Air Conditioners: Say what you will of the rest of NYCJPG — we challenge you to find a larger collection of air conditioner photos anywhere on the Web. Voted "notable newcomer" by the AC Appreciators of America, 2002.

8/4 - 8/10/02

Billboard Babes: At least 10' tall. Guaranteed photogenic.

9/1 - 9/7/02

Bronx Zoo: Captured during a weekend of fall foliage.

12/1 - 12/14/02

Central Park: Protests, sports, trees, grass, sculpture, lakes, castles, animals — it's all here.

10/20 - 11/9/02

Churches: More like an appetizer then a theme as of yet. But a really big church series is planned for the spring. The most ambitious series we've done yet in terms of research and fieldwork. Stay tuned!

7/7 - 7/12/02

Columns: From the barbaric to the overwrought to the just right.

11/10 - 11/30/02

Construction: NYC seems to have been in a building and rebuilding boom since we started working here in 1990. But maybe it is always this way.

10/6 - 10/13/02

Curtained Windows: When a blanket and thumbtacks are no longer enough.

9/29 - 10/5/02

Fire Escapes: Even back before we knew we liked photography, we knew we liked "series" photography: those pictures of water towers at MoMA, or Andy Warhol's soup cans. Take one thing, and see how its underlying form changes (or doesn't) from instance to instance. Web-based digital photography is the perfect medium for exploring this.

8/11 - 8/17/02

Fluorescence: This series forced us to learn what the "white balance" setting on our camera was for, and how to try to fix the picture if we used the wrong setting. Which, unfortunately, is hard to do and there remains an egg-yolky tint to some of these pictures. But we've since learned to shoot all our images in our camera's "RAW" (rather than JPEG) format, which allows you to try different white balance settings AFTER having taking the picture! Score another point for digital! (And if we read the literature correctly, higher-end cameras allow the same thing to be done for exposure.)

7/28 - 8/3/02

Forced Perspective: We love digital photography for its "you are there" feeling (much more then you can get from a standard print photo), and believe the technology will progress so that one day soon, when you see pictures like this, you will want to reach your hand into the monitor like Alice in "Through the Looking Glass". Or, when you see the spider at the end of this series, you will run screaming from the monitor like your great-grandparents did during that early movie where the locomotive came straight at the screen.

7/14 - 7/20/02

Gilding: There has been a boom in "gilding" in NYC over the past few years. Perhaps someone has invented a new, cheaper process, or hired a new, better salesman, or it was just because of the economic boom?

6/17 - 6/30/03

“The Lights of Dyker Heights”: An Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn where they don't scrimp on Christmas decorations. ... The Rube is delighted to report that several of his pictures from this expedition are included in a new book, "Holiday Lights!", available from Amazon.com. It is packed with photos from all over the U.S. and includes instructions on how to start doing your displays.

12/15 - 12/24/02

Lions: Another brief series, but we have been saving up pictures since and will probably do another one this winter. As well as one on eagles -- both are extremly popular in NYC's classically-ornamented buildings.

3/13/03; 6/15 - 6/16/03

Men at Work: Building, renovating, repairing, cleaning; another topic that could be revisited at length.

8/25 - 8/31/02

Midtown Holidays: The most crowded time of year in midtown.

12/26 - 12/31/02

Museum of Natural History: A gigantic, fascinating, exhausting, and sometimes unsettling place, especially if you read all the labels. Cafeteria much improved over when we used to visit it as children -- but that's true of almost everywhere.

6/23 - 6/29/02

Nighttime NYC: Like many of our earlier themes, combines a very broad topic with (at present) a very few pictures.

10/14 - 10/19/02

Outdoor Art: Basically we mean "modern" art (not traditional statues) which is viewed outdoors. Or in atriums ... And sometimes, in store windows.

5/13 - 6/14/03; 9/7/03 - 9/10/03

Scaffolding: With some of our early themes, we tried to connect them end-to-end like dominos, in that the last picture of each theme leads into the next. In this series, then, the picture at right was a transition from the previous Fire Escapes, and on 8/18 we start Men At Work with men working on a scaffolding.

It was intended as a in-joke between us and our most perceptive viewers, but in practice it was confusing when you'd be surfing along in one series and end up in another without noticing the switchover.

Also in practice, we find that our most perceptive viewers come up with the best in-jokes on their own, and then explain them to us so we can take credit.

8/18 - 8/24/02

Snowstorm: Coverage of the two major snowstorms of this past winter.

1/1 - 1/15/03; 2/18 - 2/21/03

Spring Flowers: We had so much fun doing this one, we plan to make it a yearly feature. The New York Botanical Garden, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens were all included this time.

3/24/03; 4/6 - 5/7/03; 5/12/03

Statues: Beauty (shown at right) has accepted our invitation to co-chair the steering committee for the site. Note that she is doing this on her own time and not as a representative of the New York Public Library, where she resides. All she asks in return is assistance in her campaign to be given regular baths because of the numerous pigeons in the area. She wants to stress that she is 100% happy with the care she is being by the library and recognizes they have to spend most of their time and money on taking care of the books. So her appeal is more towards volunteers and philanthropists who understand her desire to appear unsullied at all times.

Joining her on the committee for a better NYCJPG is her good friend and NYPL neighbor, Truth.

7/1 - 7/6/02

Sunlight: Its effects on a variety of urban surfaces are explored.

9/15 - 9/21/02

Shadows: What the pessimist sees when they look at our Sunlight series.

9/22 - 9/28/02

Terra Cotta: Our bible for this series was "Terra-Cotta Skyline" (the author graciously allowed us to quote from it as desired) and the first thing the we realized after reading it is that there's a LOT more terra cotta in NYC then we thought. It turns out to be the key ingredient in most of our favorite buildings.

7/1/03 - 8/2/03

La Théme du Jour: Sometimes we just don't have any full-fledged themes ready to go, or we have some good pictures that we would like run NOW rather than waitng for a theme they can fit into, or we want to put some new proposed themes up for consideration.

3/1/03 - 4/5/03

Timekeepers: In doing this series, we first thought there were less clocks around than we first thought, but more than we second thought. On third thought, there are lots more than we first thought. When you have your eyes open for something, it starts to show up.

1/16 - 2/28/03

Tower Tops: For pedestrians, it's a pity that the best parts of some buildings are way at the top where only other tower-dwellers can see them. We look forward to expanding on this theme when we get a camera with a bigger zoom lens, or when we can get tower-dwellers to send in some of their photos.

7/21 - 7/27/02

United Nations: Our first theme ever. Back then we imagined they would last no more than a week each, so they would form neat rows in the calendar view.

6/16 - 6/21/02

Urban Birds: Despite running only four days, it remains our most popular series with over 1600 hits on the "Pale Male" page alone! ... NYC is a prime birdwatching spot because of its location along major migratory flyways. C'mon birders, send in your photos and war stories!

5/8 - 5/11/03

Waterworks: At least this year's wet weather means they can all be turned on again! Mostly public fountains and waterfalls, but it could be outdoor art that uses water too. (Warning: subject material not suitable for persons with rabies!)

8/3/03 - 9/6/03