thousands of millions of billions of gates

[khedron]

Since it was a gorgeous day today, I took off to Central Park to see an art exhibit which has been getting far too much attention, "The Gates". And, y'know, it was fun. It's hard to convey just how many of these goofy things there are. But it was exuberant goofiness, multiplied by thousands, with a horde of volunteers walking around with 10' poles in case one of the banners got stuck on something. I think it was a success. The billowing orange was cheerful, and the (thousands of millions of...) people seemed to be having a great time.

Comments

[aymanshamma.livejournal.com]

Sweet - I'm going to link to your photo (http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ayman/blog/archives/2005/02/12/the-gates/) if you don't mind. Its one of the nicer ones I've seen.

I was worried about the fabric actually...as i felt the gates looked good without it. In your shot here, it looks good, but without wind (in photos) its not so grand. How about in person? Same thing?

[khedron.livejournal.com]

Ayman! Hey! Thanks for the compliment!

Feel free to link away. When I have some time (maybe later tonight, maybe just later), I'm going to sort through the hundreds of pictures I took this afternoon and put a few up on the gallery.

I pretty much agree with your assessment, although I'd add light to it. For me, the gates were all about the light coming through the other side, the silhouettes of the trees through them, and the wind. When there's no wind, or if the light is sort of oblique (neither coming through nor reflecting shinily off of it), they just sort of sit there, dull. A very overcast day wouldn't have been nearly as festive, but on a nice day like today, they actually looked great.

(And there were so many of them!)

[aymanshamma.livejournal.com]

In an interview, Christo said he wanted to create a warm glow as a river through the park. Which is why the light and wind are really important. I've been tracking peoples photos of the gates on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/search/tags:gates%2Cnyc/tagmode:all/). There I found some 'lifeless' shots of the curtains, as well as someone hanging from them (http://www.flickr.com/photos/plutor/4751952/) and the inevitable tag (http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/4735651/).

[khedron.livejournal.com]

Pictures: Heh. Nice find.
"Warm glow": I didn't capture this quite as well as I'd have liked; maybe this one is okay. There's something to it, though. Like the other guy you linked to, I wish I could've gone up to the top of the Met to get a better angle!

Someone said the motorcade driving through the park around 4 p.m. was Christo. Don't know if it's true, but I took a picture, as I also did with the obligatory "Pale Male" sighting.

I put up a couple more pictures here. You're under absolutely no obligation to look at them all, of course.

[aymanshamma.livejournal.com]

A couple? Try 157! :)

[khedron.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how even a 1 GB memory card fills up when you're taking 7 MP pictures and doing "exposure bracketing" for a lot of them. I took 400-some pictures, winnowed a bunch out for my archive, and then removed even more for the gallery. I really should bring it down to just 20 -- but that's hard!

nice!

[steluch.livejournal.com]

hi...you can blame enf for my being a tourist on your journal...i love the gate pics! a friend of mine flew out (from berkeley/sf) last weekend to see the unfurling and her photos (http://www.livejournal.com/users/cat_herder/38124.html) are lovely too!

Re: nice!

[khedron.livejournal.com]

Your friend's pictures are very nice! And I hadn't really realized that the width of the gates varied that much, or that they were custom-made for the paths. Helps explain why it cost $20 million. =)

And, thank you! I'm glad you liked the pictures. Tourism is fine by me.