I've always been a painter, my mother used to put up rolls of brown wrapping paper to protect the walls from my crayons, her lipstick, or whatever else I found handy. But now I'm more interested in the photos I've recently been taking. Here are two, taken on the same stormy afternoon from the Houston Street pier on the Westside Highway, which is one of my favorite places in New York.

The first is of the Empire State Building with all the new construction going on above Christopher Street. The second is, for me, about those water towers above Canal Street. And the clouds of course, those drama queens.