Early in 2011, BCC and I spent just over a week in New Orleans. It was a first visit for both of us, and we had an amazing time! New Orleans is a compelling city to visit, steeped in history and culture. We were super lucky to have fantastic tour guides in our dear friends Loren and Kat, who took led us on a gluttonous journey of food & drink through the best local spots in town.

We arrived pretty late one night (around 3am), heading straight from the airport to Molly’s at the Market, where Loren was slingin’ beers. The next morning we woke up and walked over to BJ’s Lounge, another watering hole he works at. They were having a BBQ and I had some for breakfast. A wise choice, always.

Next we headed to Kat’s workplace, the Royal Street Deli, where I had my first taste of alligator in the form of a mouth-watering po’ boy. Yum. Just down the street, there was a little band playing. That’s one defining characteristic about New Orleans – music is everywhere!

To walk off our meal, Kat took us around to some of the most photogenic areas of the city. I have to say it’s a great advantage to have another photographer showing you around!

The whole city was preparing for Mardi Gras, so practically every house was adorned with vibrant colors!

Over the next few afternoons we walked around the sculpture garden at New Orleans City Park, went into the aquarium, and checked out a drive-thru daiquiri place! I’m not kidding! The south is great.

On our last full day, we got a private tour of Lafayette Cemetery, one of many throughout the city. So many photo ops! Creepiness aside, it was a beautiful and serene place, I could probably have spent all day photographing the headstones and crypts.

Bonus: this bulldog was hanging out inside one of the bars we passed! At the bar! Such a gentleman!

New Orleans (and Loren and Kat!), I look forward to seeing you again soon

I took the little Neingrenze with me on a trip to the Brooklyn Instrument Museum garden one rainy afternoon. We sat at the picnic table, under an oversized umbrella, and I grabbed some snapshots. Because of the Neingrenze’s forced color toning, I decided that these all looked better as black and white. You may have seen the other shots in my older post (linked up there), what do you think?

Works nicely for portraits, surprisingly!

After awhile, the rain let up a bit and I was able to go relax in the hammock. It was tricky getting a sharp photo since I was swinging, but I timed it pretty well after a few tries!

In 2008 I was hired by the Latin American Music Conference to photograph their official closing night party, the Pepsi Blue Carpet Bash. Along with the band Pacha Massive, Tony Touch was there to play some tunes.

Of all the little northside towns I visited while in Italy, one of my favorites by far was the nearby city of Siena. The town was named for Senius, son of Remus. For those of you following at home, Remus was brother to Romulus, for whom Rome was named! (I’m a huge mythology nerd. More on that later.)

Siena in my memory is characterized by dreamy, sunlit orange tile rooftops and darkened alleyways with spots of bright light peeking in.

I took these in the Siena Cathedral, where I again found myself hard pressed to pay attention to the tour guides and instead wandered off on my own looking for interesting light. In retrospect, paying attention back then would’ve saved me some time right now as I search the internet for confirmation on which photos were taken where, but oh well. I can’t help it.

We also visited a sprawling vineyard. I was impressed by the intricacies involved in getting the wine flavor just right.

I spent the first semester of my senior year at college on a study abroad program, in a small town just outside Florence, Italy called Sesto Fiorentino. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I didn’t speak a word of Italian when I arrived, but by the time I left I was proficient enough to get around. (Barely, but still.)

What a fantastically beautiful country, and steeped in history – you can feel it walking down any street. I took about a thousand photos in the 5 months I was there, but until recently, I’d never really done any kind of post work on them. Since BCC is away in Mexico for a week with his family, I have some free time on my hands so I decided to run some of the images through Lightroom and see what I could bring out.

The camera I used while abroad was a secondhand Sony Cybershot DSC-F717, what I’d call an “intermediate” point-and-shoot. I had minor control over the settings, but everything was shot in JPG and it definitely had limited capabilities compared to my DSLR. Still, it was a workhorse and it survived all my bouncing around Europe, from Italy to Dublin to Amsterdam.

We lived in the 500-year-old Villa Corsi-Salviati. It was by far the most magnificent place I’ve ever stayed. Ever. I had difficulty paying attention to the tour guide our first day at the villa, distracted by all the scenes to photograph. My favorite spot was the villa library.

Groundskeeper Willie, is that you?

Here are some photos from my first week walking around Sesto and taking it all in.

Stay tuned for more rewind posts coming soon!

If you haven’t listened to Xylos yet, I’m revoking your hipster badge.

Juuuuust kidding. Who wants one of those? But seriously, this is an excellent band and they put on a hell of a show, complete with homemade LED tubes. The drummer, Chris, is a friend of mine and he called one night asking that I photograph one of their shows, so I headed over to Bowery Ballroom and got to see them do their thing. It was fantastic! Chris, this is my public apology for taking so long to get you these photos.

Before they went on stage, I hung out with the band in a little private room on the balcony where we drank and I watched them prep the LED tubes. I was also able to grab a few group snapshots before they went on. Considering how incredibly dark it was in the room and my chronic flash avoidance, I’m pleased with how the photos turned out!

Once they got on stage, I positioned myself right up front – one of the perks of being short – and I even managed to get backstage to snap a few shots of the band’s point of view. Good times!

How’s this for a creative, one-of-a-kind wedding gift – an engagement photo session! A friend of Jesse and Marty’s bought one for them, and so we met up one afternoon in August. It was a pretty hot day… man I miss summer. We had a great time walking around in Prospect Park, finding some cool (temperature and otherwise!) locations to shoot.

