Central Park
Canon PowerShot S95
2016
As someone who has always lived in flyover country, my only contact with New York City, specifically Manhattan, was in movies and on television. It wasn’t until I visited the city for the first time in the late 1980s that I started to get a feel for the place. It hardly matched what I had seen on the screen. That Manhattan was either clean and pretty, or dangerous and gritty. The Manhattan I met was just a very large city. A confusing city — it took three or four trips before I started to get a sense of direction in it, and was able to find my way without a guide.
I didn’t visit Central Park until my most recent trip there, in 2016. I wished I had not waited so long. It’s better than what the movies make it out to be — a well-designed, manicured, peaceful oasis right in the middle of this loud and busy place.
One evening on our last visit, we enjoyed a cocktail hour on the top floor of our hotel. This was the view from up there. It’s impressive just how large Central Park is, how much Manhattan real estate it claims.
If you’d like to get more of my photography in your inbox or reader, click here to subscribe.
