Category Archives: just pictures

NYC Photodump

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Just a few photos from around town:


Chantee was an accountant at my last job and was one of my first NYC friends. She has personality for days, if you needed to be told that.

A pretty Chinatown sky, while waiting for Ash and Kim to meet me at Hop Kee for Chinese food.

On my way to meet my friends Henry and Lucy for ramen, I looked up Broadway toward Canal and was overwhelmed by how specifically New Yorky the scene was.

Puerto Rico Vacation 2013: Part 1

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There’s so much story to this vacation that I’ll ease you into it with a photo of my friend Nik placing the moon in the sky over el Cañuelo, the sea fort in Old San Juan:

Puerto Rico Vacation

My favourite one of the whole trip.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: Princeton

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When we met six and three-quarters years ago, Kamran told me that he had gone to school “in New Jersey”. Later, I found out that he had spent six years at Princeton, getting his PhD in physics before deciding to go into law. The first time he took me to visit the campus was magical, since:

1) I had only lived in a NYC for a year and had never taken NJ Transit, which was completely different from the subway in that it was expensive and comfortable, and
2) living in NYC for a year was long enough that I’d forgotten what nature looked like.

Waiting for the dinghy to take us from the Princeton campus back to the Northeast Corridor station on that first visit, Kamran asked me to “go steady” with him after a month of trying to convince himself that he didn’t want to be yoked exclusively to this lady ox. Aww.

So, all these years later, we decided to go back a couple of weekends ago to relive his golden years and the birthplace of our looooove. We were supposed to leave Penn Station on the 11:15 a.m. train, but of course we got there at 11:16, so we made a stop at the Tim Horton’s inside the station and then casually watched a guy threaten the life of his girlfriend in the midst of a fight while we munched on a bagel in the alley out back. On the 12:15 train, we tucked our tickets to Princeton Junction into the slot on the back of the seat in front of us and alternated between solving the mysteries of the universe and napping.

Princeton, NJ

We took a cab straight to the graduate college (Kamran wanted to show Princeton that he’d left and conquered the world and didn’t need to wait an hour for the dinghy to campus), which was, um, gorgeous.

Princeton, NJ

Princeton, NJ

Princeton, NJ

Princeton, NJ

On our way down to the D-Bar in the basement of the grad college to see where Kamran drank tens of beers during his tenure, we went inside to the dining hall, where adorable/smelly/geeky grad students were eating bananas with their parents and stopped to stare at us, the stylish/successful/handsome people they hope to someday become.

Princeton, NJ

Then we walked up the hill

Princeton, NJ

to the main part of campus

Princeton, NJ

to begin the real reason we’d come: to eat everything Kamran remembered from his six years there.

The first stop was Hoagie Haven, where Kamran got a cheesesteak and I got a meatball hero, and he was so sure everyone inside was going to be like, “Hey, Kamshaft! Kameroon! Kamburger! What are you doing back here after all this time? Didn’t you go off into the world and make something of yourself while we stayed here slinging hoagies?” But no one was the same, and no one was there to congratulate him on becoming The Most Excellent Physicist-Lawyer Princeton Has Ever Produced™.

Princeton, NJ

Next, we walked up to the electrical engineering building to burn off our hoagies and then circled back to Zorba’s Grill for chicken gyros, where the guy in front of us was super rude to the kid behind the counter, and I said we should publicly shame him, but Kamran didn’t want to get knifed.

Princeton, NJ

Next door was Thomas Sweet, where we got cake batter ice cream with Butterfinger and sprinkles, because that combination makes sense.

Princeton, NJ

Princeton, NJ

This is Kamran eating ice cream just like Einstein, who lived/worked/died at Princeton. Only I had handed him both of our spoons to keep my hands free to take the picture, and you can see he’s using both of them at once. And that there’s no ice cream on either of them. Also, there’s a huge glare on Einstein. This could not have failed worse.

Princeton, NJ

But the ice cream was awesome. And then we were full and were mad at how old and small-stomached we are.

Continuing our walk through campus, we came this crazy fountain

Princeton, NJ

and these way crazier heads of animals, which we decided were Chinese zodiac symbols. And we were right (of course). It turns out they’re Ai Weiwei’s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads“.

Princeton, NJ

It’s hard to describe how huge and affecting these were.

Princeton, NJ

Cutting down a side street on our way to the physics building, we passed by the Princeton eating clubs, which are like the frat houses at your college except classy/elegant/full of much more money. I mean, but still not immune to keg parties in the backyard. (Two weeks later, Kamran is still bringing up “the time we went to that keg party with the live band at the Princeton eating club”. I’m 99% sure he’s joking.)

We stopped to pet the tigers outside the stadium

Princeton, NJ

and then walked through this huge Richard Serra sculpture called “The Hedgehog and the Fox” made of giant panels of rusted metal where one path gets wider and brighter and the other path gets narrower and darker. And where the immaturest of the Princetonians hang out, evidently.

Princeton, NJ

I saw some nature

Princeton, NJ

and then some more

Princeton, NJ

and then still more

Princeton, NJ

and then some involving Kamran,

Princeton, NJ

and then it was time to go home, so we stopped at another of Kamran’s most-remembered haunts, the Wawa, for some water. (Which I would call wa-wa if I was a child or just that much lamer.)

Princeton, NJ

And then we were back on NJ Transit,

Princeton, NJ

and then NYC skyline was coming into view,

Princeton, NJ

and then we were right in the middle of it again.

Princeton, NJ

And that was that.

