rimpl.photo

In February 2025 my wife and me took the chance to take an entire week off. As at that time of the year we usually go for a city trip, we chose our destination NYC as we imagined that this city would be worth more than just a long weekend. And yes, we were right. Even after a week when we were a some kind of exhausted the list of places and things not yet visited was far away from being exhausted.

This breathtaking town was the most impressive city trip among all cities that I have visited in the past.

We arrived in the early afternoon at JFK and the queue at the immigration authorities was a real test of patience. For 2 full aeroplanes the initially 5 desks were opened… but during our ore than 2 hours of waiting tie this number reduced to 2 

Finally, and with a considerable delay, our patient driver picked us up and drove us in full rush hour from the airport to Manhattan. The weather was not good and in the low hanging clouds the skyscrapers disappeared. 

The endless sidewalls of buildings on both side of the road were like an artificial canyon.

This was a strange experience for us Europeans as in our cities you can find some tall buildings but never have these long canyons with architectural, manmade sidewalls.

When we arrived at our hotel for check-in  the afternoon was finished and so were we as on the flight we didn’t really find sleep.

Around 7 p.m. we walked in a mixture of snow and rain some streets north with destination Times Square. We had a small dinner in a Chinese street restaurant and then returned to our hotel falling asleep at 8 p.m.

And the next day our NYC discovery trip began, first day with rain and the following days dry but partly with a cold wind and freezing temperatures. Each few hours we had a warmup in a coffee shop. 

The winter sun creates a magnificent lighting in the canyons with long shadows and impressive reflections from the more recent buildings mostly having mirrored facades. The amount of impressions was excessive and impossible to capture on photo.

Concerning my photographic equipment I was lucky to have the 24mm aspherical Elmarit with me, very usable in narrow cityscapes, still allowing a composition without too much distortion. The resolution and sharpness of this lens was not the listing factor with my 40 MP M10-R. Even if I use this lens only from time to time I consider it as a real keeper… os mich that I bought a second one in silver which attaches better with my camera bodies.

The second lens was the Summilux-M 1:1.4/35 ASPH. Nothing to say… perfect performance and the APO-Summicron 1:2/75 ASPH. A perfect lens, too.

Then, for adding more character and less sharpness to the composition, the Noctilux-M 1:1.2/50 ASPH comlpeted my camera outfit. 

I like this lens, even on the 40 MP it performs well. It has still a reasonable size and used fully open renders pictures with a special character. 

Our days were active. We kept our daily rhythm somewhere in between European and US East Coast time and got up early, at the opening of breakfast serving and came back to our hotel not too late. As it was February this was not difficult because the sun sets at half past five,

Concerning my photos - just have a look, it is a panoply of impressions. Of course Architecture is an omnipresent subject but also street, people and the little details that probably New Yorkers even would not realise because for them it’s so natural.

Let yourself get inspired and enjoy. 

I my picture of the Empire State Building I used for one of the very few times the masking tool as a crane far behind the ESB just „peered“ into the sky beside the building.

And another tool that I have used for the first tie is Adobe Lightroom’s AI denoising used at some of the sunset pictures taken on the Empire State Building - impressive functions.

But as for me the authenticity of a picture is something I really care about I use these tools only homoeopathically. Probably some of you have a different opinion. This is goo because it is part of the richness of our photographer’s community. Photographers are similar to medical doctors: In front of the same subject everybody would come to a different interpretation of the same reality ;-)