gabriel biderman ~ fine art photography

Scott Kelby is hosting a Worldwide Photo Walk to celebrate the release of the Lightroom 2.0, probably the best image editing software out there. These Walks are taking place all over the world on August 23rd and I will be leading one in NYC! The Photo Walks are a social photography event to get you out from in front of your computer and behind your camera with a group of like minded folk. Each walk is limited to 50 people, my walk will take us over the Brooklyn Bridge where amazing views of the city and for now, the NYC waterfalls, surround you. We will then meander around DUMBO and end the adventure at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory where we can share our work and have a scoop or three! The Photo Walks are 2 hours long and if you don’t see one in your city why not sign up and lead one? All the images will be uploaded and judged by Scott Kelby, with the winning image earning the photographer thousands of dollars in cool prizes! Again space is limited; so click here to sign up and find out more info on Brooklyn Bridge walk.

The International Guild of Pinhole Photographers just released Dark Chambers Volume 2, which features 3 of my images in it! These beautiful textured fine art books are each hand stamped and the produced in England. The name Dark Chamber originates from the Latin, Camera Obscura. This latest volume is over 175 pages and features 200+ inspiring pinhole images by 28 artists from all over the world. The book will be limited and produced in a small run. Dark Chamber volume 2 costs approximately $25 plus shipping and can be ordered from the Urban Fox Press website. or by contacting them directly at info@urbanfoxpress.com.

Also pictured is our newly decorated living room. The coffee table is an amazing wedding gift from my brotherman/groomsman, Angus. He created, crated, and accompanied this work of art out to us in April and assembled it in our house… now that’s what we call service! It features a hidden compartment which flips and reveals a ready to play cribbage board! Anyone game? Behind the table is Nancy’s chaise lounge that she has been transporting across the country for 10 years. 3 years ago she finally reupholstered the chaise with the luscious blue velvet fabric. Prior to the chaise, that same blue velvet covered Sandy on the Frozen Hudson seen below.

Pictured on the wall above the table and chaise is “Sleepless” by France Scully Osterman. Nancy and I fell in love with this image at the f/295 exhibit in Pittsburgh. It was a gift for Nancy for her Birthday and our 2 year anniversary. Sleepless is a 44×50 waxed salt print and was limited to a production of nine. This image is beautifully printed using the 150+ year collodion process. This gives it a lush and tonal depth that you can’t keep your eyes off.

Our Gallery Living Room in Brooklyn is open to the public by appointment only, and you better brush up on your cribbage game!

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of marriage to my lovely Nancy. I’ve only known her 1/4 of her life but can’t wait to reach the halfway mark! We were married under an arbor and when I came upon this one right outside the Woodstock area I knew I had to capture it. I used a combination of a zone plate and pinhole to take this image. My Zero Image 4×5 camera comes with a turret of 3 zone plates and 3 pinholes I can choose from for exposing. By combining the two “lenses” I was able to get the “glow” from the zone plate while retaining the sharpness of the framework with the pinhole. How much did I pre-visualize? Well a pinhole camera has no viewfinder but I’m used to “seeing” with this camera. I shot low to the ground and towards the sun and knew there would be flare, but the red and green light pouring forth is the most beautiful light I could have asked for.
Happy anniversary Nancy!

June 24th is also Nancy’s 1st anniversary of turning 40. Yes, she did put all her eggs in one basket but she’s a summer solstice baby and we both have strong feelings about midsummer eve. We celebrated the longest day of the year not at a baseball park, but in Upstate New York close to where we were married. During the summer solstice the sun appears to stand still facing the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a powerful day for telling the future as well as discovering true love, which we both are lucky to have. So the second picture featured is a reflection of Nancy taking the plunge! I know they say 40 is the new 30 but in Nancy’s case I’d have to say it’s the new 25! Happy Birthday my muse! You continue to inspire and understand me like no other. Let the summer good times begin!

First off I want to thank everyone who attended and wished me well at my sold out lecture on Pinhole and Night Photography yesterday! Thanks to David Brommer and B&H for giving me the opportunity to share my vision, I’ve been doing this for several years now but I still learned a lot while compiling my research. I did catch a cold the day of the lecture and my voice is officially shot after speaking for 2 hours!

