Sandy

The Post-Sandy Manhattan Cover Photo in New York Magazine

readingbyeugene Leave a comment

The new cover photo from New York Magazine is absolutely spectacular, showing the division of power-less and aglow Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy:

Manhattan, half dark.

The photograph was captured by Iwan Baan. The editors at the NY Magazine explain how the photo came out to be:

An improvised newsroom was soon up and running, with 32 editors, photo editors, designers, and production specialists squeezed around a conference-room table, down the length of which snaked a tangle of power strips, extension cords, and chargers resembling similar arrays sprouting across the city. At this point, proofs were due to go to press in 72 hours. Staffers spent them scrambling to secure writers and photographers as well as exchanging personal e-mail addresses to make it possible to transfer files (our servers were still down), arranging car pools, finding rooms at three different hotels for colleagues from darkened neighborhoods, and draining our hosts of coffee and soda. The easiest part of a harried three days came Friday around noon, when we met to settle on the cover. A photograph taken by Iwan Baan on Wednesday night, showing the Island of Manhattan, half aglow and half in dark, was the clear choice, for the way it fit with the bigger story we have tried to tell here about a powerful city rendered powerless. We crammed back into the conference room, raced to finish our pages, and hoped, like other New Yorkers, that everyone would find the lights on when they got home.

What a story.

###

Update (11/4/12): According to Poynter, Baan created the photograph with the Canon 1-D X with the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L lens on full open aperture (f/2.8). The camera was set at 25,000 ISO and Baan used 1/40th second shutter speed. Baan mentions that this photograph would have been impossible to photograph without the ability to boost to such a high ISO, but I disagree. He could have underexposed the image significantly and brought out the shadows in post-processing. How much leverage he has in editing photos, however, I do not know.

 

Seth Godin: Get Over Yourself

readingbyeugene Leave a comment

In the wake of Sandy’s devastation, Seth Godin offers:

In the face of billions of dollars of destruction, of the loss of life, of families disrupted, it’s easy to wonder what we were so hung up on just a few days ago. Many just went face to face with an epic natural disaster, and millions are still recovering. Writer’s block or a delayed shipment or an unreturned phone call seem sort of trivial now.

We’re good at creating drama, at avoiding emotional labor and most of all, at thinking small. Maybe we don’t need another meeting, a longer coffee break or another hour whittling away at our stuckness.

There’s never been a better opportunity to step up and make an impact, while we’ve got the chance. This generation, this decade, right now, there are more opportunities to connect and do art than ever before. Maybe even today.

It’s pretty easy to decide to roll with the punches, to look at the enormity of natural disaster and choose to hunker down and do less. It’s more important than ever, I think, to persist and make a dent in the universe instead.

We’ve all been offered access to so many tools, so many valuable connections, so many committed people. What an opportunity.

How will you take advantage of this opportunity?

###

Here is my review of Seth Godin’s Linchpin, which is perhaps the best book he’s written.

How Wall Street Bankers Handled Sandy

readingbyeugene 1 Comment

This Bloomberg piece details how those on Wall Street handled Hurricane (Superstorm) Sandy. It’s slightly (perhaps very) disconcerting, as these people turned to $1,000 wine, delivered sushi, and Monopoly games:

“I had to go to the wine cellar and find a good bottle of wine and drink it before it goes bad,” Murry Stegelmann, 50, a founder of investment-management firm Kilimanjaro Advisors LLC, wrote in an e-mail after he lost power at 6 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Darien, Connecticut.

The bottle he chose, a 2005 Chateau Margaux, was given 98 points by wine critic Robert Parker and is on sale at the Westchester Wine Warehouse for $999.99.

“Outstanding,” Stegelmann said. He started the day with green tea at Starbucks, talking with neighbors about the New York Yankees’ future and moving boats to the parking lot of Darien’s Middlesex Middle School.

You have to click to read the rest. Using fax machines? No dumpling bar at JP Morgan? Wall Street had it rough.