Rooftop. Alphabet City, Manhattan. A young music mogul in the years before the big time.
Website of the day: Humans of New York
You know that we’re a big fan of people watching around here. One of my favorite features every week are the Peoples of the World on Wednesdays. And New York City… New York has every kind of people ever invented on one little island, and Humans of New York has pictures of tons of them.
My photos on the cover and inside of the inaugural issue of The Lo-Down Magazine. Lower East Side, New York City.
I was thrilled when I was asked by one of my favorite neighborhood news blogs, The Lo-Down, to take photos for their inaugural issue of their new print magazine. As a Lower East Side resident who is invested in the community, I can definitely say that being asked to take photos for such a venture is one of the proudest recent moments in memory regarding my photography.
The task was to capture the area South of Delancey Street at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge which is known as SPURA (Seward Park Urban Renewal Area). Currently, and for many, many years as far back as I can remember, the area consists mainly of city-owned parking lots usually filled with trucks in various stages of wear and tear. It’s an area I pass by daily since I live very, very close to it and for many community residents it is now an extremely hot topic due to the development plans and proposals. You can read a bit about SPURA here on the Lo-Down if you are interested.
I am really proud of the Lo-Down for launching their new magazine which is being sent out to thousands of Lower East Side residents this week as well as many of the local stores, cafes and retail establishments in the area and happy that I could contribute to their venture with photos of the neighborhood I love so dearly, the Lower East Side.
You can view the photos used in the magazine (and a few more that are part of the same set that I just love) larger either on my Flickr here:
… or you can view all of the photos including scans of my photos in the Lo-Down Magazine on my Google Plus profile here:
The Lo-Down Magazine - Photos of SPURA - Lower East Side
Enjoy!
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View my photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.
Spring cherry blossoms overlooking the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. Central Park, New York City.
On Spring mornings, the world hangs in sleepy stasis.
Trees, adorned with blossoms as soft as winter’s first snow, use their branches to gracefully conduct the world’s awakening in a daily symphony at dawn.
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I am admittedly a night person. I have tried for years to trick my stubborn body into accepting a different biological time-clock to no avail.
However, on days when I am carefully trying to get myself to accept the mornings as a friend and not a foe, I am always amazed at how differently the world appears especially during certain times of the year like springtime.
On a perfectly cloudy Spring day in Central Park, it’s as if the world is opens up its dewy eyes one by one as the city stretches out languidly for a few hours.
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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page
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Buy “Spring Blossoms Overlooking the Central Park Reservoir - New York City” Prints here, email me, or ask for help.
Corner restaurant on a sunlit evening. Tribeca, New York City.
There are certain colors that dominate memory mixed on the palette of the mind’s eye with the hues from dreams and tones of nostalgia.
But it’s the tones of nostalgia that stand out the most: the penetrating longing for places and moments we have or have not experienced that creates a void in our beings so deep that its echo is felt in every moment and heard in every thought.
There are words for this type of nostalgia: sensucht and saudade. Sensucht is a German word that describes the emotional state of longing and yearning and saudade is a Galician- Portuguese word that describes a similar intense state of longing for something or someone. They can both be experienced as a longing for a place that is unidentifiable but somehow familiar and indicative of what we would most closely identify as home. Sometimes the yearning is so intense that only the emotional state is what we are aware of and it’s not always easy to tell that there is a deep yearning for something or someone at that moment.
New York City, for me, fills me with constant yearning with its colors and the way that light casts its glow on streets, brick, and the structures that fill in the image of New York City in my own mind. In the reds of the bricks I feel a longing for other cities I have not yet experienced and in the light that falls onto the street early in the evening I see the same light casting its glow on the spaces I wish to walk thousands of miles away.
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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page
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Buy “Saudade - The Colors of Nostalgia - Tribeca - New York City” Prints here, email me, or ask for help.
Good morning Follower,
Yesterday I had the pleasure to have met a great musician DXTS. We want for a walk around the Flatiron and Times Square, he brought his camera and posted some photos on his Tumblr. #TheDaily has an interview so watch it. Thanks again for the great time!
I was interviewed last night by the wonderful Thomas Hawk and the lovely Lotus Carroll on their on-air live show called Phototalk Plus.
I was super nervous and there were some weird (but funny, in retrospect) technical difficulties but they were finally able to get me on the phone and everything went smooth after that. I really enjoyed the questions from them and the super active and hyper live audience.
So, if you ever wanted to hear me answer questions about how I got started with photography (which admittedly is fairly crazy, at least when I think about it), my thoughts about shooting in New York City, my thoughts about cameras and post-processing/editing as well as some talk about noodles (yes, really!), you may just enjoy this video (my full interview starts at 49:00):
Photo Talk Plus, Episode 14, With Special Guest Vivienne Gucwa
Enjoy!
(I decided to accompany this post with one of the photos I talked about briefly during the show, one of my favorite examples of industrial urban decay here in New York City: The Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn)
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Buy “Oxidation - Domino Sugar Factory - New York City” Prints here, email me, or ask for help.
Japanese Magnolia Blossoms. Spring. Stuyvesant Square, New York City.
As the steel exoskeletons that wind along city buildings bask in the glow of springtime, fresh-faced blossoms blush in the warmth of the sun tilting their heads skyward hoping for a kiss.
And the earth swoons.
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Spring definitely ‘sprung’ in New York City this past weekend. Trees are already blooming nearly a month ahead of schedule which is unusual but also beautiful to witness after what seemed like a long and rather dreary winter.
These are some of my favorite spring blooms. They are Magnolia Liliiflora also known as Japanese Magnolia. The tree is actually native to China, but was also cultivated for centuries in Japan. It was introduced to English-speaking countries from Japan and so the name of Japanese Magnolia has stuck even though the tree is not technically native to Japan.
I love how lush the blossoms are when they first open. They are quite delicate though and don’t last for very long so it’s a special and rare treat to catch them when they first bloom.
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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page
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Buy “Blush Response - Japanese Magnolia Blossoms - Spring - New York City” Prints here, email me, or ask for help.
