About the Banner #34

An explanation of our last banner, AFTER THE JUMP...

I shot this photo in early October on a trip to visit my friends John and Paul in the Catskills, upstate New York. Paul is totally into leaf-peeping so we did a bit of that. This was just a random house we were passing across a large field. I cropped and flipped the photo, darkened it a bit, and added a tilt-shift effect to make it feel miniature. In a final bit of editorializing which was ultimately unreadable, I dropped an Obama campaign sign in the front yard.

Previously
About the Banner #28-33, and Our Five Year Anniversary [tr]

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About the Banner #28-33, and Our Five Year Anniversary

This week marked the five year anniversary of Towleroad, and I just wanted to thank everyone for reading and coming back. Since October 2003, we've generated 10,750 posts, 163,400 comments, and carved out a place I'm proud to come to every day. I'd also like to thank Michael Goff, my partner in this endeavor, who keeps things running behind the scenes. It's exciting and humbling to get to do what I do for work on a daily basis.

That said, I've let slip a tradition of explaining the banners posted at the top of the site and I apologize. This post should fill in the gap. I hope you find it interesting.

Our last banner was a photo of a deer I took on Fire Island at the end of the summer. I cropped it and added a slight tilt-shift effect to give it its fuzzy edges.

The banner prior to that I shot the night of Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. What a night that was. I've never felt so much positive energy in one place. I have hope that on November 4th we'll be feeling that energy again.

Continued, AFTER THE JUMP...

This banner was shot on the interior of the ferry from Boston to Provincetown. I chose it for the nice diagonal slice of windows I knew I'd get if I crushed it down. Also for the reflection of sunlight on the interior. This one was shot with the iPhone. You can see the same kind of angular thing going on with the last banner in this post.

This banner was shot on a day trip to the western end of Fire Island, away from the gay towns, down by Jones Beach. There was an air show going on at the time. I managed to catch the lighthouse tower just as the light swung round into the lens, and I crushed it and punched up the color a bit.

This is an interior/exterior shot of a house on Fire Island, but I like it because the colors are so luscious and actually reflect both interior and exterior light. Reminds me of the peace and tranquility of the summer evening.

This shot, another I chose for its angular properties, is the roof of a temporary race track at a county fair in Missoula, Montana. I took it during a horse race. My favorite thing about the photo are the velvety hills with the shadows of the clouds on them. They didn't play out very well in the banner, which I flipped on its head.

For more 'About the Banner's click here.

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About the Banner #27

You may have noticed we did a bit of redecorating today. For info about our last banner, FOLLOW THE JUMP...

I shot the last banner with a camera phone, and although it looked to me more like some kind of atmospheric shot of the Earth from a satellite when turned on its side and compressed, it was actually just an average shot of a sunrise from a frost-coated airplane window somewhere over Montana. Click top photo to enlarge.

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About the Banner #23

The last banner (if you can still remember it - I know it was ages ago) was a combination of three photos. The first was a cameraphone photo of a distant helicopter flying into some clouds, the second was another cameraphone photo of some billboards outside the midtown tunnel in Manhattan, and the third a recent photo of the Empire State building. I just made them into a collage, of sorts.

For more banners, click here.

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About the Banner #22

It may be so long ago that you've forgotten it, but the last banner was a shot I took in June when I was in Washington D.C. It was taken coming out of the Metro station on the mall adjacent to the National Portrait Gallery. I squished it, but it was less the content and more the shapes, colors, and reflections that appealed to me.

For more banners, click here.

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About the Banner #21

I shot the last banner while I was visiting family in Montana. That dog in the photo is a Border Collie named Gaby that belongs to the neighbors. Poor thing is scared of her own shadow. Actually, she's frightened of just about everything, but particularly of people — anyone — with a hat on. I don't want to know what made her that way, but I wasn't wearing a hat the day I took the photo, so maybe that's why she decided to take part in my little bucolic scene.

For more banners, click here.

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About the Banner #20

The last banner was shot early in the morning on Fire Island over Memorial Day weekend. There was a cool mist over the calm water and whomever had set up this beach chair had gone elsewhere.

I enhanced the saturation a bit for the banner, but I do like the more muted tones of the original, and especially the way the ocean and sky come together in an ambiguous horizon. Unfortunately, given the horizontal nature of the banners, that part of the picture was lost.

For other past banners, click here.

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About the Banner #19

The most recent banner was taken from a photo I shot over Memorial Day at Fire Island. I manipulated the image, bringing the planes slightly closer together and tweaking the color slightly, then reversing it altogether. I'm assuming the planes were part of some military airshow, but I really have no idea.

For more banners, click here!

