Canyons of Steel - No. 1

Canyons of Steel - No. 1

On this 16th anniversary of the unspeakable events that
brought down the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center…

This image is part of a series of New York nightscapes I call Canyons of Steel.
Most of these have been taken digitally in recent years, but this film image is displayed today for reasons I’ll explain.

For my sensibilities and with my love of New York, as well as classic American Popular Song, the title of this series was inevitable, as I attached a camera with a very long telephoto lens onto my tripod and opened my 23rd floor Midtown Manhattan hotel window to the view down Avenue of the Americas on a clear October night in the mid-1980s.

I often write about how my “Gray Matter Gramophone” so easily fires up while I’m shooting…
or when editing an image…or simply whenever looking at one at some future moment.

Always, this view looking downtown past Rockefeller Center to Lower Manhattan brings forth,
from that music library between my ears and behind my eyes, the sound of Frank Sinatra singing
the timeless lyrics of Vernon Duke’s “Autumn in New York,” including the line
"Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel; they're making me feel: I'm home."

So, may I share one favorite set of Canyons of Steel in this view which includes the
Twin Towers in the shimmering tele-compressed distance of a Manhattan autumn evening.

On a technical note, yes, I know an image such as this would have benefited from a nice low-ISO digital capture,
as I prefer for all current nightscapes (*). But somehow, especially at this point in time and memory, and most especially as it relates to the distant, almost spectral, appearance of the Twin Towers, I’ll allow for, even welcome, the limitations of mid-80s 400 ISO slide film…and be grateful that I had this viewpoint - and opportunity - while it still existed.

©2016 Steve Ember
(*)