visible on the roads in the photo, and there's a horse-drawn cart on Broadway. But also look closely along the sides of State Street -- yep, cars. (The Model T was about a decade old at this point.) And they're parking along State Street much in the same way they still are almost a century later.
There's a large-format, uncropped version of the photo after the jump.
A view from above, back then
We were poking around the online collections from the State Library this afternoon looking for something else when we came across this aerial photograph of Albany before the Empire State Plaza was built. It's from 1948. It made us think of the 1910 map overlay of Albany -- then over now -- that B sent along earlier this week, and some of the comments.
Anyway, there are three more photos:
+ From behind the Smith building
+ Looking north from the South End
+ And another, wider shot also from the South End -- in this one you can really see what would become the ESP's footprint (look for the Smith Building and the the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception).
photo: New York State Archives, Aerial photographic prints and negatives of New York State sites, 1941-1957
Bullseye
The Sage Colleges Library shared this photo the other day and it made us smile. It's from a 1937 archery class at Russell Sage College.
The photo is from a collection of Sage archival photos maintained online by the New York Heritage Project. A few more examples: a photo from a circa 1940 auto mechanics class, and working the in the lab during the 1920s.
We're a little disappointed our college education didn't include archery.
Whoosh... by a nose
We're always a sucker for the photo finish pics from the Track. The photos make the horses look like they're traveling in warp or something. Like, whoosh! (Here's a bit about how they're taken.)
The photo above is from the finish of the Travers this past Saturday. Will Take Charge just nosed out Moreno for the win.
Numbers
Speaking of things that make our heads warp a little bit: wrapping our them around the amount of money bet on the races. NYRA reported that the "all sources handle" -- the total amount bet, wherever people were placing bets -- was $41,363,760 for the Travers Day races at the Saratoga Race Course. That was up 13 percent over last year's total. The on-track handle -- the amount bet by the 47,597 people actually at the Track: $9,672,249.
Yep, the Saratoga Race Course advertises on AOA.
photo: NYRA
A collection of moments from Saratoga
Over at the Elario Photography blog they've posted a beautiful photoset of shots from the Saratoga Race Course by "Big Joe" Elario, taken over the last three years. The set includes a lot of good moments.
Browsing through the photos is like a 3-minute trip to the Track.
Today's moment of summer
The technical term: crepuscular rays, from a Latin word for twilight.
Jessica captured this sunset photo on Central Ave in Albany Tuesday.
We're pretty sure we hear a choir singing when we look at this image.
In the the park with the tulips
Check it out: An aerial view of the tulip beds near the Moses statue in Washington Park. The image above is just a section of the photo. We've also embedded a large, zoomable version of the whole photo.
The photo was taken by Robert Eastman. His company -- Ground Aerial -- takes low-altitude aerial images using a 60-foot extendable mast topped with camera equipment. As he said to us in an email today: "[W]e were in Albany on Tuesday working on a project. Since the weather forecast for this weekend doesn't look so great, I thought I'd stop by Washington Park and enjoy the tulips on a nice sunny day. I couldn't rest breaking out the equipment and getting a panoramic shot from the air."
(Thanks, Robert!)
Night trains
Schaghticoke, July 2012.
This Friday as part of Troy Night Out local photographer William Gill will be at Anchor No. 5 talking about his collection of train photos taken at night -- and how he does it. William explains in an email:
A few years ago, Troy resident Jim Shaughnessy released a new railroad photography book and I saw his night photographs from the 1950s for the first time. Very inspiring work. So much so that I went out and started shooting at night. The first photos were pretty terrible but they got much better quickly. Soon, I started wandering the capital region (and beyond), doing large lighting setups along the tracks, capturing some of our unique scenery and built environment. Working at night allows me to capture images from the half the day that few see and also to photograph some scenes that would be difficult to under sunlight.
The process is unbelievably slow, which is as much a reaction to the complaints about digital photography and the ubiquity of cameras as it is anything else - if everyone has a camera, I want to make images that few others would try to make. In the end, slowing down the photography has been very rewarding - while many chase trains from their car and shoot photos from a few, well-worn locations, I'm able to spend all night setting up in hard to reach locations. ...if I'm only going to get one shot in a night, why not spend an hour paddling a canoe full of lighting gear to a remote location?
His website includes a bunch of photos, along with backstories and some of the unusual setups he uses.
photo: William Gill
Traces
For no other reason than we like the way they look: photos of the traces recently left by ice skates on Albany's Buckingham Pond.
Here's a set of five in large format.
Earlier on AOA: Tiny, frozen bubbles
Winter in Schenectady, then
Above is a 1916 photo of ice skaters in Schenectady's Central Park. Make sure to check out the large version. The picture makes us smile -- the big crowd of people all out on the the frozen lake, like it was the place to be that day.
The photo is from a collection at the Grems-Doolittle Library and Archives at the Schenectady County Historical Society. The library also has a blog, which includes a handful of other interesting winter-time Schenectady photos -- like one showing harness racing on a frozen Erie Canal.
