My recent work trip to Manhattan included one perfect, spring sunny day – so I hit the streets to do some New York City street photography.
The constant sunlight and plentiful shadows made this a rich environment for my style.
Everything south of 34th street and west of Park Avenue was mine to explore. While it was a tiny slice of the island, after seeing so much photography done in and around Manhattan, I had my own chance to wander and capture what I saw.
It was a blast.
I’m not sure when I’ll ever get back to NYC, but for this trip, I made the most of it.
Shot on the Canon EOS M6 and (mostly) EF-M 32mm f/1.4.
Count Times Square in New York City as a place I’ve never been to, until a few weeks ago.
I’ve been to New York twice before, but never so close to some of the more iconic destinations: Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, etc. For this work trip, I resolved to fix this and visit Times Square, which was just a few blocks from my hotel in Manhattan.
My flight landed in the evening, so I took the opportunity to get some night street photography done in Midtown.
And? It was fine. Lots of people, cool options for colored lights and silhouettes. Very crowded.
And tons of people with cameras, photo and video, taking selfies. One pair of ladies even had a mini podcast rig set up to livestream from Times Square. “Look where I am,” everyone was saying.
Street vendors are some of my favorite subjects in the city, especially at night. Food trucks are like little beacons of light surrounded by darkness, and with people always on hand, they make for good photo subjects.
However, one food truck operator – seeing me snap a few photos – came out and called me an “@$$hole.” I gave him a thumbs up and quickly walked away.
I shot most of these using the Canon EOS M6 and the EF-M 32mm f/1.4 for its low-light capabilities and a bit of extra reach (it’s a 50mm-equivalent lens on the M system).
Street photography in a place like Times Square is fairly easy since there are a million people milling around. The trick is to find the quiet ones, or quiet moments, amid all this chaos, and capture that.
That was my strategy, at least, and in the heart of NYC, it worked out pretty well.
It’s a helluva thing to leave beautiful Pentwater, Michigan – a quiet village along a sandy Great Lakes beach – and land in Brooklyn, New York, all in one day.
But here I was, landing at JFK airport on a Sunday evening.
I travelled to Brooklyn on business after a frazzled trip involving too much time in the car and too long a walk after parking.
The remedy was to drop my bags in the hotel room, clean up, and hit the nighttime borough streets with my Canon EOS M2.
This was my first time in Brooklyn. I visited Manhattan years ago for a quick visit on my big New England trip in 2008. Now I had two days across the river to walk and explore.
After landing, I got up early the next morning and hit the East River for sunrise in New York. It was a beautiful morning, with sunshine and lots of joggers out.
For work, I stopped by Peter Pan Donuts for a work video shoot and grabbed some photos of this classic (and famous) bakery.
The team, and the donuts, were amazing. The kitchen was a bit crowded, but we managed to make it work for the video project.
From there, and fueled by a jelly-filled donut, I took the morning and walked around Brooklyn, walking the Brooklyn Bridge halfway to Manhattan and over the East River.
I brought along the Canon EOS M2, the successor to my beloved M. It keeps the form factor and toughness of the original M, and speeds up the autofocus and shutter blackout. The M2 and a few lenses were all I needed for walking around Brooklyn.
The city was hot and busy – a little too busy for my taste, especially having just left peaceful northern Michigan. By mid-afternoon, I was ready to hit the road to New Jersey for my next work assignment.
My wife and I hit up mid-state New York to catch a Brandi Carlile concert in Bethel, the site of Woodstock.
We glamped and hit up some hiking in the Catskills while we were there. Pretty great to unzip the tent and see all this. Above shot on my Canon M, below on iPhone 13.
We know how expensive it is to rent studio space, and that it can be especially difficult to justify the price when it’s for your own passion project. But if it’s a project that excites you, that drags you out of bed at the crack of dawn and keeps you up late at night, we want to give you the opportunity to create it.
BYO camera? Free?
Not many excuses now to not do that thing you want to do, New Yorkers.
Kudos to VSCO. They’re providing platform after platform for photographers (and “”creatives””) to do their thing. It’s fun to see them stretch and grow beyond film-looking presets for Lightroom (that I still enjoy and use).
I’d give anything for a space like this in my area. My next project is dying for a location to shoot some portraits. I don’t need equipment – just space.
