Bride and groom, ready to leave on the next train out of here…

Bride and groom, ready to leave on the next train out of here…

Image by Ed Yourdon
Note: this photo was published in an undated (Dec 15, 2010) Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10017."

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I’ve been to Grand Central Station to take photos on three seperate occasions in the past couple of years (click here and here and here to see the Flickr sets). But it has been almost exactly a year since I was last here with my camera, and I was curious to see whether the Christmas "spirit" would be visible again this year.

I also thought I would see if I could shoot some interesting video clips of tourists and travelers, students and children, faux Santa Clauses and Christmas revelers. As it turned out, I was able to record about 70 video clips with my Canon G-12 camera, and I’m still working on piecing them together into a coherent video; it will probably end up on YouTube, and I’ll post a link to it here whenever it’s finished.

But I couldn’t leave the place without shooting some still photos too — so I put away the G12, pulled my Nikon D700 out of my back-pack, and wandered around the station a couple more times, to see what I could find. Last year, I reported seeing large groups of tourists and people (as well as a couple of soldiers) moving quickly from the ticket booth to the trains, hurrying to arrive home for the holidays. There was also an animated "light show" playing all across the ceiling of Grand Central at various intervals; consequently, there were several shots of people staring straight up at the ceiling, with a look of wonder and amazement on their faces…

This year, the scene was different: I saw dozens of would-be and make-believe Santa Clauses. I was told later that there was a "Santathon" in the city, and that similarly costumed Clauses were in evidence throughout the midtown shopping area. In the Grand Central station, there were also costumed elves, Santa’s helpers, and comely young women with decorative antlers on their heads.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there was also a bridal party engaged in the serious business of getting photographed in the midst of the crowd. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but the bride and groom looked distinctly Russian; in any case, they were an unusual sight, and I was happy to include them in the overall tableau…

I have a feeling that there will be even more holiday festivities at Grand Central during the next two weeks; however, I doubt that I’ll have the time to come back and photograph at again. In any case, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year … and stay tuned for another visit to Grand Central — a year from now, if not before.