Monday, October 29, 2012

For years I have been riding by bike through Manhattan early on the weekend mornings.  Many years ago I did this on a ten-speed Peugeot racer and carried a Leica M2 with me.  The Peugeot is long gone, and the M2 now sits on a shelf in my office as a nostalgic reminder of all those early trips through the city.  On one of those long ago trips I took the photo below of an ornate section of the old West Side Highway just before it was torn down.



This morning while once again riding a bike along the Hudson River, I happened upon a graveyard for some of the artifacts of the old highway and took these pictures:

The same ornament from the old West Side highway image above now sits an empty lot on the edge of the Hudson River, which is where I took this photo on my bike ride this morning.
Rusted girders from the former highway also rest in the lot, as wild flowers grow around them.

This is the original Leica M2 I used to take the topmost black and white photo of the West Side Highway.  The camera is shown here with an accessory Leica meter and a dual-range 50mm Summicron lens.  I still use this camera occasionally for shooting with black and white film.


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