The photo class assignments I

Facade: right exposure, overexposed bz 2 f stops and underexposed by 2 f stops

Person in front of a window: shoot from the inside to the outside, window 2/3 and wall 1/3.

Street corner at night: at different shutter speeds (15, 4, 0.3, 2″, showing you the first and last here)

Having a lot of fun with the class so far!

The last two months

Wow, it’s been a while since my last visit to the blogging world. Things are good in New York – busy, but good. Lots of work, lots of going out and going to dinners, lots of art stuff (the Fountain art fair, the Met), theater plays (an Austrian one and the London Merchant in the basement of a church), concerts (Carnegie Hall, a piano recital at a small museum – Nicholas Roerich – on the Upper West Side, Arlene’s Grocery) and other fun stuff such as a belly dancing show, drinking wine in the cinema while watching the Oscar-nominated animated shorts or going to a roof-top bar just because the evening is nice. I also went snowboarding to Okemo in Vermont twice, the second time this past weekend, where the weather was more appropriate for the beach than for the slope. And I started a photography course last week, so expect to see more photos here again soon!

The Guggenheim

I saw the very cool Maurizio Cattelan exhibition at the Guggenheim last weekend. Tons of details catch your eye as you make your way up the spiral.

The little Odessa

We had the nicest weather between Christmas and New Year’s  and I went for a walk at Brighton Beach or, as it is also called, Little Odessa. You really feel a bit like you suddenly are in Russia.

The crazy Christmas decorations

If you want to see exceptional Christmas decorations (next year, I guess), go to the Dyker Heights neighbourhood in Brooklyn. I went there with my parents when they where visiting over Christmas. Decorations range from festive to funny to completely over the top – it is amazing to see how much effort, money and electricity must go into these display.

The books I read in 2011

Paulus Hochgatterer: Caretta Caretta
Xiaolu Guo: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers
Helle Helle: Rødby-Puttgarden
Paulus Hochgatterer: Das Matratzenhaus
Morten Ramsland: Hundehoved
Nick Hornby: Slam
Tatiana de Rosnay: Sarah’s Key
Haruki Murakami: Gefährliche Geliebte
Dirk Stermann: 6 österreicher unter den ersten 5
Paulus Hochgatterer: Die Süße des Lebens
Marlene Streeruwitz: Das wird mir alles nicht passieren. Wie bleibe ich FeministIn.
Lisa Genova: Still Alice
Sue Monk Kidd: The Secret Life of Bees
Siri Hustvedt: What I Loved
Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Stephen Chbosky: The perks of being a wallflower
Janet Hobhouse: Dancing in the Dark
Anthony McCarten: Show of Hands
Erich Segal: Love Story
Justin Kramon: Finny
Alice Hoffman: Local Girls
Augusten Burroughs: Running with Scissors
Siri Hustvedt: The Sorrows of an American
David Leavitt: The Page Turner
Jonathan Coe: The Rotter’s Club
Jane Smiley: Moo
Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger
John Haskell: Out of my skin
Nicholson Baker: The Everlasting Story of Nory
Chris Cleave: Incendiary

Books in bold are the one’s I would recommend. My favourite of the year: The White Tiger.

The Christmas in New York

Merry Christmas!