if you're on instagram...

...you may have seen these already, but it's been awhile since i did an "all instagram" post, and having got some pretty good shots up on the high line in new york city the other day, i can't resist piling them all together!

based on my instagram feed, you could be forgiven for thinking i either work for IAC or am stalking frank gehry, but i just never get tired of photographing this building. 

on this particular trip i was lucky enough to have lovely husband jeff with me. he is emphatically not a person who loves cities, but being one of the nicest men alive, he will occasionally come to new york with me, as a special treat. 

seriously. i NEVER get tired of it.

for my part, i try to be a good hostess on these occasions, and choose activities that i think he will most enjoy, or at least, that he will not actively hate. i *KNEW* he would really love the high line... and he did!

the empire state is hard to beat for iconic new yorkiness

this being jeff's first trip to that amazing and creative park* you would think that i would've taken lots of photos of him enjoying the day. sadly, you'd be wrong. i am a bad, bad, wife! :)

i don't know the name of this building, but i love the round chimblies!

here's a shocking confession for you: i don't really like taking photographs of people. for one thing, they move around, which i find challenging... i have a hard enough time capturing an image i like of stationary objects, lol!

this huge sculptural installation by el anatsui is hung on the side of a building bordering the high line, and is made of rusted metal and mirrors; it's called "broken bridge ii" and looks completely different now than it did six months ago.

i don't even really like to take traditional landscape pictures either, though, and often hear the complaint that you cannot get any sense of context from my pictures. but i figure if you want to see what the whole high line looks like, you can google it; because let's face it there are guys with cranes and helicopters and elebenty millimeter professional lenses that have already done that job waaaaaaaaaay better than i ever could. 

it seems unlikely that these dinner-plate-sized puffballs are actually martian dandelions, but they sure do look like they could be. the estimable missus trash opines that they may be alliums, and a quick googling seems to support her view!

what i do like is to frame little macro bites of one thing at a time. a couple of flowers, an interesting turret, some tree branches against a pretty patch of sky.

these flowers look like black-eyed susans... except PINK! :)

on this same new york trip the other day we also visited the rubin museum, where one of my favorite current exhibits was a group of pictures of the most beautiful and desolate burial shrines in the desert of northern china, by a photographer called lisa ross. in one of the descriptions of the work, she refers to the photographs, which are, i suppose, technically landscapes, as a series of portraits of these sacred places. and i thought, "she's right! that's EXACTLY what they are... and that's why they are so amazing, too!"

some of the flowers on the high line are as architectural as the surrounding buildings

i love the idea of photographing something that's big and outside and inanimate... but doing so in an intimate way. and if you have an opportunity to visit the rubin before the middle of july, you should definitely check out lisa ross' uyghur photos!

a few birches in the gansevoort woodlands, at the end of the highline. the first time i visited, i could actually peer OVER THE TOPS of some of the "woodlands"! :)

and now i need to go and tidy myself up, because we are expecting a couple of strippers to arrive here at the house in about an hour! :) :) :) no seriously, we really are! ok, yeah, technically they are FLOOR strippers, and coming to talk about refinishing the hardwood in our entryway... but that doesn't sound nearly as exotic, does it, lol?! wish us luck, darlings, we are hoping for a cost estimate that comes in under infinity dollars! i fear we may be slightly optimistic in this, but i'll let you know! ♥

*the high line is a uniquely lovely urban park garden built upon a mile or so of disused elevated freight railway line that runs above tenth avenue through the meatpacking district in manhattan. they have an excellent website, on which you can read more about it, btw. :)