A recent visit to Costa Rica coincided with Holy Week, and Juan Sanatmaria Day ( a national patriotic holiday), so the entire country shut down for days as religious and national celebrations took place. Adjacent to my hotel is the La Soledad Church who organized a bit of pageantry for the event. I stumbled upon their procession and followed it to where several other church processions converged upon the Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, a large Cuban baroque church in central San Jose.

The World is a vessel without a true home port as this very exclusive floating resort community has a leisurely circumnavigatory itinerary that takes about two years to wrap around the globe. As the home office is near Miami, docking here in Biscayne Bay is the closest thing this ship has its own residence.

North of Manhattan are several large patches of wilderness in the lower Hudson region. Among them is Harriman State Park, a wonderful network of hiking trails featuring a commuter train stop near the trailheads on the southeast and northwest sides of the park. It is the largest parkland near NYC that allows camping, yet it is often quite sparsely utilized by city dwellers.

Among the trails is the Long Path that runs from the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, and weaves 350 miles north (564 km) to Albany NY. For anyone who finds that jaunt too short, Harriman is also intersected by the infamous Appalachian Trail that spans 2175 miles (3500 km) from Maine to Georgia.

For ship spotters (cousins of the uber-geeky train-spotters or bird watchers) the January 2008 meeting of Cunard’s three Queens at the mouth if the Hudson river was historic. At the time, Cunard’s fleet of ocean liners (not to be confused with cruise ships) consisted of the Queen Mary II, Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth II. Each was on different itineraries, seldom in the same region with one another. So for all three to be in New York, and with the QE2 on one of her final voyages before her retirement, was a unique nautical confluence. I joined a large unorganized gathering in Battery Park, eager to witness the event on a cold and drizzly winter night. Several photographers  were present too, on land and in the air. I had hoped to get a permit to photograph from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as all three ships were scheduled to pass underneath, all neatly in line as they sailed out to sea in different directions.

The QM2 was constructed with the Verrazano Bridge as a major design influence, as it’s height is restricted by the clearance under the bridge. To appease the principles of Archimedes, the ship’s stack has a hinge that flips it back like the lid of a Zippo lighter, allowing for passage under the bridge. I thought it would be rather awesome to get a shot from overhead, but unfortunately, with my press-pass-carrying days long behind, my influence with city hall to obtain permits was very limited, so I was stuck in a crowd hugging the rails in Battery Park.

So with that in mind, viewing this photo one might ask, “where are the ships?” Well there were some embarkation delays so the carefully orchestrated lineup of liners didn’t quite pan out as planned as all three steamed out in the harbor in a huff not allowing for anyone on the ground to capture all three ships in any single frame. But, I did snap this fireboat escorting the Queens through the fireworks display. The shot I wish I took can be seen here.

I often enjoy the challenges of photographing at night without a tripod, relying on steady hands and careful breathing, or makeshift platforms. Sodium vapor street lights are brutal on a camera’s auto white balance and often difficult, if not impossible to correct. As such, I rather let go of my quest for color perfection and intentionally let the sickly purple and orange hues shine.

In the wee hours of the morning on a work night, I was woken up by a ship’s fog horn. I live off Riverside Drive in Manhattan, alongside the Hudson River and near the George Washington Bridge. Up until that night, I had never heard any of the many vessels that traverse this waterway blast their emergency horns. I rushed to my rooftop on this unusually warm November night and found that the mild weather had caused the Hudson to fog over reminiscent of images of San Fransisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. So I grabbed my camera, tripod and a light coat, then headed out.

This is an “outtake” from a set of images I made in Szentendre, an artist community north of Budapest, Hungary. During the last few moments of autumn dusk, I found a glowing shop window display stuffed with loads of tungsten candles and surrounded by an ivy-like wall of grape vines. One of the best images I have made over the past five years was a part of this series, taken just minutes afterwards.