Today was probably my last visit to the New York Botanical Gardens for a while. My passes expire at the end of the month and I have used the heck out of them including six visits to the Gardens proper and usage of their reciprocal services in five other states. I missed the lotus bloom this year. I missed the magnolia bloom this year. I missed the cherry bloom this year. I missed the rose bloom this year. Maybe I should get another set of passes.
Tag: new york botanical garden
Flowers and Pictures
Rachel came by around 8:30am, we picked up Whit at 10:30am and by 11:00am we were at the New York Botanical Gardens. Rachel is a floral arranger and this was my first visit to the gardens with someone so familiar with the aesthetics of plants. She oooh’d and aaah’d as I had my first time finding flowers so impossibly captivating that a portion of my brain refused to believe they were evolved. No, these lotuses must be made, designed to be more vibrant than a neon bar sign. Evolution is a war where standing still means continuous improvement and adaptation. What war could spawn such beauty?
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| From 2012-08-14 New York Botanical Garden and Museum of Modern Art |
I know this is not the case. I know that each of these blossoms is either a direct adaptation or secondary exaptation that helps these flowers attract pollenating insects and that our enjoyment of them too was secondary until breeders began laying their genetic path. Each of these above facts makes them more not less beautiful although the awe response moves from amygdala to neocortex.
Whit is doubled over in laughter at a sign in the sensory garden that says “LOOK” with Braille beneath it.
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| From 2012-08-14 New York Botanical Garden and Museum of Modern Art |
We next went to the Museum of Modern Art. I had never been, Rachel had, and Whit was a member. The top floor held an exhibition space on children which was very well done. The most moving piece there was a set of drawings done by kids showing planes in a dog fight. I remember my friends scribbling the same and smiled until I realized the date and time: Spain during the Spanish Civil War. We had imagined our dog fights, they had not.
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| From 2012-08-14 New York Botanical Garden and Museum of Modern Art |
A floor down lied my four favorites of Magritte, De Chirico, Sheeler and Wyeth. The Wyeth was near a bathroom and I wanted my picture taken in front of it. I stood and waited for the crowd to clear but my presence made the crowd persist so I dodge over a piece until they dissipated and I got my shot or more accurately Rachel got my shot. Christina’s World is my poster child for underdetermination. The print looks like a meditation on distance, or feminine rights, or some other thing until one learns that the woman depicted has polio. This picture shows how she got around.
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| From 2012-08-14 New York Botanical Garden and Museum of Modern Art |
The next object I stared at unflinchingly was Charles Sheeler’s an American Landscape. Charles Sheeler is probably the only artist who I like enough and that is unknown enough that I could become a leading scholar on them. His depictions of American industry are both patriotic and haunting. He paints portraits of technology and progress almost entirely devoid of humans or their affects. I first saw A Classical Landscape in a textbook in 10th grade and have loved him since.
The final two pictures were Magritte’s Empire of Lights, II and Dali’s Persistence of Memory. I much prefer the former as an original work and he matter-of-fact depiction of the impossible challenges the viewer to remember the limitations of painting. What is on the canvas is only as real as the paint it is made of and no more.
Persistence of Memory was quite small. I figured it’d be 16″x20″ or so not the 9.5″x13″ of its actuality and getting a shot in front of it was tough as it is comparatively dark. Compare this to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon which is almost 64 square feet.
We saw Starry Starry Night, we saw the masters of Suprematism, and we saw more Monet than I ever again wish to. The next floor down was 1940-1980 and very quickly I lost interest. Conceptual art by and large doesn’t move me as I think the concepts artists reflect upon are small and much better expressed in science and math. A fractal or algorithm shows repetition much better than several not quite identical boxes.
We went to PizzArte for dinner and I threw keto to the wind consuming four slices of very good pizza. Almost immediately insulin stalked my blood stream and I nearly fell asleep at the table. Whit thought I was faking it until I started slumping over and had trouble asking questions.
The ride home was quiet and the day was over before 10. It had been a while since I’ve had one stop so early.
New York Botanical Garden with Tee Jay
The New York Botanical Garden train show is the highlight of that institution’s winter season. Â Their main greenhouse is outfitted with several train displays and reconstructions of NYC landmarks. Â The exhibit is quite popular and even though we arrived at opening, we had to wait 3 hours for an available slot. Â In the meantime, Tee Jay and I went through the rest of the Gardens.
Most of the Gardens were somewhat barren but the larger elements still came out.
Big Butterfly
This was a large butterfly in the Children’s Garden. Â Around this butterfly were showcases about how plants and animals interact in that delightful prose marking children’s education. Â Plants aren’t eaten they’re “consumed” and deer don’t shit out seeds they “transport them”.
The indoor part of the exhibit had binocular microscopes. Â Fact: everything looks cool under a 50x binocular microscope. Â Teejay and I spent 20 minutes or so hogging them as we just looked at stuff we had on us. Â Here, Teejay is absorbed with how dirty his glasses are:
Tiny World
We still had some time to kill and walked the periphery of the east end of the Gardens. Â This boulevard was lined with trees decorated by public school classes and the differences between them were stark.
Income Disparity Tree
The tree to the right is decorated with plastic ornaments, the tree to the left is decorated with pizza box cut outs. Â The pizza box ornaments each had a wish on the back.
Heart in the Right Place
We made our way to the Haupt Conservatory which had an enclosed staging area with a train theme. Â There was a conductor on stilts who had a watch that showed the season instead of the hour. Â Periodically she’d yell things like “all aboard, it’s almost 10 of spring!” I wish I could summon such whimsy on command.
Conductor Kicks
I had seen a few macro shots of the event but the expanse was impressive.
This area:
Tanjou
Was transformed to this:
Waiting to Enter
Suspended to the left is something Tee Jay called the “ewok copter” or “wookiee copter”. Â I laughed far too loudly at this. Â Here it is in detail.
Ewok Copter
All of the constructs were made of natural materials like twigs, bark, needles, boughs, berries, nuts, and roots. Â The cathedral of St. John the Divine was almost five feet tall.
Sense of Scale
Before going to a venue, I try to determine three to five shots I want. Â One was a low angle shot of a train with a distinction sense of “rushing” to it. Â Tee Jay politely suffered through my numerous attempts at getting this in several parts. Â I forgot my basics and failed to consider using shutter priority to catch movement and instead got mediocre shots like this with no sense of motion:
Close Call
Only  later did I accidentally get what I wanted but without the sense of size:
Bridge Blur
Tee Jay and I were both decked out with nice cameras and I had my pocket notebook and we were asked by event staff if we were press. Â We said no, but I’m curious what would have happened if I had answered otherwise.
One technique I used during the day was holding up my camera on my monopod with a wide angle lens on it. Â The changed perspective made up for my other photographic shortcomings.
Another High Angle Shot
Sadly, the lights on Yankee Stadium are not trapped fireflies.
The exhibits were a parade of beauty and detail set in idyllic surroundings. Â I’ve rarely photographed something I’d call calming and even the frenetic pace of the trains didn’t break the tranquility. Â There was very little shoving and all the children were well-behaved.
Close Splash
Tee Jay and I spent a good bit of time during the day failing to take shots and sharing our photographic inadequacies. Â I hope to do it again sometime, maybe when the lily pond returns.
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