This week’s photo of the week has been over 6 months in the making! Last October I went on a great 25+ mile bike ride that started in Brooklyn and continued up the scenic bike path along the West Side Highway. This is my usual route to work but I only get to take advantage of the wonderful views up until 34th street. Then, I met up with the infamous David Brommer, and we made a decision to explore the West Side Bikeway as far as our bikes and legs would take us. It was a beautiful day in October and a wonderful ride. We stopped several times for photos and yes, I confess, once for Dinosaur BBQ. Of course I had packed a 4×5 pinhole camera and lightweight tripod along. This black and wide image above was definitely the most amazing thing we saw! For some lame reason, I forgot about it and never had a chance to develop it until 2 weeks ago…What a pleasant pinhole surprise! I couldn’t remember where this was along the highway but I was determined to retrace my bike treads and find out more information. So last week after work, instead of biking south along the West Side Highway, I headed north and in less than 10 minutes, I started to find some answers.

“The New York Central Railroad 69th St Transfer Bridge has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior 2003″

was stamped onto a plaque on the grassy field in front of the ruin.
The top color image, and Official Photo of the Week, was taken as the sun set on a gorgeous May evening.
But now, I wanted more info – the who, what, and where of this Transfer Bridge story…

To understand what a transfer bridge is you must first know what a car float is. The car float is a specialised form of the train ferry. A railroad car float is an unpowered barge with rail tracks mounted on its deck. It is used to move railroad cars across water obstacles, or to locations they could not otherwise access, and is pushed or towed by a tugboat. Until the advent of post-war trucking, the railroads had 3400 personnel operating small fleets with 323 car floats, plus 1094 other barges, towed by 150 tugboats between New Jersey and New York City. Deep searches into the internet yielded this excerpt that Christopher Gray expounded further in the New York Times article from 2004:

To speed the operation, several designers developed suspension systems that raised and lowered the transfer bridge from an overhead structure. In 1911, the New York Central Railroad built such a system, designed by James B. French, at the foot of West 69th Street. French patented his design, which uses two separate decks raised and lowered independently and a wide shed running across the top to protect the lifting machinery.
French’s design “swept the field,” says Thomas F. Flagg, an industrial archaeologist who has studied and written about transfer bridges for three decades. Mr. Flagg says that such an operation could unload 800 tons of cargo in 15 minutes. To a non-specialist, the rail-car transfer seems unwieldy, but it is faster than a modern container crane, Mr. Flagg says.
In the mid-1920′s, the Long Island Rail Road built several float bridges of the same design on the East River at Long Island City; they accommodated 100-ton cars and could rise and fall 18 feet.
As American railroading – and rail freight in the Port of New York – declined drastically, these float bridges tumbled into disuse, and by the 1970′s were wide open for graffiti, vandalism and urban adventure. In 1998, Gantry Plaza State Park opened at 48th and 49th Avenues, succeeding the Long Island Rail Road transfer point there. The landscape architects Thomas Balsley Associates incorporated float bridges into the design.

For further reading check out: New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan’s Significant Buidlings and Landmarks
I just ordered mine!

I checked the weather on Sunday morning. Rain until 1pm and skies starting to clear soon after that. Phew, we had organized a group pinhole shoot at Coney Island to celebrate World Wide Pinhole Day at 2pm.

Would the skies hold out?

Well, the Pinhole Gods were smiling upon us as we met at Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Stand a little after 2pm. After filling up on dogs and fries we hit the boardwalk. The sun never really broke out but at least it did not rain! Adam, Amy, Angelia, Matt, Steve, and myself were loaded with over 10 pinhole cameras, 12 4×5 film backs, 1 Fujiroid back, a bad batch of slightly larger than 4×5 Bergger 200 film, a Lubitel, and a lensbaby…we must have been a scene to witness!

3 hours later we made our way back to the nangabe house to develop film and eat lots of meat! We are all still in the process of developing/scanning our images…but this shot of the worn boardwalk and Parachute Jump in the distance was my best shot of the day. This was one of the few cases that I did not use a tripod, instead I placed the camera directly on the boardwalk. The beauty of the pinhole is that you have an infinite depth of field. It works best to flaunt it and look for composition that challenges this infinite depth.

You can see some of Matt’s pinholes and documentation of the day on his flickr site.
And stay tuned for some more images from the rest of the pinhole gang that participated in World Wide Pinhole Day 08!