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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
Grand Central Terminal, also known as Grand Central Station
Grand Central Terminal (GCT, often unofficially called Grand Central Station) is a terminal rail station at 15 Vanderbilt Avenue (42nd Street and Park Avenue) in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Built by the New York Central Railroad (for which it was named) in the heyday of American long-distance passenger trains, it is the largest train station in the world by number of platforms: 44, with 67 tracks along them. They are on two underground levels, with 41 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower.
Although it has been properly called "Grand Central Terminal" for a century, many people continue to refer to it as "Grand Central Station". Technically, that is the name of the nearby post office, as well as the name of a previous rail station on the site.
Layout
Besides train platforms, Grand Central contains restaurants (the most famous of which is the Oyster Bar) and fast food outlets (surrounding the Dining Concourse on the level below the Main Concourse), delis, bakeries, newsstands, a gourmet and fresh food market, an annex of the New York Transit Museum and over 40 retail stores.
The main Concourse is the center of Grand Central. The space is cavernous and usually filled with bustling crowds. The ticket booths are here, although many now stand unused or repurposed since the introduction of ticket vending machines. The large American flag was hung in Grand Central Terminal a few days after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The unusual ceiling of the Main Concourse is described below. The main information booth is in the center of the concourse. This is a perennial meeting place, and the four-faced clock on top of the information booth is perhaps the most recognizable icon of Grand Central. Each of the four clock faces are made from opal, and both Sotheby's and Christie's have estimated the value to be $10m-$20m. Within the marble and brass pagoda lies a secret door that conceals a spiral staircase leading to the lower level information booth.
Ceiling
In fall 1998, a 12-year restoration of Grand Central revealed the original lustre of the Main Concourse's elaborately decorated astronomical ceiling. The original ceiling, painted in 1912 by French artist Paul César Helleu, was eventually replaced in the late 1930s to correct falling plaster of the original ceiling. This new ceiling had been obscured by decades of what people thought was coal and diesel smoke. Spectroscopic examination revealed that it was actually tar and nicotine from tobacco smoke. A single dark patch remains above Michael Jordan's Steak House, left untouched by renovators to remind visitors of the grime that once covered the ceiling.
There are two peculiarities to this ceiling: the sky is backwards, and the stars are slightly displaced. One explanation is that the ceiling is based on a medieval manuscript, which visualized the sky as it would look from outside the celestial sphere: this is why the constellations are backwards. Since the celestial sphere is an abstraction (stars are not all at equal distances from Earth), this view does not correspond to the actual view from anywhere in the universe. The reason for the displacement of the stars is that the manuscript showed a (reflected) view of the sky in the Middle Ages, and since then the stars have shifted due to precession of the equinoxes. Most people, however, simply think that Helleu reversed the image by accident. Embarrassed, the Vanderbilts explained it away by saying that the ceiling depicted the heavens as they would look outside the celestial sphere, from God's vantage point.
Composition:
POV: mezzanine floor
Time/weather: 2:20PM/1°C, showers
Exposure Time: 1/10
F-Stop: f/2.8
Focal Length: 7300/1000 mm
Metering Mode: Pattern
Flash: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode
File Size: 190 kb
Pp work:
1. soften the green ceiling by Neat Image software
2. sharpen the remaining pixels
3. resize for TL
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