Feb 1st - Another Met Trip, this time with folks from the Seanwes Community
Of course I spent half the time just enamored with the architecture in this one section. All this ancient art, and I wanna look at the building it's housed in.
This piece caught my eye. Such intense colors and the range between the brightest and darkest parts is incredible. I should go back and look at this one for a few more hours. Love it.
There are a few members of the Seanwes community that live in the tristate area and they sometimes come to NYC to meet up. One such visit included a trip to the Met. What better to do on a cold winter day than wander around indoors? Speaking of which, it's getting about time for me to visit again.
Feb 8th - Blue Bottle Bushwick
Pour-over action at blue bottle coffee
While I was at Blue Bottle I decided to do one of these popular "what in my bag" Images. It's a little bit of a mess, haha. I no longer have the big Tokina lens on the left. The aperature started to jam up all the time. It had to go.
It was really exciting that Blue Bottle opened an outpost in Bushwick. There aren't nearly enough excellent coffee shops in the neighborhood. It also had a clean white modern look that few other coffee shops around have. Moiz, too, was pumped about it coming around, so he asked me to meet up with him there. We talked about restructuring the photo team and moving away from the retainer system, so February was my last month of retainer work for them. It's been all project-based since then, which has been fantastic. It has freed me up to take on a lot more client work elsewhere since they no longer need me to produce content constantly.
Also Feb 8th - Galen Gatzke's F*ck Cancer Benefit
I realized a few years ago that I really don't enjoy event photography, so I stopped doing it professionally. But, when a friend from Nooklyn got cancer and his sister was hosting a benefit for him, I was very happy to do my part to help out. There was a raffle and some really cool art and really amazing prizes, including something like $900 of advertising and a fancy Yeti cooler. I should have bought more raffle tickets, haha.
Feb 10th - Snowy photos in Forest Park
I see all these wonderful photos of snowy places on Instagram and it makes me jealous. So I tend to stroll out and look for fun things to photograph when it snows. But I still haven't taken one that I'm really proud of. So the quest continues.
Regina and I started working on Save the Dates for our wedding later in the year. Or at least I have some samples in Photos on this day.
Feb 12th - Dinner at Kyo-Ya with Jacob
I only took one photo at Kyo-Ya, but it's of Jacob being Jacob, and therefor not suitable for this blog. Instead, here's a rainy sidewalk near the restaurant. I really wanted to reflection, but I wish now that I'd waited one more second to get this person stepping into the puddle and creating ripples.
I'm well known for taking tons of photos every time I go out to eat. It's the curse of being a food photographer and takes quite a bit of fortitude to overcome. But I did in this case. I was incredibly excited to try out Kyo-Ya. It's a French-influenced Japanese Kaiseki restaurant with an incredible prix-fixe menu. And with that, I've got another Michelin Star dining experience under my belt.
Feb 16th - Bun-ker Vietnamese
Lil' fried meat rolls by the bamboo.
Harley is buds with the owner of Bunker, so when they opened in the new location Harley set it up for me to photograph some items from the menu.
This is when I first started to play with food styling and including ingredients in the photos. The spring roll had the most transformation, going from just the rolls and sauce to including all the mint, peanuts, and peppers. It's a much more exciting image than what we had before.
Bunker is a fun and pretty place. I definitely recommend you try it out.
Feb 21st - Harley's House
Meow!
Harley's house is beautiful and a very comfortable place to be, so I always enjoy when he invites me over to photograph it. He and Tristin (now his wife!) had done some redecorating with a bunch of flea market finds, so he wanted to get some new photos to show the place off. I'm very happy with these images and a few of them are still in my portfolio. I love the vibe they've got going here and would be excited to snap more places like it.
We took Harley's son to the park afterward so he could burn some energy. The kid is an atomic bomb.
Regina and I went to Florida to visit her parents and also to escape from the brutal NYC winter. I've heard of this 'snowbird' concept of people leaving the frozen north to enjoy a winter in the tropics. I always assumed it was just an activity for the rich and not something achievable by mere mortals. But thanks to having family down there to visit, we were able to have a fairly cheap trip out of it, and it really affected me. I want to do it every year from now on. And since I'm writing this blog post in January of 2018, that means it's time to get cracking on planning it. Especially since this year's winter has already been so rough.
I intended to make some vlogs from this trip but only ever got around to making one., which is linked above. I've got lots of footage left to make the additional videos, but it will probably never see the light of day, in lieu of spending time on better things I can produce now. You can check it out here.
Below are a couple of highlights from the trip that I never posted about. I also recorded some video that I intended to make vlogs with, but that hasn't happened. I did, however, write posts for all of these upcoming things, so I'll link those when they're up.
Stay tuned. There's a e-mail sign up at the bottom of this post if you want notifications when they're up!
23rd - Boatyard Restaurant, Fort Lauderdale
She snappin' me snappin' her.
Feb 24th - Casey Key
I fell in love with the beach.
Feb 26th - Siesta Key
More beach love, this time with a side of architecture.
Also Feb 26th - Lido Key Tiki Bar
The Speakeasy of beachside tiki bars
A Fond Farewell to Florida Fronds