Christmas lightup at NYC, Dec 12-14

I had never been to the Big Apple during Christmas season nor took pictures of it at night.

On Dec 12, I was guided by Tom, an ex-New Yorker, to walk along Fifth Avenue where Lord & Taylor had wonderful, traditional window displays. As I did not like to use flash because of the harsh light effect on subjects and the light bouncing off the window, I had set my aperture to F3.5 and shutter speed to 1/20 seconds.

It did not help that I did not have a tripod and fellow viewers were walking into my view and looking at the displays too. Timing was essence.

The star-war effect was taught to me by Charles where I set my shutter speed to 1/20 seconds and twisted my zoom lens while capturing a Christmas tree.

At Rockefeller Center, there was a sea of people gathered at the Rockefeller Plaza where angels with trumpets drew your attention to the eight-ton, 72-foot Norway spruce in the center. Below the gigantic Christmas tree were people skating at the Rockefeller Ice Rink. Opposite to the tree, snowflakes danced to a tune on the facade of Saks Fifth Avenue. Bare trees around the rink were adorned with lighting, adding to the Christmas mood.





Thereafter, we proceeded to Times Square where I had a "light" overload. Lighted billboards, advertising musicals, brands, etc, were on every corner. We also went inside a M & M's store that had three floors of merchandise related to M & M's such as towels, mugs, jewelery, etc, and of course, chocolate.

The next day, we passed by Central Park Zoo which used to be free. The giant 'web' was the roof of a pavilion in the park.

My hand was frozen and painful at the end of the day when I took New Jersey cityscape from Manhattan pier. The wind made the cold unbearable.

Overall, I enjoyed this trip, having a deeper insight to life in NYC since I would not have ventured to tour the less-touristy places on my own.

Christmas at NYC photo album.