Good Night - New York - 2006

G' Night: New York (sounds British - G'Night Governor)

That's going to be the working title of the first calendar: all night shots. And I have pah-lenty to choose from. It's also a good printing test since I (and maybe you dear prospective customer) get to see what the tonal range will be like.

Of course - first problem I ran into was quite a lot of image cropping necessary to hit their 11.25 by 8.75 inch side (decided to start with the smaller size after looking at pricing and also looking on Lulu at what sold best). As far as cropping goes, what I mean is - it seems (and I could be wrong about this) that they want the image to fit the calendar page - i.e. I don't think there is a way to say: this is the image size, it will fit on the paper, just center it even though it's smaller than the page.

Maybe there is a way - not sure yet.

A lot of what I'm going to be futzing with in the beginning will be calendar related (as opposed to book) but it's a good way to get me started and seems like the quickest thing for me to produce.

G'Night New York - Calendar of Black and White Photography of the city that never sleeps unless forced to.

Reminds me of a story. When my father first came to NYC from Cleveland Ohio (he was about 12 at the time); he said he couldn't get over the fact that there were people and cars out at night.

This was around 1935. He said he never got over that. Years later, in his seventies then - we were driving through Manhattan at 4 a.m. - and he looked around and saw lots of cars and said again - just can't get over the fact that there are this many people doing something at this time of night. Some of those early - he's how it works where I grew up - soul mappings just stay with you forever I guess.

Lying in bed, I heard a tremendous booming sound. My windows shook. Wondered if it was an explosion or just something falling off a truck. Could be those pesky terrorists again. Well, probably not. I'll find out what it was in the morning. Sounds of several police sirens. A bit of walkie-talkie chatter. And like that - as if they had put on the sounds of the forrest CD - I'm sound asleep.

And waking up - well let's just say that when you flip the t.v. or radio on - you will surely be greeted by the announcement that some tractor-trailer has jack-knifed on some important artery; usually in the early morning. You know that it jack-knifed at an important exit or entrance ramp since those are the only locations worth reporting. For all I know they're doing a jack-knife dance throughout the highways of America. And the only thing that does pique the interest is: what kind of truck jack-knifed.

"Good morning, New York. Seems that a tractor-trailer has carrying ketchup in glass bottles has overturned on the exit ramp of the G.W. Bridge. Traffic is stalled for miles, and some of the ketchup has poured into the Hudson River. The E.P.A. is on the scene, as well as cleanup crews."

OR

"Good morning, New York. A truck jack-knifed this morning on the entrance ramp (fill in the blank) of the New Jersey turnpike. The truck was carrying containers of ball-bearings. Clean-up crews have been slipping and sliding all morning. We interviewed one driver who was behind the truck when the ball-bearings tumbled out - and he told us it weren't a problem since his car just speeded ahead faster than normal - though he couldn't steer it too good."

G'Night New York.

I always wonder about those tractor-trailers and their equilibrium. They always seem to be jack-knifed and it's always on an entrance or exit ramp where millions of cars need to pass.