city center

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This time last week, I found myself wandering around Chinatown with my friend, Birch. It had been a little while since we caught up so we figured a change of scenery would be nice. With cameras in our hands, both of us were practicing our street photography skills.

Towards the end of our photo walk, we had made our way to City Center. They have a great coffee and gelato shop called Docezza that Birch wanted to photograph. So while we were standing around, I decided to capture a few images of my own of this man working while drinking his coffee. What attracted me the most to this scene were all the round shapes. The roundness in the overhead lighting (and reflections in the window), the roundness in the word coffee and even this man’s head played perfectly in the roundness. In the image to the right, I especially like how he’s holding the coffee with that little hook in his pointer finger that plays so well into the round theme.

My camera settings for both images are F5 and 1/80th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

All photos available for print and licensing >

On the same day that I was looking down at times square, I was also looking up. I took this image about 30 minutes before that other one from the rooftop bar and I was actually on solid ground for this one. HAHA.

I’ve always wanted an image like this from times square. The buildings are just so massive all around you that I knew there was a way. For some reason, I’ve found it really difficult to capture in the past. I guess all I needed were just some dark cloudy skies and birds flying above me all at the right moment. Patiences is obviously key in photography. But I really like this image because it just feels like a big hug from the buildings. Everyone all at once, “awwwww”.

Without my 16-35mm wide angle lens, I would not have been able to capture all of it. But now that I’m looking at the image again, I wish I would have gotten lower to capture it. If I was kneeling down on the ground, I think I would have been able to capture much more of the buildings on the edges and maybe would have been able to fill in some of the spaces in between? Who knows. Either way, I’m happy with the way this one turned out. There was a fair amount of lens correcting that went into this. I also like how the cloudy skies give the buildings a mood of darkness. Usually when you visit times square, all you see are the lights. It’s like a totally different view.

Which makes me think, if I didn’t tell you that this was times square, would you have been able to guess the location?

My camera settings for this image are F/8 at 1/60th of a second ISO 400.