Flavorwire Exclusive: Striking Photos of Brooklyn as Seen From Elevated Subway Lines

By Alison Herman

June 16, 2014

I’m always riding the subway around Brooklyn to do photo expeditions in one location or another, and it’s often occurred to me that some of my favorite views of New York City can be seen from the subway itself. The problem is, shooting photos from an elevated train means shooting through warped, scratched, and filthy plastic windows. Or maybe that’s not a problem after all? One day this past February, with the city blanketed in snow and illuminated by amazing winter light, I decided to toss my perfectionism aside for a month and make a virtue of necessity, shooting a series of warts-and-all landscape photos from Brooklyn’s elevated subway lines — called, naturally, Elevated Landscapes. Since there’s no other way to capture these particular shots, aside from possibly renting a helicopter, it seemed a shame to let them get away. And I think the smudges and distortion add a certain quality that I’d never have been able to achieve in Photoshop.