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About the Banner #18

The last banner was a close-up of a shot I took in May at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
I thought it was pretty obvious it was a Mallard, though some people saw a Snoopy face in the beak.

For more banners, click here.

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About the Banner #17

The last banner was from an old photo I shot from a plane in 1992 above Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I think of it as a 'color field' shot for its distinct separation of hues, somehow appropriate for a location steeped in art and artists. Also one of my favorite places on earth.

For more 'About the Banners', click here.

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About the Banner #16

The last banner was from a photo I shot at the Queens Museum, where there is a scale model of New York City which includes all five boroughs.

The Panorama of the City of New York was built by famed urban planner Robert Moses, who designed the city's infrastructure from the 1930's to the 50's. He built this 9,335 square-foot scale model, which includes 895,000 structures...every building in New York City prior to 1992.

The model was recently refurbished, so I took a trip there in early February to check it out. It includes a changing light show which attempts to show the city from sunrise to sunset, and as the city plunges into darkness, hundreds of tiny lights begin to twinkle.

There is a walkway around the model. Some parts of the walkway are glass, allowing you to see portions of the model below it.

MUCH MORE AFTER THE JUMP.

This shot gives you an idea of the size of the model and the room it's in.

A view of Central Park.

Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

In the shot on the left, you can see the grounds of the 1964 World's Fair including the Queens Museum, where this exhibit is located. On the right, that tiny park you see is Washington Square Park.

Another shot of the room. Note the horde of people on the right clamoring for a better view of Manhattan.

An airport and a view south down the length of Manhattan.

Here's more info on the Panorama from the Queens Museum.

For more About the Banners, click here...

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About the Banner #15

Congrats to those of you who guessed that the image in the last site banner was a boat. I was invited for a quick jaunt last summer in a friend's speed boat on the Hudson River and snapped the image you see below. There was an abstract beauty in the construction of the boat's interior and the fast-moving water beyond it that caught my eye. I stretched and reversed it for the banner. And there you have it.

For some of our past banners, click here...

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About the Banner #14

My latest banner was a random house I shot on Fire Island over the summer, using a long exposure. I wanted a spooky-ish autumnal shot for October and this fit the bill. After flipping the image, saturating it a bit, and did altering of the windows, it was ready to go.

Check out more of our past banners here...

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About the Banner #13

I hope you liked the last banner, because I really fawned over it a lot. Har har.

It's a hybrid of three separate photos (two more appear after the jump) that I shot one night on Fire Island last summer, which I resized and merged together. The fawn on the far right was actually a larger shot of the fawn walking in the middle which I reversed and resized. Then I merged the three shots to create the banner, which I thought had something of a mystical feel about it. I'm no Marlin Perkins but I believe that this fawn is one of the ones pictured here.

For more About the Banners click here.

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About the Banner #12

This was a shot of my friends Phillip and Jeremy at a swimming pool over the 4th of July holiday in Provincetown. There is another shot of them in this portfolio, but I appreciated the effect of standing over the edge of the pool in this shot and thought that the perspective might make a good banner, particularly for the middle of the summer. Ah yes, I miss it already.

For previous About the Banners, click here...

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About the Banner #11

The last banner came from a series of photos I shot over the first weekend of June on Fire Island. This is the view from the harbor, looking toward Sayville, NY.

It was just after sunset and the atmospheric conditions produced this mystical blue glow over everything. I was lucky to have my camera along.

For the banner, I flipped the image and squeezed it a bit.

For previous About the Banners, click here.

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About the Banner #10

Sorry this has taken so long — better late than never.

This was a tree in the yard of some good friends in eastern Long Island. I was staying there over a weekend and had the pleasure of looking out at this blanket of green beauty. It's what I yearn for at the end of a long winter, and that's why I chose it as the banner.

I flipped the photo horizontally and saturated it a bit (like it needed any!).

Something about the way the branch of that tree hovers over the lawn gives me a sense of peace. And a sense that I wish I owned this property.

Previous About the Banners...

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About the Banner #9

The last banner came from a rather mundane photo I shot while waiting in the dirty, stinking subway where far too much time is wasted waiting for trains. The photo, which I cropped and turned lengthwise, was taken on April 2, 2006.

If you can squint hard enough and ignore the rats, urine, random black ooze spilling from holes in the wall, discarded butts, flattened wads of gum, and random graffiti tags, you might call the built-up patina of grime, rust, and paint a kind of Jackson Pollock-esque art of filth.

Then again, maybe not.

Previous About the Banners...

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About the Banner #8

The last banner was a photo of a Gary Hill video sound installation which is displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The installation, called "Inasmuch as It Is Always Already Taking Place" was created in 1990.

