Pixiq

Although I was born and raised in the Bronx, I don't think of myself as a New Yorker.  That maybe because where I was raised, it was a pretty far haul to a subway, and as kids, we really only knew the Bronx, and it was rare to go into Manhattan.

I can count on two hands the times my family did an outing into Manhattan, and I really can't remember seeing Central Park.  The usual destination was either a friend of my parents on the West Side, or the Christmas show at Radio City.

But what other people think of as New York was just as foreign to me.  We didn't visit the Empire State building, or the Central Park Zoo.  Why should we - when there was the Bronx Zoo, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens, which we could get to with two buses.

One little known fact about the Bronx is that it has more parkland than any other borough.  There were plenty of parks for us to play in.  When I moved to Gunhill Road, we lived near the Oval Park (I'm not sure if that's the right name but that's what we called it because of the running track).

When I moved into Manhattan to go to film school, I lived near Tompkins Square Park during the time of what would later be thought of as the great upheaval.  I was around when there was the riot at Tompkins Square Park - and frankly - the park was not a nice place to hang-out, but I did jog around it in the mornings, jumping over gaps in the cobblestones.

It wasn't until I moved up to the upper east side, halfway between Central Park and Carl Schurz Park that I began to explore and photograph Central Park.  When it snowed, I was like a kid and went out to Central Park with as much equipment as I could manage.

Many of the more popular shots in the store were done with various 4 x 5 inch view cameras.

The point is, although I've been photographing Central Park for years, and managed to win an award in one of their photography contests - the park was always new to me.  Even though you might think of me as a New Yorker, I still see the park and most of the city with the eyes of a tourist.