Saturday in the subway

Somehow, I managed to go a whole year last year without taking a single photograph in the subway. I still don't know how that happened. I decided that today was the day to fix that.

I figured the best way to end that drought would be to get some shots of a mysterious secret subway station that I'm willing to bet most New Yorkers don't know exists - and if they do, don't realize they can go see it. I'm talking about the legendary City Hall subway station that has been out of service since 1945. While you can't actually get off the train and walk the platform (unless you're a transit museum member on a (rare) tour), you can see it from a downtown 6 train while it makes the turnaround after the Brooklyn Bridge station. Just stay on the train after the "last stop" announcement, and the next announcement will inform any remaining riders that the next stop is Brooklyn Bridge uptown. After the train leaves the Brooklyn Bridge station, it goes through the old City Hall station and returns to the Brooklyn Bridge Station on the uptown track. Yes, it is perfectly legal to stay on the train for this loop. I even had a few MTA employees wave from the City Hall platform as we went through.

The goal was to get a few photos of this station that was once the flagship of the subway system. Unfortunately, the lighting on the platform from the skylights wasn't enough, and none of the platform lights were on, therefore any shots from a moving train would've just been streaks of tile. I'll have to try again another day. But it was pretty cool to see this little hidden part of NYC.

However, the goal was to take subway photos, and I wasn't going to be denied. So here are a few from the Union Square, Spring Street, and Brooklyn Bridge stations.














I've been staking out this s-curve for a shot for over a year now. Not sure I quite captured it today. I think I'll need to come back with a telephoto lens to really compress the curve and make it more dramatic.







One thing I also want to do is expand how I view the subways. I prefer to give them the b&w treatment and max out the tonal range, which emphasizes the architecture, lighting, and textures. But I rarely explore different viewing angles and colors. Here are a couple experiments from today. I was trying the angled perspective to help draw attention to the lines running through each shot. When processing, I was really drawn to the colors in each one, and wanted to emphasize them as well, as they ran along with the dramatic lines. Not sold on these shots, but they'll give me something to work from.









Thoughts appreciated, of course.