Country
United States
Coordinates
40.71° N, 74.01° W
Best hour
Twenty minutes either side of sunrise
Continent
North America
Every angle is taken. What isn't taken is the empty version of it.
The Manhattan skyline is the most photographed object in the world, which makes it a genuinely difficult subject: whatever you shoot, the viewer has seen a better version. The way through is subtraction — fog that removes two thirds of the buildings, a blizzard that flattens Fifth Avenue, a 5 a.m. street with nobody on it.
The other way through is the peregrines. New York holds one of the densest urban peregrine falcon populations anywhere, nesting on bridges and towers because they read as cliffs. A falcon stooping past a skyscraper is a more honest picture of this city than the skyline is.
The wild neighbour
Snowy Owl
Bubo scandiacus
In irruption winters, snowy owls hunt the runways at JFK.
The open shelf
More frames of New York
Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, fifteen at a time. Tap any frame to study it — each remains its photographer’s.
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