It's a fascinating piece — basically a self-portrait of Gary Hill himself. Each monitor broadcasts an image of the artist's own body and the monitor size corresponds to the size of the body part which it displays. The installation is intended to recreate Hill's body as a living, breathing entity via a system of wires and monitors that connect back to something in the dark recesses of the space — the unseen part of a man, the soul.

For my own purposes, I collapsed the photo. I thought it appropriate to use here in a space where the objectification of the male form is also broadcast via the monitor you're looking into right now.

Previously
About the Banner #7 [tr]
About the Banner #6 [tr]
About the Banner #5 [tr]
About the Banner #4 [tr]
About the Banner #3 [tr]
About the Banner #2 [tr]
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner #7

The banner up for most of February was taken from a very simple shot of the famous "I Love You" graffiti, which you'll find in various spots around New York City. I stretched the photo a bit for my purposes. Another one of my purposes was to have the banner serve as a Valentine for my boyfriend Dave who was away for three weeks. All together now: "Awwwwwww."

Previously
About the Banner #6 [tr]
About the Banner #5 [tr]
About the Banner #4 [tr]
About the Banner #3 [tr]
About the Banner #2 [tr]
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner #6

The last banner was created from an image I shot a few years ago in Berlin. I was there helping coordinate a magazine fashion shoot with my friend, photographer Joe Oppedisano, and this Berliner was our "punk" model. Joe was shooting him from the front and I was off to the side, just snapping a few shots for fun. The model was a really sweet guy, but didn't speak much English. We didn't speak much German, so there wasn't a lot of chatting.

Previously
About the Banner #5 [tr]
About the Banner #4 [tr]
About the Banner #3 [tr]
About the Banner #2 [tr]
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner #5

The last banner came from a photo you may have seen before on the site. It's from my Top of the Rock series. At the top of the Rockefeller Center the glass windguards are built with camera-sized openings. They may be there to diffuse wind sheer at high altitudes, but they make clever slots for inserting digital cameras. Screens on the backs of digital cameras are the new viewfinders. Gone are the days of tourists holding cameras up to their faces and squinting through the tiny hole to get a good shot.

Previously
About the Banner #4 [tr]
About the Banner #3 [tr]
About the Banner #2 [tr]
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner #4

The last banner I had up on the site was a combination of two shots I took on my trip to the Top of the Rock last November, a trip I'd highly recommend to both New Yorkers and those visiting the city.

So this picture technically doesn't exist, at least from this perspective, but I wanted to combine the tops of Manhattan's most recognizable skyscrapers, the Chrysler building and Empire State. Add a giant gorilla, and you've got an homage to Peter Jackson.

Previously
About the Banner #3 [tr]
About the Banner #2 [tr]
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner #3

For the story behind the last banner, take the jump...

I shot the last banner out at the beach over the summer on Long Island. Sometimes just playing around you can get shots that are appealing in strange ways. This was a 30 second exposure of the tops of some bushes taken at around 11pm. To create the banner I simply reversed the image and flattened it a bit, taking out some of the yellows. I liked the 'end of days' quality it had in the movement of the clouds and the shifting focus in the grass.

Previously
About the Banner #2 [tr]
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner #2

For the story behind the last banner, take the jump...

I shot this photo on Fire Island at the very end of July just after sunset one evening from a friend's roof. There was a party being set up on the beach, hence the white tents. To me it almost had the feeling of a circus come to town but the scene was devoid of people, save for a few workers rigging things up.

One other detail I liked about the photo that didn't make it into the banner is the cloud formation off to the right which looks like a bird in flight. This last summer was a scorcher. Every time I look at this photo I can feel the heat in the air.

Previously
About the Banner #1 [tr]

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About the Banner

Regular readers of this site know that I change the banners somewhat frequently, mainly on a whim. Many of you write in to ask for the story behind the banner, so I'm going to try and start including these as a regular feature when I change them out. For the story behind the last banner, follow the jump.

This was created from a photograph I took at Coney Island in late June. I had been given a photo assignment from Where magazine to shoot five different spots in Brooklyn, one of which was the famous amusement park/beach. It was a cool day at the beginning of the summer and the beach wasn't that crowded — a few swimmers, a few lifeguards socializing in their bright orange jackets.

As I snapped shots, I happened to catch this one with a gull coming in to the frame. It was something of an 'accidental' shot. I hadn't even lifted the camera properly - notice the diagonal horizon. Yet ultimately, the awkward perspectives were what I liked about the shot. I also thought the lifeguard in the foreground was sexy in the mysterious way that lifeguards can be.

To create the banner I photoshopped out the lifeguard's companion and retained the simple elements as best I could.

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