on the move

It's time for a change! I've redone my main site and have migrated this photoblog over there. It'll be nice to have everything under one virtual roof.



Come with me over to LIMPIRE and together we shall take over the world.

in the end

Everything looks beautiful--if you look at it in the right way.

my favorite place in NYC

This is my favorite view in all of New York City. It's the Renwick Smallpox Hospital on Roosevelt Island, the narrow strip of land in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Behind the hospital, you can see the 59th Street bridge, which spans the island but there isn't an exit, which is weird. You can't drive to the island; you can only gain access to it on the subway (F) or the endlessly fascinating funicular.



This photo was taken in February, 2009. The ruins of the hospital were under renovation for the preparation of South Point Park. (Last I heard, it was going to be turned into a café.) My friend and I sneaked in to shoot this photo just as the sun was rising, and we had the entire tip of the island to ourselves. It was a truly amazing feeling to be alone on an island wedged between two boroughs.

bronx views

A photo from February 2009, from Highbridge Park in upper Manhattan. This is a view of The Bronx over the East River. It was one of the first photos I took that my militant Israeli photography teacher approved of. I still remember what she said: "Now this--this is interesting."

sky queen

This photo is from last year but I just re-discovered it. It's the Unisphere in Corona Park / Flushing Meadows, Queens.

a little geekout

I went to see my friend's hardcore band play Tuesday night, and tested a new (well, new to me) camera that can shoot at 3200 ISO. This number refers to film sensitivity, meaning that it can make images in very low light. And that's important because I shoot a lot in bad light and don't like using a flash.

Let's geek out for a second. Here's a photo I shot Tuesday night in Chicago. I have clearer ones, but I like this the best. Not sure what produced that green flare spot.



So, that one above was shot with the Canon Mark III. Compare that with this shot of Sugar & Gold I took in New York last year with the Mark II.



See how much grainier the second one is? It was also shot at 3200 ISO, f 4.0, with a focal length of 24mm. This first shot was exposed a touch longer (1/15 as opposed to 1/25 of a second, but I never said this was a scientific comparison. The lighting conditions were also different--probably equally crappy, but different.)

In any case, I approve. I would have loved this sort of low-light resolution during the blackouts in Buenos Aires.

love in the barn

A year ago, my dear friends Sue and Chris got married at the Queens County Farm Museum.



Happy Anniversary, I love you guys.

flashbox

I was redoing my website and came across one of my old favorites from the summer, when I shot this amateur boxing match in New York. These were adolescents, and while some of them were quite fearless, I think the huge crowd (a warm evening on Pier 84) made a lot of them nervous. And the horrible bankers there screaming obscenities at the kids fighting probably didn't make it any better. I had some sweet press access--elbows on the ring--and their anxiety was palpable.



This was my first photo assignment for Issue 3 of Norman Einstein's Magazine.

just a reminder

I'm attending the wedding today of my oldest friend.



I took this photo my first full summer in New York, in June 2008.

messing with people

So, a little while ago I discovered this feature on my flickr account that shows you how people are getting access to your photos and it turns out that whenever people search the phrase "male manicure" this photo comes up:



Obviously, it's not really a male manicure, but that's what I titled the photo. It was actually part of a shoot I did last summer for an New York City amateur boxing event called Rumble on the River for my friend Cian's magazine, Norman Einstein's.

It remains one of the most fun shoots I have ever done. If you're into boxing, you can check out the full story.

banner change

I'm changing the banner on the blog today, so I thought I'd post the photo that I used for the original banner.



I shot this at a party in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) last year, at the end of May. Still one of my favorites. This new banner is a couple on a motorcycle in Buenos Aires.

missing nyc

I miss New York this week. This is a photo from the summer, on my buddy Luis's last night in town before he moved to California. I demanded he stay up until sunrise.

love, trees, and near-tripod-bludgeoning

I took this photo a year ago, on Valentine's Day, near Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan. Yep, I was tromping around the deserted Hudson River Parkway by myself on Valentine's Day. But that day yielded some of my favorite photos (including this one), so...it's awesome being single.



There is kind of a weird story that goes along with this photo. Like I said, I was alone and it was near dusk, and I was heading home because it was so cold out and as much as I wanted to stay to shoot, I also wanted to be out of the woods by dark. I was technically in park, but an abandoned one that I accessed by skipping a rotting gate, so it was a little creepy. At one point I saw a guy walking toward me on the same narrow path by the river, about 50 meters away or something. I looked down for a quick second (it was really muddy) and when I looked up again, he was gone.

My adrenaline shot up like a rocket. I froze on the spot and tried to listen--did he foist off into the woods? Was he waiting for me to walk by to pounce on me? I thought about backtracking to the fence I'd hopped to enter, but not only did that mean going backwards, it meant I'd be looking back over my shoulder the entire way. I immediately dropped my pack to the ground and unstrapped my tripod to use as a weapon in case I was about to be attempted-murdered and kicked into the river.

I really hate being scared. I am not into scary movies at all. But I also hate the feeling of being scared for no reason. So I crept forward and called out, "Hello?" And a few seconds later--though of course it felt like longer--he emerged from the trees, buckling his belt. He had just stepped aside to take a piss. We passed each other, me still gripping my iron-clad tripod like a bat.

And then, in this perfect light, I got this beautiful shot. The trees look so combative at the time, but when I look at it later, it looks like a tree party. Happy Valentine's Day! You didn't die!

Highbridge Park

Highbridge Park up in Washington Heights is a peculiar place. I avoided it for a while because it is literally depressed in both senses of the word, and I like to shoot places at sunrise. You can't really see into it from the street, because it's sunken from view into the Harlem River and...you just don't know what goes down in there, although you can imagine. But I really wanted to get down there. I'd heard about some crazy parties that go down there, and the Old Croton Aqueduct makes for some fantastic shots. Several months ago I ventured down there with some friends.

There were, as you can imagine, a few squatter settlements, including this penthouse suite.

Hudson River Parkway

Van Cortlandt Park

The Staten Island Farm Colony

The Staten Island Farm Colony has been one of my favorite shoots for my AbandonedNYC project. Here's a sampling of photos, one in the snow at sunrise, and one not in the snow, at sunset. It's pretty easy to get to, in the sense that you don't have to worry about climbing anything crazy, or getting chased by cops. Sunrise shoots are a big commitment though. I discovered that the Staten Island ferry at 5 a.m. is a mini-ferry.

Here's a map if you want to get there yourself.

Rossville, Staten Island

Officer's Row