September 20, 2009

Esse Aficionado street performers doing their "Jackie O" bit in front of the Met.

Lucida Building cafeteria on a Sunday afternoon. Lexington Avenue at East 85th Street.

September 3, 2009

Bowery near East 4th Street.

August 7, 2009

The "Obama note" and Michael Jackson watch. Broadway near West 29th Street.

July 17, 2009

This image depicts the heat of summer, but it was shot in late spring two years ago on East Ninth Street near Fifth Avenue.

June 29, 2009

Springtime scene, Union Square. April 24, 2009

Waiting for a cab. Fifth Avenue at 28th Street. April 24, 2009

Woman outside Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Fifth Avenue at 50th Street. April 24, 2009

Stilt walker on Union Square. June 26, 2009

March 20, 2009

'Tis springtime, finally. This photo was shot three years ago at Bryant Park.

February 17, 2009

Fashion week entrance. Sixth Avenue at Bryant Park.

February 13, 2009

Photographer. Fifth Avenue at 51st Street.

February 4, 2009

Fountain lion (on a moving truck). East 17th Street at Union Square.

Images on PhotoShelter

January 29, 2009

Both of these were shot on the Upper West Side not far from the Lincoln Center.

January 20, 2009

Window display at an optical shop. Madison Avenue at East 46th Street

January 20, 2009, Times Square

Times Square scenes during the Obama inauguration rites.

January 16, 2009

Broadway at Bleecker Street.

December 30, 2008

Smoker on Park Avenue at East 34th Street. This will be my last New York picture in 2008. I'm happy that this terrible year will be history after tomorrow.

December 16, 2008

East 14th Street near Fifth Avenue.

November 23, 2008

Crosswalk on Lexington Avenue at East 43rd Street.

November 12, 2008

A poster at the back of a newstand on Union Square.

November 9, 2008

Artist Corin Hewitt in "Seed Stage," a blend of performance art, photography, and installation at the Whitney Museum. My wife and I visited the Whitney mainly to look up the William Eggleston retrospective, where picture-taking is not allowed. But not at Hewitt's area on the first floor. It would have been nice if we came away with photos from the Eggleston exhibit instead.

August 13, 2008

Brooklyn Bridge entrance from Brooklyn.

August 8, 2008

My new book, published through Blurb.com, is out.

July 10, 2008

Union Square.

June 25, 2008

My first self-published book is now available at Blurb.com. At 160 pages long, it shows 114 of my best images from a three-year project.

June 3, 2008

This is my wife Reena having fun with the wolves at the Guggenheim Museum. The installation is by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

June 1, 2008

Staten Island Ferry passenger. For a leisurely Sunday stroll with my wife in Battery Park and a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, I brought the little point-and-shoot instead of my usual heavy gear. Had I known that I will come across something like this, I would have suffered the large camera.

May 23, 2008

Two blah pictures from the four that I shot today: Fifth Avenue at 14th Street and at Columbus Circle.

May 6, 2008

Woman waiting for the bus. Ninth Avenue at West 27th Street.

April 17, 2008

Man engrossed with his Blackberry. Park Avenue at East 27th Street.

March 17, 2008

I discovered a few weeks ago that light on the Upper East Side is best all day around this time of the year. But I stuck to my usual route walking north through Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen and coming home with nothing good. That many of those days were gloomy didn't help at all. So I checked out the Upper East Side again, and for the past couple of ventures I got several for-keeps pictures, four to be exact. Nothing really spectacular, just simple scene pictures that New Yorkers of year 2058 might study with some nostalgia.

The picture on top was shot on Saint Patrick's Day, and I got the other one on March 14, both on Madison Avenue at East 75th and 66th Streets.

February 26, 2008

I went out to do my usual thing in Manhattan, starting at the World Trade Center intending to walk north up to wherever I get tired and start homeward. Reaching Chinatown, I happened upon a police raid of what the media now calls the "Counterfeit Triangle," which is a small block bounded by Canal, Centre, and Walker Streets. At first I just looked around, wondering what was going on (as the moniker implies, stores and sidewalk-level stalls in the building peddle an assortment of counterfeit products).