I love to photograph love. It’s true. It’s a great feeling to be able to capture the fun between two people who genuinely enjoy being around each other. And it’s infectious! After a shoot like this, I’m always compelled to come home right away and hug BCC

In July, I had the pleasure of covering Kim + Justin’s wedding in lower Manhattan as second shooter to the very talented Lauren Volo. Above is a photo of the entrance to the illustrious Rivington Hotel, which is where the bride got ready and also where the reception was held. The ceremony was in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, which I had never been inside. Gorgeous.

We spent the first hour or so photographing Kim and her bridesmaids as they got ready in a perfectly lit hotel room. There’s really nothing better than shooting in 100% natural light!

I see it often enough, but there’s still something so wonderfully surreal about the sight of a full-dressed wedding party in the streets of NYC. Here, Kim adjusts her father’s boutonnière.

Next we limo’d and cabbed over to the cathedral. While Lauren shot up close to the couple, I was tasked with getting wide angle shots of the space itself, and of the crowd as they watched the ceremony.

Once outside, it was time for the formal portraits. My job was to catch the “in-between” moments, and since candid portraits are my favorite portraits, it was great!

After the portraits it was back to the Rivington Hotel for the reception, which took place on the very top floor and roof. It was perfect weather and from way up there I got one of the most amazing views of Manhattan I’ve ever seen!

Mmm, cupcakes.

1/60 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

The photo above is straight off the camera (SOOC), with no processing whatsoever except I resized it for the web.

Last week Photojojo (my absolute favorite photography blog/store) started carrying the little Japanese NeinGrenze 5000T, a pocket-sized, dedicated tilt-shift, point-and-shoot camera. For $150. Having just received a paycheck, I was feeling particularly impulsive and I ordered one immediately. A few days later I had it in my hands and have been learning my way around it. Lots of trial-and-error, to say the least.

Tilt-shift photography is a niche genre that has started finding its way into the mainstream more and more as of late. The effect can be done in post-production fairly easily, as evidenced by the popularity of such software as TiltShift Generator and Instagram. If you’re not familiar with the technique, check out some amazing examples here! Of course, software can do just about anything these days, but it never looks quite the same as the effect produced by hardware. Unfortunately, true tilt-shift lenses for your SLR start at about $1300. Another option is a Lensbaby, which costs between $150 and $400 depending which model you get. I owned a Control Freak for awhile, but I ended up selling it because I found it too difficult to use.

The NeinGrenze 5000T is easy to use, but not easy to master. Constructed entirely of plastic and extremely lightweight, it’s definitely a toy. In truth, it feels like it shouldn’t have cost more than $50, but I suppose what I spent is the price one pays for immediate gratification, and for having the “first” of anything. I predict that the demand for this camera will create a market for other affordable tilt-shift hardware.

You have control over whether or not the flash fires, size and quality of the images (JPG only), white balance (daylight, cloudy, tungsten, etc.), EV (+/- 2), ISO (100 or 200), saturation and sharpness (low, normal, high), color (standard, vivid, sepia, or monochrome), and whether it shoots in burst. The flash takes forever to load and whites everything out, so for me I think it’s best to just consider this as an outdoor, bright light camera only – sans flash. Also, I’ve found that it tends to overexpose the scene in general, so when I remember I set the EV to -2.0. Other than that, I leave everything else on the default settings.

Shooting with the NeinGrenze 5000T is an exercise in patience and whimsicality. My biggest qualm with its functionality is that it puts a blue/green cast on every photo, and there is no way to turn that off. Through the viewfinder colors appear normal, and your choice of white balance is reflected, but the output is generally the same. As a result, when I shoot outside I set it to “cloudy” mode since that makes everything a bit orange, in an attempt to force the photo to not be so blue. Be prepared to run each photo through your editing software of choice if you want to achieve more realistic coloring.

1/500 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

You can move the lens slightly with a little switch to make it a macro shot or wide, but once that’s done it seems to pick its sweet spot of focus arbitrarily. In the first photo, the bike is in focus which is way off to the right. On the other hand, in the photo of the leaves (color corrected) the focus is in the center. You can vaguely tell via the camera’s LCD where the focal point is when you’re framing an image, but it’s kind of a guessing game at the same time since the LCD isn’t super high quality. Fortunately, since the output quality isn’t that high, I put an old 1GB SD card in and can take around 800 photos before it will be full. So you can take a LOT of versions of each photo you want and hope that one comes out!

In this photo taken with macro mode (color adjusted), the sweet spot plane is along the bottom:

1/15 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

To make focusing even trickier, there appears to be some amount of shutter lag. So you have to be willing to sit VERY still, or use a tripod, and it helps if your subject is inanimate! It also shoots video:

1/15 sec at f/3.0, ISO 625

1/15 sec at f/3.0, ISO 550

1/4 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

1/500 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

1/500 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

1/125 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

1/60 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

1/1000 sec at f/3.0, ISO 100

I hope this review was helpful! If you have any specific questions, please leave them in the comments!

It was a truly beautiful day, sunny and clear skies despite the thunderstorm warnings. I met couples that had been together for over 40 years, finally officially tying the knot. I met their friends and families, and everyone had huge smiles plastered across their faces.

Counting down ’til they open the doors:

People were there giving out free water, which was amazing since it was 100 degrees out!

David got friendly with one of the Captains of the NYPD! That guy was awesome!

We met the majority of the couples we spoke to BEFORE they actually entered the office, since that’s where everyone was lined up. The exits to the building were all blockaded off , but people were allowed to stand across the street and watch. As each couple exited, they were met with screams, applause, and the music of a live string quartet! If they crossed the street to their adoring fans, they got confetti thrown on them and more cheering. It was amazing to see everyone so happy. What an amazing day and how lucky I am to have been there documenting it!