The blog is good -- we got sucked into it for longer than we'd like to admit yesterday. It includes some great historical materials. Definitely worth a look.
Researching old houses
Speaking of the Schenectady County Historical Society: The Grems-Doolittle Library is offering a workshop on researching the story of old houses on February 16 from 2-4 pm. Blurbage: "Join us and discover the resources in our library available for researching the history of your home, neighborhood, and the people who lived there. This workshop will also include time to conduct research in the library." The workshop is $5. Contact librarian Melissa Tacke for more info -- 374-0263, or librarian |at| schist |dot| org.
From the hillside in Troy, in winter
Venkata sent along this photo after a recent snowfall -- it's from the 9th floor of a building at RPI. We like the streaks formed by the traffic on 787 Route 7 as it heads off into the background.
We're a bit envious of the view from his office.
Here's a large-format version, along with one more photo.
(Thanks, Venkata)
Santa Speedo Sprint 2012 photos
It's important to stretch your body suit before sprinting.
The 2012 Santa Speedo Sprint raced down Lark Street Saturday.
As in years past, it was another fun time. Lots of smiles. And the Albany Society for the Advance of Philanthropy raised a lot of money for the Albany Damien Center and the AIDS/HIV programs at Albany Medical Center -- $17,500.
Here are a whole bunch of photos from this year's sprint...
Troy Victorian Stroll 2012 photos
And the balloon man was there again.
It was fun walking around the Victorian Stroll in Troy Sunday. Lots of strollers (both types), people in Victoriana, street performers, decorated windows.
One of the good things about the stroll is the way it highlights downtown Troy's assets -- the walkable, compact grid; the beautiful architecture; the interesting shop spaces.
Here are a bunch of photos from the afternoon...
The Empire State Plaza, from above
If ever you've wondered: "What would it be like to fly a remote controlled plane with a an HD camera near the ESP?" -- wonder no longer.
The embedded clip above was posted on YouTube this past February by user IloveSPIDERZ. The plane takes off in Lincoln Park, and fights what appears to some very strong wind (motion sickness!) while flying near the south end of the plaza. It's a long clip, but you can get a pretty good sense of it from a minute or two.
(Thanks, Carl)
Tangentially, elsewhere: If I Fly a UAV Over My Neighbor's House, Is It Trespassing? [The Atlantic]
Color Me Rad photos
When we mentioned the Color Me Rad 5k at the Altamont Fairgrounds awhile back, it looked like it could be fun. It also looked like it could be messy. It appears to have been both!
Sebastien's posted a bunch of photos from the this past weekend's race (full photo set). That's one of them above.
Lots of technicolor smiles. (Probably less for the traffic.) [@MaryRozak]
photo: Sebastien Barre
Please don't set your dorm room on fire
Some things pretty much go without saying, so if you're going to say something about them, you might as well go big.
The Albany Fire Department set a simulated dorm room on fire at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences on Thursday to demonstrate how quickly a fire can engulf a room. The answer -- in case it's on a test -- is: fast, about a minute. [YNN]
Amy's posted a photoset from the demonstration.
(Thanks, Amy)
photo: Amy Wilson
Capturing the Adirondacks
"The Way it Looks from the Stern Seat"
An exhibit of work by early 1900s Adirondack photographer Seneca Ray Stoddard opened Friday at the State Museum. Blurbage:
Seneca Ray Stoddard: Capturing the Adirondacks is open through February 24, 2013 in Crossroads Gallery. It includes over 100 of Stoddard's photographs, an Adirondack guideboat, freight boat, camera, copies of Stoddard's books and several of his paintings. There also are several Stoddard photos of the Statue of Liberty and Liberty Island. These and other items come from the State Museum's collection of more than 500 Stoddard prints and also from the collections of the New York State Library and the Chapman Historical Museum in Glens Falls.
The museum says it's the first time it's exhibited these photos from its collection. It's also created
Stoddard himself is an interesting story. He was born in Wilton in 1844, and started his career as an ornamental painter at a railroad car factory in Green Island. Stoddard was one of the first people to photograph the Adirondacks, using a method that sounds like a tremendous hassle. His photos and guidebooks played a big part in making the Adirondacks a tourist destination.
It's interesting to us think about what motivates someone to basically drag an entire dark room through the Adirondacks. It makes sense. There's something about photographing a place and telling other people you were there that's a very strong draw -- even today. Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram are full of place photos. It's just a lot easier now.
We wonder what he would have done with an iPhone.
Look out, Loudonville!
He Who Shall Not Be Named?
Check out this photo Jessica sent along from Wednesday's storm.
She emails: "I took this photo before the storm tonight outside of our home in Loudonville. Didn't notice the face in the clouds until a little later. ... I posted it on my Facebook and instagram and now I can't believe I didn't take the picture because of the demon cloud! It is super creepy."
Yikes! It's like Voldemort looking down on Loudonville, or something.
... said KGB about Drawing: What's something that brought you joy this year?