The whole building was surrounded with steel barricades and with so many cops both plainclothes and uniformed. I saw a number of photographers and TV cameramen doing their jobs as well, and thought, what the heck, I'm here I might as well take pictures also. It occured to me that this might interest the NYT, and so after getting my fill of pictures and got the info for the captions I called the Metro picture desk, and indeed they want me to send them my pictures. I said for them to wait two hours which is about how long it would take me to get back home to my apartment in Jersey City by PATH train and by bus. I got home sweating under layers of winter clothing, processed five of the best ones immediately, was able to email them around 3:50pm.

The Metro picture desk later told me they did not use any of my pictures because another editor had sent someone to cover the press conference with Mayor Bloomberg. But she said had that not been the case, she would definitely have gone with mine, which depicted the actual raid itself and not the city's head politico holding up an orange sign with the word "Closed" on it. I guess the NYT is just saving money since mine are bona fide action pictures, not propaganda.

February 22, 2008

I was able to record Jeff Wall's talk at Strand in Manhattan on Friday evening. The audio is a 54-minute, 61.8MB mp3 file. Get it here. The male voice with an accent that to my ear is slightly British is Michael Newman, at the right of the picture, author of Jeff Wall Works and Collected Writings which was promoted at the event. I didn't get the name of the lady who spoke first.

February 21, 2008

Waiting shed. East 14th Street near University Place.

February 14, 2008

These two were shot minutes apart and both on the Lexington Avenue side of the busy Grand Central Terminal area. Red is the color of the day, supposedly, that's why I picked these two to post from the five pictures that I brought home today. All were made in the area. And unlike most of my recent pictures, these were shot with my left eye peeking through the viewfinder.

February 12, 2008

Let it snow. West 23rd Street at Eighth Avenue.

February 8, 2008

The MoMA sculpture garden shot through the window glass (which is lined with white stripes) on the third floor right outside the Edward Steichen photo galleries.

February 5, 2008

I was in Lower Manhattan today intending to do my usual street photography stuff, the difference this time was that there are 10,000 times more people than on a usual Tuesday on account of the NY Giants victory parade. There was one particularly rowdy incident where I happened to be; a group of young men were jumping on the roof of a parked taxicab and destroyed it and police moved in and made some arrests. Of course, I switched into my old news photographer mode (which I really really missed, btw) and shot quite a few frames. But then there were hundreds of other “citizen photojournalists” documenting the car-stomping along with me and I felt a little useless, redundant. Everyone had their cellphones and P&S out and was even more aggressive than I was in getting the picture.

On the other hand, I got some decent shots that was worth offering to NYT, and so they did use one on their website and maybe on tomorrow’s paper as well. I think I’m one of the few (I saw a number of youngish people with red-ringed Canon lenses), if not the only person, who got the shot who thought of doing that. Them citizen journalists shoot mainly for fun, for Flickr and YouTube, and for free.

January 31, 2008

I would often do my walks on Fridays so that at the end of the day I could treat myself to a visit at MoMA which does not charge admission starting at 4pm on Fridays. However, the weather forecast said it will be sunny Thursday and rainy with some sleet on Friday, and I naturally want to take advantage of the sun.

I walked a total of 120 blocks starting from the 14th Street PATH station to Union Square to East 84th Street and back down to the 34th Street subway station. I haven't walked this much in a long time. At the end my heels hurt, though not as much as they did in my summertime hikes. I brought home six pictures. None of them spectacular, but good enough for me to consider including them in my portfolio. The top photo was shot on Eighth Avenue at West 40th Street. And I happened upon a fashion shoot at Central Park's Belvedere Fountain, which is indeed a good place to do such a thing since it is pretty much bereft of people during these months.

January 29, 2008

Bowery at Bayard Street, Chinatown.

January 25, 2008

Construction worker yawning. Broadway at West 72nd Street.

January 23, 2008

Heath Ledger died the night before, and this was the scene I found outside his SoHo apartment. Top photo is of the media camped in front of his apartment building on 421 Broome Street a couple of blocks east of Broadway. The second picture is of a gay couple who stayed a minute to mourn the 28-year old actor who took his star turn playing closet gay Ennis Del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain."

January 17, 2008

Finally, a picture. This isn't much, but it's better than nothing. I'm no Erwitt, photographing dogs is not my thing. On the other hand, it's undeniable that dogs are very much part of New York City streetscape no less than pigeons or taxicabs are. I came across this toy-whatever-it-is walking several steps ahead of its human caretaker on Union Square this afternoon.