A Day in the Life

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• Tuesday night, my friends Ash and Kim came over to . . . well, I don’t want to say they came over “to” watch The Skulls on Netflix streaming, because it’d be embarrassing to plan a night around a 2000s-era teen heartthrob secret college fraternity movie, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. Kim and I had basically spent the entire afternoon having an online argument about the types of people who have a list of celebrities they’re allowed to cheat on their significant others with–apparently this type of person is everyone but my BFF, Tracey, and me–that eventually escalated into Kim and Tracey–who have never met nor spoken before–exchanging words over a Google document the three of us were editing together and then somehow resulted in me telling Kim I’m ambivalent on whether or not she has a brain. Um, but The Skulls was surprisingly entertaining! I thought maybe Kim was speaking metaphorically when she said there’s a duel in it, but there’s definitely a duel in it.

• Wednesday: “Survivor”! “American Idol”! Have I mentioned that I’m aaaaall over this Burnell Taylor kid? He has such an interesting tone that I really think he can make anything sound good, even a song from a musical. This is the performance that really got me. Even Kamran likes him. I downloaded the “American Idol” app so I could vote for the first time ever this year. I haven’t, you know, done it yet, but I could.

• Kim came over again on Thursday night so she could tell me about the first date she had with a guy who asked her what her credit score is as a way of deciding whether she’s wifely enough. I won’t say anything else about the night so as to not lessen the impact of a man asking her credit score on the first date to determine if she’s good wife material.

• Friday night, it was unclear if anything was being done for happy hour, so there were just four of us left at work when we decided to go out. We work in the Financial District, so by the time we got to this new bar I wanted to try, it was so packed with suits we literally couldn’t get ten feet in the door. We went to an old standby bar instead, and my friend Jeff has an amazing way with waitresses without even trying, so we were led to this upstairs room filled with Victorian-ish furniture that was totally uncrowded and where they were playing everything from my iPod at a totally reasonable level: Cold War Kids, M83, Imagine Dragons, Band of Horses, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Passion Pit . . . it was, um, basically the best time I’ve had in a bar?

Nik and Jeff in repose:


Dranks:


• Saturday night, Kam and I went for a tasting menu at Tocqueville in Union Square, which is one of our favourite restaurants, one of the best restaurants in NYC, and one of the restaurants most deserving of a Michelin star that doesn’t have one. We were treated like a king and queen and then went home to watch “X-Files” and The Game, which I’ve basically been thinking about nonstop since, especially this song, which is so annoyingly and catchily 1960s.

• Yesterday, we watched Safety Not Guaranteed, which was adooooorable, and Midnight Cowboy, which was well done but totally depressing and made me feel like I will pretty obviously end up living in a condemned tenement building someday and almost killing children with stolen coconuts. Also, thank god Angelina Jolie looks like her mother and not her father.

Later in the afternoon, we went on a walk up the East side of Manhattan and into Central Park, which I’m using as an excuse to use my Adventure Time logo:



the Queensboro Bridge at the edge of Manhattan, looking over Roosevelt Island


a modern building with art-tastic balconies and doors


looking down the East River toward lower Manhattan


a crazy wild boar statue surrounded by all sorts of marine life and snakes eating toads and stuff

Apparently this is Sutton Place Park’s replica of Porcellino, a sculpture by Pietro Tacca from 1634. Bill Clinton liked it, too, although for a completely dumb reason.


a Colonial-looking house with a vibrant door

This place had a private drive and a private park overlooking the East River. A Latino-looking person driving a Honda–obviously the hired help–wanted to leave but waited to open the gate until Kamran and I were well across the street. We talked about how we spend so much of our lives feeling better-off than everyone everywhere else in the U.S. that it’s annoying to see someone wagging their rooftop solarium in our faces.


New Yorkers play tennis inside giant balloon-domes


Magnolia Bakery cupcakes from Bloomingdale’s


a store devoted entirely to buttons


Hans Christian Anderson in Central Park


apartment buildings on 5th Avenue behind the Central Park conservatory


the Alice in Wonderland statue, which is totally freaky and not at all for children


squirrel/rat


an elaborate temple on 5th Avenue


sunset over the Central Park conservatory

New York Fashion Week After-Party

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My latest gig shooting a New York Fashion Week after-party for The Set NYC was moved from Friday to Saturday night because of the “snowstorm” that “buried” all of Manhattan in half an inch of freezing rain, but the crowd turned out despite the rescheduling, and I was all up in their business with my camera and my flash and my skillz.

I arrived early to watch the models get their faces and hair did,

New York Fashion Week After Party

and then I shot my patented mix of models,

New York Fashion Week After Party

regular people livin’ it up,

New York Fashion Week After Party

and professional dancers gettin’ down:

New York Fashion Week After Party

My favourite moment of the evening was when I marched up to this girl and told her she was adorable and that I needed her picture,

New York Fashion Week After Party

not realizing that one of the women she was with was runway model and “America’s Next Top Model” finalist Maytee Martinez (left):

New York Fashion Week After Party

Oops.

In the elevator before work this morning, I heard a woman tell another woman that she was “busy last week with fashion shows”, and I know that even as recently as a year ago, I would’ve thought something akin to “blahblahblahshowoff” upon hearing this. But today, I thought, “Oh, weird, so was I.” Obviously I ain’t no bigshot photographing the Marchesa runway show or whatever, but it’s crazy to me that I’m participating in this very New-Yorky thing in my own way. And I seriously love the sort of freedom in editing that comes with shooting pictures that are inherently artistic. I’m sure plenty of people would vomit over my 1995 raver aesthetic, but I DO WHAT I WANT.

New York Fashion Week After Party

New York Fashion Week After Party

New York Fashion Week After Party

New York Fashion Week After Party

The rest of the set is here, on my Ettible Photography Facebook Page.