MIKE CRUPI • rochester photo blog

My first annoying foliage photo of the season…

Fallen leaf in a sea of green. ©MIKE CRUPI

I went apple-picking for the first time since…well I really don’t know if I’ve ever picked an apple actually. Took the family and the grandparents to the Apple Farm in Victor. Good times, excellent apples.

Dean enjoys a fresh apple. ©MIKE CRUPI

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 made me think back to what I was doing at the time and I decided to dig up the photos I took in New York eight days after the attacks. I was living only about an hour from New York City, but on vacation in the Adirondacks on September 11, 2001. I was back in Connecticut a few days later, but the newspaper I worked at wasn’t sending anyone to Manhattan at that time, so I had to go on my next day off, September 19. By that time they had the area around Ground Zero very tightly controlled. I waited for hours to obtain press credentials so that I could get a slightly better vantage point than the rest of the public. Of course after all that waiting the more telling photos were of the outpouring of love from New Yorkers away from the attack site, the personal memorials at every park, the messages of condolence – handwritten, typed, written in dust – the pictures of missing loved ones plastered on posts, on windows, on walls, the candlelight vigils attended by hundreds of people. Everyone just seemed shattered, it really made a big city seem like a small community. I’m glad I went that day, I didn’t take any groundbreaking photos but I got to see New Yorkers at their best.

Hundreds of pictures of the missing. ©MIKE CRUPI

The still smoldering ruins of the WTC towers. ©MIKE CRUPI

Leaving notes of condolence. ©MIKE CRUPI

Acrid, yellowish smoke rising from Ground Zero. ©MIKE CRUPI

Firefighters douse the still smoldering wreckage. ©MIKE CRUPI

Messages on the dusty windows. ©MIKE CRUPI

A flag hanging downtown. ©MIKE CRUPI

Union Square Park filled with memorials. ©MIKE CRUPI

Candelight vigil at Union Square Park. ©MIKE CRUPI

Candelight vigil at Union Square Park. ©MIKE CRUPI

A note left one week after the attacks. ©MIKE CRUPI

Women stop to look at the recovery effort at Ground Zero. ©MIKE CRUPI

Pictures of the missing at Grand Central Station. ©MIKE CRUPI

Mourners at Union Square Park. ©MIKE CRUPI

It was a cool, overcast Labor Day, but we still had fun at Progressive Field watching the Indians play the Tigers on Monday. Grant’s favorite part may have been the Bob Feller statue outside the ballpark.

Grant climbs on the Bob Feller statue outside Progressive Field. ©MIKE CRUPI

Grant reaches for Feller's baseball. ©MIKE CRUPI

The view from Section 130 at Progressive Field. ©MIKE CRUPI

Kids and adults alike wait anxiously for the National 9/11 Flag to be carried onto Rochester’s Frontier Field Aug. 20. The tattered flag was recovered at Ground Zero and stitched back to health by people all over the United States. ©CATHOLIC COURIER

Waiting to see the National 9/11 Flag at Frontier Field. ©CATHOLIC COURIER