Walking through a New York minute

It's really hard to see a city in 36 hours especially when a big chunk of it is taken by covering a marathon, but boy did I try in the roughly 12 hours between my train arriving at Penn Station to getting a pre-marathon slumber at 1am. I certainly didn't get to everything (read: none of the touristy stuff) but all I did was strap on a comfortable pair of shoes and get to walking. I walked roughly eight miles during the day (including a relaxed morning in Washington, DC before taking Amtrak up) and this is what I saw from my hotel room in Lower Manhattan to Midtown and back as day turned to night.

Lower Manhattan

Arrival

I believe that I first heard this idea from Evan Ranft but I think that it's a pretty common perspective among photographers that your creative eye is like a muscle that needs to be sharpened or warmed up before you can be in a position to be at your best. I've subconsciously taken that principle into every photowalk I do to feel out the environment around me and get comfortable being perceived with my camera. A lot of these early images end up being snapshots that don't really bring anything to write home about, but they're the shots that are crucial to finding the special shots.

Everything about this just screams New York street photo, and it's so funny that this was shot literally minutes after stepping out of the hotel room. Their hat was what got my attention, and I'm proud that I actually went for the photo (even if it was a very quick almost fire from the hip as the focus being behind the subject will give away) since it's one that I would usually frame with my eyes but not even think to get my camera out for. I don't know if New York just has a higher propensity for oddball character types or if the vibes of the city just emboldens photographers to take more photos of people as you see them but it truly felt like a cheat code to just point the camera anywhere and pretty much guarantee that you'll capture something interesting.

Not much explanation is needed for the iconicity of the New York City subway, but it's a place I wouldn't typically shoot from since I'm usually so focused on my own comings and.goings.

The left photo really stands out to me as there's a clear subject in the woman with red hair (though my eyes also go to the Calvin Klein leggings). It reminds me a lot of a similar photo I took in Stockholm in 2023 where I was similarly able to peer over a platform.

Upper West Side / Union Square

As darkness fell, I took a stroll into Union Square and the Upper West Side. I switched from my trusty 18-135mm kit lens to my then brand new 50mm f/1.8 lens which is a godsend for shooting at night. On my Sony a6400, it has a 75mm focal length which left me occasionally reaching for a lens that was a touch wider. I'm looking at the 24mm f/2.8 as both a more compact profile that gets me closer to the look of a modern compact camera like the Fujifilm X100VI and comes out at a wider 35mm focal length.

The lights shine brighter in New York as the city teemed with life on this Saturday night. The magic came in being able to isolate moments of calm and quiet amidst the chaos. Ordinary scenes like grabbing a meal from a halal cart or a delivery driver on the job seem extraordinary in this city.

Midtown

As I approached the heart of Manhattan, life quickened even as primetime TV shows were making it to air.

Times Square

The Crossroads of the World

All of it came to a head at the intersection of Broadway and West 42nd Streets as the bright lights of Times Square came into focus. 8pm quickly looked like the middle of the afternoon to the point where I didn't need the faster aperture of the 50mm to capture a sharp image.

The energy was infectious, with a new scene everywhere you look. It's impossible to contain it all into one section, so I'll take the next three to show you the center of the universe. One thing you can say about the Square is that it's anything but boring.

By pure coincidence, it was Dia de Los Muertos, the Spanish holiday where the dead is honored through ofrendas. It was a spiritual moment to get in the middle of a giant spectacle and having that juxtaposed with such an intimate experience for those being honored and doing the honoring. It's hard to tell where the line blurred between public spectacle and intimate offering, but nonetheless it was really cool to capture this.

Take a couple steps in another direction and there was a seemingly impromptu car show that had a few people walking onto Broadway (including this intrepid photographer). I had a ton of fun playing with the shutter speed to get those pieces of motion blur in the background for a little bit of chaotic energy.

Take another couple steps and I'm in the middle of a demonstration? I couldn't quite make out what the goal of the demonstration was though.

Midtown

I didn't ever get starstruck on this trip until walking into Midtown and seeing quintessential New York sites like the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and the iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store. The media nerd in me had a field day gazing into NBC's operation at Studio 1A and the hubbub around the taping for Saturday Night Live (which happened to be the night Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance unbeknownst to anyone standing outside on a chilly evening). I also had an ironic moment of calm sitting on Fox's courtyard waiting for my phone to get a quick charge.

I got some really unique shots of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store since it was lit up to promote Apple Intelligence (a feature that is still half-baked nine months later, but hey at least the building looked cool).

Chinatown

Morale was starting to fade as I had a dead phone and was slowly starting to work back to my hotel in Lower Manhattan. After being rattled by seeing some sort of domestic incident (an off-duty cop made haste in attracting an on-duty officer's attention in a way that was genuinely impressive for after midnight.) I was fully just focused on getting home at that point, but it did bring me through Chinatown: a neighborhood that was mostly devoid of people at this late hour but provided some interesting shadowy scenes.

Brooklyn Bridge

Lastly, I made a detour within a few blocks of Gild Hall in Lower Manhattan to the Brooklyn Bridge. I wish I could've seen it during the day to truly take in its grandeur. Honestly I was too knackered to capture it properly but flaws build character.

I'm not sure how I was able to get up the next day for marathon coverage, but I did a few hours later without being worse for ware.