Author: Stacy Horn

This was the first picture I took on my Christmas Window Display walk. It’s a couple of NYPD guys standing in front of the Apple store on 14th Street holding machine guns.

As I said, not one window blew me away. But this year interactivity was the theme. A lot of the displays involved an interactive element. I wondered if students or alumni of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU (ITP) were involved. They’ve had shows every year for decades featuring work like this.

This was a popular one. It would take your picture, and then people would take pictures of their picture. All I could think about was how poor the quality of the picture of the picture would be.

I had more fun watching people. There were a lot of children but I didn’t get the sense that most of the windows were geared towards children.

I was behind these guys for a while. Adorable.

I liked the windows that did what they normally do, showcase a product.

This was kinda cool, this glittering serpent thing wrapped around the building.

And I always love the Tiffany windows. They’re very small and so you have to come in close, which the window artist uses to create a sense of intimacy. Oh, you can see the serpent thing in the reflection!

I went out to photograph Christmas window displays, but this non-holiday window turned out to be my favorite. I’m sorry to say that not one window out there blew my mind. Not even Barney’s, although I loved the sound effects in one. I’ll post a few of them later in any case. The people viewing the windows are fun to see.

Sorry for the shakey-cam. It’s hard to walk and film without some shaking.

In my book, Imperfect Harmony, I describe the time we sang beside the Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum. (Cliff Notes: It was awesome.) I remembered that the angels on the tree were lit from below and they reminded me of ballerinas in a Degas painting. Did I remember correctly? Yes!

Here’s the same shot, pulled back. One more below …

This is the view from where I stood. I had trouble seeing John Maclay, our director, but there was nothing to be done about that. While everyone else in the choir filed in, and the audience found their seats, I was like a little kid chomping at the bit, waiting for Christmas to begin. I couldn’t stand still. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s GO!” (I am insufferable.)

This is a detail from a more old fashioned Christmas window type decoration. Those skiers and that ski lift are mechanical and they are in constant movement.

I have some things I need to shoot uptown tomorrow. Maybe I will walk up 5th Avenue and take pictures of all the elaborate windows I pass by. I just remembered that Barney’s always had great Christmas windows (they used to be right nearby me, now they’re uptown so I haven’t seen their windows in a while). I forget where they are exactly, I wonder if they will be on my way?