My Experience Photographing New York City
This is a blog post where I share my experience of photographing New York City. This is my first ever experience stepping foot into America. With thanks to my parents for a belated graduation reward, I have had the opportunity to appreciate American culture and diversity by documenting such a vibrant city. In this blog, I will be discussing my process behind my image making while taking in the addictive daily encounters of NYC.
Arriving at JFK Airport in the afternoon of Tuesday 30th February, we made our way to the cab that we reserved, feeling the fresh cold air against our skin whilst gazing into the hazy winter sky light. Heading towards our hotel based in Broadway (Times Square), we had the excitement ready to embrace car horn beeps and city centre convenience right on our door step. Looking through the cab window while we were being driven down multiple avenues, every street became a stage for our photographic observations.
As it was our first time exploring New York together, we planned a variety of tourist attractions. We visited MoMA, The Natural History Museum, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, The Empire State Building, Times Square, The 9/11 Memorial and of course The Statue of Liberty. For our visit that lasted just under a week, we used a mobile app based tourist pass called ‘Go City’, which was great for bundling our chosen attractions together for a discounted price. There is so much more to explore in New York and it truly felt like there were not enough hours in a day !
We made the most of our time by visiting a variety of tourist attractions along with carrying out photowalks around a diverse variety of locations such as China Town, Manhattan, The Upper West Side and The Upper East Side. As a photographer, it can be tempting to take a tourist based ‘cliche’ photograph, but for me and my partner Luke, we inspire each other to think outside of the box with our image making.
Luke focused on a gorgeous series based on abstraction of the city scenes, especially during the evening when he created some experimental long exposures of the hustle and bustle of the city that never sleeps. While focusing on location and community, I tended to photograph various women carrying out their daily wonders and routines in different areas of New York. I was interested in the locals and how much of a variety of people New York dispenses. When me and Luke are photographing people and places together, we share inspiration and confidence. As Luke is a collage based photographer who experiments with street photography and I am a fashion and portrait based photographer who looks to push towards fine art practice; we inspire each other to observe subjects uniquely.
Averaging around 25,000 - 35,000 steps per day; we were defiantly building up appetites. Luckily for us, we had the pure convenience of pizza bars selling pizza by the slice for $3. We’d grab a slice from Upper East Side, take some photos in central park and then filter our way out into the Upper West Side’s fine choices of coffee shops. We had some gorgeous meals out one of which was in a restaurant in the heart of China Town, the portion sizes will leave you enough to take home for your supper. New York is a great place to become lost in while being able to filter through authentic restaurants from the ordinary commercial dives. Luke and I are both so eager to book our next visit here so that next time we can be based in the more suburban and less touristy areas of the city.
To break our trip up a little, my parents booked us into a hotel based in Brooklyn on our last night. We walked over Brooklyn Bridge during a beautiful sunny evening. Stepping into Brooklyn, we noticed how the buildings had shrunk as the rowdiness from the centre of Manhattan left us behind. Me and Luke ventured out that evening, and we got to know some locals who were studying and living in Brooklyn. The locals were impressing us with Brooklyn’s quirkiness. We were staying in Dumbo, which is known for its trendy cafes, high end restaurants and art scene. This felt like the American alternative to The Northern Quarter back home in Manchester.
Next time, we would love to stay in Brooklyn for a longer duration. There was still so much to explore on the other side of Brooklyn Bridge. We loved every minute of New York City and now we are aware of the easy and cost effective transport links via the subway, we would love to explore the outside areas of Manhattan.
Thank you for reading my blog, I hope it has given you some confidence to visit new places, refresh your current experience and create new photographs. I hope that the idea of creating a community of like minded creatives helps to aid your creative practice. To be sharing work with one another, brain storming ideas together and visiting new places with like minded people is a great way to feed your inspiration.