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| ...On a jet plane... |
For someone that hasn't flown in well over a decade, it was a fairly pleasant flight for someone that was a little on edge. There was a bit of turbulence over the Midwest but that was to be expected as that area of the US gets active weather this time of year. Because I didn't sleep at all the night before my flight, my intention was to sleep during the flight but that wasn't happening. I did manage to get an hours worth of napping though. The flight went by fairly quick too which was a good thing.
Upon arrival I was pretty much worn out but was shocked back to life by the crazy humidity of New York. It wasn't bad mind you, I just didn't expect that sort of humid weather for New York. I couldn't believe how bad the traffic was for that matter also. It's much worse than LA which is weird to me because NY is known for their good metro transport so the idea is that traffic would be good since everyone is taking metro right? Nope. Far from it. JFK was 14 miles from my friend's house where I'm staying at while I'm here and it took me nearly an hour from the airport to get to my temporary residence.
After getting to my friends house, we visited her local watering hole to have a few drinks and allow me to finally relax after my flight. I was also given the tour of the local park (which was more like a forest because it was so big and lush even though its smaller than Central Park) Prospect Park that I fell in love with immediately. The sunset light was awesome! I will come to learn that NY light is just awesome all around and I'll get to that shortly.
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| Prospect Park at sunset |
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| Boat house at Prospect Park |
I went to bed fairly early since I wanted to do the tourist thing first thing in the morning. I was warned that the light would be beaming into my room early in the morning that I took no heed of. "I'll be alright" I said and for the most part I was. It blew my mind how much light there would be. I woke up sometime around 5 ish and saw the light outside the window and thought I had over slept. In my hurry, I grab my phone to see the time and it read 5:30. My mind was blown! 9am ish type light that early?! That's great for us photographers! I allowed myself another couple of hours to sleep and rest up so I didn't go out and do my thing until 9am.
I'm not that big of a tourist. All I had in mind was to visit the Hayden Planetarium at the museum of natural history because I'm a nerd and a fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I could've done without a lot of other landmarks and places to visit but this was important to me so I hit the subway and went into Manhattan to visit the Hayden.
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| Glass enclosure of the Hayden Planetarium |
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| First look of the Hayden from 81st St. |
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| "Planets and stars and shit..." |
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| Saturn and Jupiter suspended within the Hayden |
The Hayden blew me away! There is nothing else like it out there as far as I know. The architecture is amazing and the design of the interior, to the planets set to scale and various planetary exhibits was well thought out and well done. It's hard to explain in detail but there's a very large sphere that almost takes up the entire interior of the Hayden that's supposed to be our sun and I was able to catch a show inside of it! Most planetariums are regular looking buildings save for a dome at the top and that is where visitors catch shows. How many times can you see and say that you caught one inside a scale model sun?! I heeled out on that.
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| He remembers everything - inside the African animals diorama exhibit of the Natural History museum |
After my Hayden experience, I walked around the other wings of the natural history museum and even though it is larger than the one we have in LA, because the wings are stacked up on top of each other, it felt smaller than ours. I only spent an hour at the natural museum proper since I had to meet my friend in lower Manhattan and I'm just not into the other things as much as planetary sciences.
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| What are you looking at?! |
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So I met up with my friend in lower Manhattan at B & H Photo Video and I know that store pretty well. Online that is. So it was a real treat to be able to visit the actual store and purchase something. How they operate business there is amazing but REALLY inefficient. It's like a really big camera store, if you were from the west coast it would be somewhat akin to Samy's or if you're from Chicago...Calumet etc. but the difference is, it ran like a mail service or UPS. There were conveyor belts running throughout the entire store and if you wanted a product from a particular department, the clerk would ring you up, and the product would be rolled in from who knows where to where you were, the clerk would scan the SKU, give you the receipt and send your stuff to the front but it doesn't stop there as you have yet to make your payment! You then take that receipt, go to the CASHIER and pay for it there and the clerk would give you another receipt where you would take said receipt to the pickup counter where you can finally get your hands on the product you wanted! Very inefficient yet I was amazed at the system. Oh btw, I just bought 6 rolls of film for my 35mm camera...
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| Stroller pushin' - Park just outside the Hayden |
After that ordeal, I was off doing the touristy thing on a very small scale. Didn't hit up alot of the landmarks. I was more interested in how the natives went about their daily lives. So armed with my iPhone (which all these photos were taken on and with!), I went into battle mode and shot first and asked questions later so to speak. We hit up alot of parks like Bryant park and saw Grand Central which I was in AWE of. Not too much different than our Union Station. A lot of similar columns and type fonts but really, Union Station doesn't have a quarter of the history of Grand Central and is nowhere near its size. Not to mention their renovation is pretty much done from what my eyes could tell and Union Station? Well, it still needs a bit of work.
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| "New Yorkers love their parks" - Bryant Park with Central Public Library in the background |
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| Chandeliers of Grand Central Station |
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| Grand Central Station Main Hall/Hub |
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| Unknown Buildings |
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| The Flatiron |
Near the end of the day we ended up going to SoHo (which I learned refers to the neighborhood south of Houston St. so NoHo is north of Houston and it's pronounced "Howston") to grab some eats from a restaurant named Arturo's Coal Oven Pizza which is my friend's favorite and whenever you hear New Yorkers boast with pride about having the best pizza anywhere? It's true and if Los Angeles had that kind of pizza, we'd be boasting about it as well. Archetypal thin crust pizza we're used to seeing and having but the difference with New York pizza is that you can taste everything on it and it's not just a subtle taste of each ingredient, it's EVERY ingredient. Hell, the dough had awesome flavor! I can't recall a time eating a pizza in LA, NY style or other, where I've remarked about being able to taste the flavor of the dough. It was a divide by zero, mind blowing experience. When I go back to LA and I hear a friend remark about how good the pizza is at whatever place they say, I will take it with a grain of salt because I now know what good pizza is. Until then, what will come and what has been, was and is, ok. Just...ok.
One thing I want to get into was how great the light was throughout the day in New York. As a photographer, light means everything. It is everything. From sunrise (as evidence earlier in this entry) throughout the day, it was great. Even the noon sun, which we're taught to avoid shooting in, wasn't all that bad. Golden hour on the other hand?! That was what blew me away. The New York golden hour is much longer than the ones in LA and it is MUCH better here. Really soft, warm and creamy. I never saw such a thing in LA. During the golden hour here on my first day, everyone just looked beautiful side lit and back lit. The way that golden hour sun blanketed the sides of the various high rises and silhouetted everyone in front of you (that is if you looked towards the setting sun like I did) was...cinematic. I'm saddened I have no proof of this as I only had my iPhone as a camera and left the film and DSLR at my friend's place but I still have a couple of days until my flight back. There's tomorrow to shoot, which I do plan on shooting just before we head upstate for the wedding. Friday itself is the actual wedding and then there's the remaining Saturday, Sunday and Monday to shoot as my plane departs back home to LA on Tuesday.
This was a great first day and we did alot. Covered a lot of ground and had enough material for an entry. The following days where I can shoot will offer more content and better image quality. I promise.
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| C train I took to the Museum of Natural History |
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| Subway Life - NY commuters waiting on their train |