I’m a long time resident of the Upper Westside and I am so grateful to live a half block from Riverside Park. There's an iconic statue of an eagle on the corner of Riverside Drive and 76th St. It’s an historical landmark because it was originally gifted to the City of New York by Alexander Hamilton’s nephew. I recently learned it was designed as a watering trough for dray horses. So it's been there since before the age of the automobile. To me, is a symbol of my neighborhood and my home.

When I go for a run in Riverside I usually begin at the Eagle. It’s a timeless marker of time and seasons. You’ll see several pictures of it in this gallery. There are a couple other subjects you’ll see a few times. There is a majestic elm on the edge of a playfield near 74rd St. which I think of as a mothering tree. Its branches are so large and wide that it creates a gauzy canopy in the spring which turns to a leafy refuge in summer and fall. Standing underneath it makes me feel safe and protected. Light plays off its limbs and streams through its leaves in wonderfully unexpected and subtle everchanging ways. You'll also see several panoramas of a long curved staircase that leads down to an arched pedestrian tunnel near West 78th Street. I photograph it often, watching the seasons change around it while its graphic arch sits implacably near the center. Maybe it’s a reminder that sometimes we must descend before we rise, or maybe that the only way out is through.

Or maybe that's a little bit of pablum and they are simply good subjects for practicing difficult to make panoramas. As a practical matter, making successful panoramas with the iPhone is not easy. The mode has a tendency to distort every straight line and flat plane into overtly curved shapes. Any straight line or flat plane that the viewer might recognize in the real world as straight or perpendicular to the picture plane, the camera will tend to curve in distracting, sometimes kind of goofy, ways. There’s nothing wrong with making goofy pictures, but it’s not my primary creative intention. So whenever I find a subject that doesn’t become obviously distorted by the panorama making process, I tend to return to it in order to practice the craft.

As a runner, a huge reward for the effort of getting out of the house is the direct experience and adventure of watching the changing seasons and the always changing length of days. As days begin to lengthen in winter, then shorten in summer, light, and the time of day that light looks the way it does, shifts and changes angles so that I can almost feel the curvature of the earth tipping to and fro with the sun as I run through the months of the year. So clearly, some curves are good. I’m primarily interested in describing natural ones. Trees, playfields, curved staircases - even statues of eagles - lend themselves to the practice of making panoramas and the experience of describing what I see when running.

Riverside Park is my panorama incubator. I run through it to practice seeing familiar subjects in novel ways. When I see something that is so enchanting, surprising, or encouraging, that I must stop my run, my creative urge is to capture it simply and share it. Practice makes seeing the unexpected easier. Regularly creating difficult to make panoramas gives me the courage to make panoramas of more challenging subjects at other times. You can see the results of those explorations, such as my panoverts, panoblurs, and subway pictures, in other galleries on this site.  

The order of the pictures in this gallery is chronological. They date from Autumn 2020 to Spring of 2024 so you will recognize the gradual changing of seasons as the years unfurl. Happy Scrolling!