With each new week comes another step (or two) towards New Yorker status. My work permit is finally being processed (although it will take 2-3 months), Ted has an appointment for his NYC ID card (free stuff!), and we've finally got some furniture in our apartment. We are doing the whole 'adult' thing very well, in fact, so well that, having finished finding the main furnishings for our apartment, for the first weekend in a long time we haven't made our ferry-based pilgrimage to IKEA, and we feel that it might be missing us.
I thought about the theme of Color (hey! I didn't spell it wrong, I'm in the US don't-cha know) a lot this week and I've even been watching YouTube video after YouTube video on different digital techniques to try and get what I wanted (Josh Katz was particularly useful). However, watching these videos alerted me to the sad reality that the image I wanted to take (super swish pic of a yellow taxi cab) needed kit that I don't have. I put this idea on the back burner and felt a little demoralised; I usually have a plan and without it, I felt a little lost.
On Saturday afternoon, Pete, Ted and I wandered around SoHo and the West Village and we found color everywhere: from our Mexican drinks to art on buildings; from taxi cabs to street signs. I snapped at anything and everything and hoped that somewhere along the way I'd find something that addressed Colo(u)r in a cool yet artistic way.
I chased this van over two blocks, lost sight of it, nearly gave up, and then Ted saw it pull in. Although I snapped shot after shot - a session worthy of a Vogue shoot - this was the first picture I took.
The whole day became about spontaneity, something that I rarely apply to my photography excursions, and it was liberating. I came back with hundreds of photos of hundreds of subjects and I was super chuffed with a variety (keeping them in the photo bank - perhaps we'll make a photo stream page on here for non-themed good'ns?).
In the morning we had trekked to Summer Streets, a super cool event that CLOSED PARK AVENUE from 72nd street right down to Brooklyn Bridge from 7am - 1pm for three Saturdays in August and we managed to catch the last one. Whilst it was insanely weird walking down the road of Park Ave accompanied only by cyclists, runners and other pedestrians, it was also super cool. We planned to walk the length of the Summer Streets route, however, the weather had different plans and we were pummeled by rain of biblical proportions (I must say, it was pretty reminiscent of a British Summer).
Along with about twenty other New Yorkers and tourists, we sought cover and watched runners and cyclists who weren't perturbed as the rain came down. In most situations we looked on with pity as each passerby became more and more waterlogged. We felt smug and dry. That was until these guys came along.
They couldn't care less and so your theme for this week is Devil May Care.
Oh and one last pic for your delight... My version of Pete in pensive color, on this side of the pond, although he looks more like he's been put in the naughty corner:
Happy snapping,
New York xx