For the most part, culminant is a root word meaning the highest point, though some older dictionaries allow this little, mono-syllabic word to stand all by herself.  I like the sound of culminant and have invested an enormous amount of weight for the word in the rubric of Abecedarium:NYC. We are going to photograph the highest natural point in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island and the highest human-made point in Mahhatten (Of course with the Twin Towers gone, it’s the Empire State Building).
The highest point in Brooklyn is Greenwood Cemetary. Today, I realize that our decision to make the shooting of culm a five-Burrough wide project has become absolutely daunting! I used to be almost deathly scared of cemeteries. When my girl scout troop offered to sweep autumn leaves from the grounds of the Memorial Gardens in Memphis, where I grew up, I begged to be excused from this odious good deed. I take my trembling nine-year-old daughter Noa to photograph the Revolutionary War statues in the cemetery. As we wind our way up the only real hill I have ever seen in our burrough, we realize that from this vantage point near 8th Avenue and 27th Street we are looking straight across the sky at the tops of buildings in downtown Manhattan.