Yesterday was the 4th of July, my first since moving to New York. Naturally, we decided to do it up right—by going to Jersey.

Sometimes I think I’ll never be a “real New Yorker” because I actually kinda like Times Square. It seems that more often than not, simply mentioning the words “Times Square” to a New Yorker will elicit responses of “Dear god, why?” (a coworker actually said that to me once) and a disdain normally reserved for Hoboken, L.A., and the Red Sox.

Shot an engagement party for a lovely couple on Friday night. It was held on the rooftop of a building in the Lower Midtown/Koreatown area. The shot above is the view from the south side of the rooftop. You can actually see the Brooklyn Bridge, a good three miles away. I can’t begin to imagine what it’d be like to have that view waiting for you every morning.

Updates have been few and far between lately on account of me still wrestling with my library of over 36,000 photos. I’m hoping to use “this photography thing” to help supplement my main income, or at the very least bring in enough money to pay for itself. God knows photography is no cheap endeavor, and it’d be nice if it pulled its own weight once in a while.

In the eight years I lived in the Bay Area—three of which spent living in the heart of downtown San Francisco—I never once attended Bay to Breakers. Friends and coworkers often participated, to the point of thinking up fun and crazy costumes (usually group-themed), but I never did. I wish I could provide some valid excuse but really it just boiled down to laziness. Weekends were my sleep-in days, Sunday the holiest of holy Days of Sloth, and I’d be damned if anyone was gonna get me out of bed before ten or eleven in the morning, let alone at seven o’clock.

No accompanying text tonight. I’ve had the longest day in recent memory and I just want to go to sleep.

Somewhere in New York, a princess is missing her slipper.

I love my GF1 a little more each day. I was able to get down nice and low for this shot thanks to the electronic viewfinder, that can angle up at 90º. Even if I had shot this using the main LCD–which grants some level of leeway when it comes to shooting angles–I still would’ve had to position myself awkwardly to get the capture.

I’ve been playing with shooting from the hip again lately. It’s a bit of an art, because not only do you have to properly frame and compose the shot, but you have to keep the camera still, which is tougher than you’d think because you also have to shoot clandestinely. Well, maybe not “have to,” but it’s part of the fun of shooting from the hip–capturing people when they don’t realize they’re being captured.

New Yorkers don’t seem to like umbrellas very much. Or perhaps they just don’t like owning or carrying them. Whenever a decent amount of rainfall hits, they all buy cheap $5 street corner umbrellas, use them for a day, then toss them into trash cans when it stops raining. I call them “donebrellas.”