January 7, 2008

I haven't had any luck during the past few walks in NYC. I'm having a bad run this winter, unlike the year before. I'm blaming the gloomy days which we have more of than nice sunny days when the light is warm and crisp and photo opportunities are plenty.

However, last month a guy by the name of Ch'ng Yaohong reviewed my online portfolio, particularly my personal work, on his Asian Photography Blog. It made my December.

(Sorry for the late post. I'm racking my brain for something to put out here, and I suddenly remembered Yaohong's blog.)

December 9, 2007

Beggar eating. East 14th Street at Union Square, again. This is the first shot (from the hip, no cropping necessary) that I made walking from the Sixth Avenue PATH station to Strand on a gloomy day. I generally avoid taking pictures of beggars (though they are part of the landscape of the streets), and I don't know why at this instance I did. This might be a perfectly lame picture that will win me no awards whatsoever, but there's something about it that nails my eyes to it. By experience I learned to trust my instincts as I will this time and decide to keep it.

November 27, 2007

This fellow is a sidewalk vendor who, for a minute or two, stood away from his table brimming with cheapo cellphone accessories. I shot this on Union Square, which happens to be my favorite spot in entire Manhattan. Why? Because of Strand Bookstore, Barnes & Noble, a great pizza resto whose name escapes me, and the outfitter shop Paragon Sports, all of which are in the vicinity, not to mention the mid-week farmers' market. And the place just throbs with life. I'll pick this postage stamp of a park over Central Park or any other park any day.

November 14, 2007

As you might have guessed, I shot the top picture in Chinatown, on Grand near Elizabeth Street to be exact. The second pic I got on Union Square. Like last week, the only time I can shoot this week happened to be a gloomy day. When I got up this morning there was fog, which would have made things more interesting (though I'm in Jersey City and I don't know whether Manhattan is as soupy). It was warmish like a radio jock described it, and I even had to take off my jacket around 5pm when I was already up Fifth Avenue because my thermal top is already feeling clammy.

November 9, 2007

Broadway near Thomas Street. I know this isn't much, but the only time I can shoot in Manhattan this week was not at all conducive for photography; the skies were heavily overcast and it later rained. I'm in a long dry spell here, so I'll have to make do with this one, which might or might not later make it to my final collection.

November 2, 2007

Lloyd, who claims to be an unemployed actor, begs on Sixth Avenue between West 12th and 13th Streets. I shot this on January 13, 2006. The reason I posted this is because the people in charge of selecting images to be included in the PhotoShelter Collection, a virtual agency that will launch in a few days, rejected it. I believe this is one of my most beautiful street portraits, and so what I'm saying is they made a mistake.

Lloyd caught my attention when I saw the discrepancy between his attire and what he was doing on one side of the sidewalk. He had this paper cup, white to match his get-up, out for change that people can spare. Note that he tries to hide his begging cup, and I think it there's a fair chance that people seeing this picture for the first time without caption will think Lloyd simply is in some neat costume and make-up and it's Halloween.

I approached him and asked how much he would like from me so I can take his picture. He said ten bucks but I haggled it down to two. I know that's bit mean, but at the time I was jobless which accounts for the fact that I was able to go around Manhattan twice a week at least.

Anyway, with his permission secured, I took a few steps away from him and under a smallish tree which I calculated as the best angle for a shot. I think I've already shot several frames, in rapid succession, before I got this one with a passerby caught in a blur that contrasts with the serenity of Lloyd as well as his mendicancy.

I saw Lloyd at least twice on the same stretch of sidewalk on Sixth Avenue, his attire the same but not as clean, still begging. He seemed to have lost weight also. I should have said hello on one of those ocassions, for we made eye contact and I sensed that he remembers me.

October 12, 2007

For lack of something new to present, I pulled one from my archives. I hope I won't appear immodest in saying the following: Study this picture closely and you will be rewarded with the pleasure of discovery (that is, unless you're hawk-eyed and saw it immediately). I shot this from the hip while walking up Seventh Avenue at West 41st Street on July 14, 2006. I cropped a bit from the left and bottom. Good luck.

October 5, 2007

Today this picture turns one. Happy birthday, "Fruit vendor. Seventh Avenue at West 30th Street"!

September 27, 2007

I've been busy lately and couldn't venture out in Manhattan at least once a week as I used to. So here's a picture I probably would have made this time as well, what with the summery ickiness at the start of autumn. I shot this shade-bathing man at a handball court on East 29th Street near Second Avenue on July 28, 2006.