NY Through the Lens - New York City Photography

Hurricane Sandy debris on Delancey Street on Monday morning. Lower East Side, New York City.

Tons of debris seen earlier this morning looking down Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The wind was pretty harsh at that time and it’s even more brutal now. A huge wind gust just literally shook my entire apartment (I live on the 5th floor of a very, very old walk-up).

Just got a robo-call from Con Ed saying that power may be shut off here on the Lower East Side. If I don’t update again for a while, that’s why. Stay safe all!

In case you missed my earlier post, you can catch me on my Twitter mainly (unless the power goes totally out everywhere) until the middle of this week unless I have to go out for some completely insane reason.

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View the rest of the posts about Hurricane Sandy in NYC on this blog here:

Hurricane Sandy New York City

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The Chrysler Building and New York City skyline as seen from the Empire State Building.

Looking out over New York City from up high, the skyscrapers rise from the ground proudly as if they are marching towards the horizon where the city and the sky meet briefly and where steel dissolves into light.

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This photo was taken with my phone and edited with Camera +. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other phone photography posts made to this blog here, my mobile photography photos on Flickr here, and my phone photography for sale here.

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Buy “The Chrysler Building and Skyscrapers of New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

Sunset on the beach at Coney Island. Brooklyn, New York City.

While the last of summer’s sun pours itself onto the earth touching the ocean with its warmth, autumn waits with baited breath lingering above in the blue of the sky.

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This photo was taken with my phone and edited with Camera +. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other phone photography posts made to this blog here. You can check out all of my mobile photography photos on Flickr here. Additionally, you can view my phone photography for sale here.

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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

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Buy “Beach Sunset - Coney Island - New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

The Flatiron Building rising from the shadows. New York City.

Out of the shadows, the city rises proudly into the sunlight that casts its glow on the structures borne out of the aspirations and hopes of urban dreamers.

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This photo was taken with my phone and edited with Camera + and Snapseed. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other phone photography posts made to this blog here. You can check out all of my mobile photography photos on Flickr here. Additionally, you can view my phone photography for sale here.

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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

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Buy “Flatiron Building - New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

Sunset view from the High Line. Chelsea, New York City.

In the evening when the sun slides along the buildings and shadows glide along the streets, the city lingers longingly in the last few moments of sunlit bliss as urban wanderers slow dance to the sun’s daily adagio.

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This photo was taken with my phone. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other Instagram posts made to this blog here. You can check out all of my Instagram photos on Flickr here. Additionally, you can view my phone photography for sale here.

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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

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Buy “Evening Adagio - New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

Clouds over 6th Avenue. Chelsea, New York City.

The clouds billow like smoke descending from the flames of the sun over the city in the afternoon.

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This photo was taken with my phone. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other Instagram posts made to this blog here. You can check out all of my Instagram photos on Flickr here. Additionally, you can view my phone photography for sale here.

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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

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Buy “Clouds Over Chelsea - New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in the late afternoon. New York City.

In the light of the afternoon, the city stretches out across its bridges into the promise of evening’s suggestion of night.

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This photo was taken with my phone. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). Check out my other Instagram posts made to this blog here. You can check out all of my Instagram photos on Flickr here. Additionally, you can view my phone photography for sale here.

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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

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Buy “Walking Over the Brooklyn Bridge - New York City” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

Crossing Lower Broadway. Greenwich Village, New York City.

In keeping with my promise to post a photo every week taken with my phone, here is this week’s mobile photography post. I am @newyorklens on Instagram (view my feed here). You can read about my thoughts on mobile photography and Instagram here and you can check out some of my Instagram photos on Flickr here.

As I experiment more and more with photo-editing apps for phone cameras, I find myself falling more and more in love with mobile photography. I branched out this past week and tried out Photoforge2 and VSCO and it was something of a revelation to me.

Photoforge2 has quickly become one of my core editing apps for my phone images. It has many of the same tools you would find in Photoshop and/or Lightroom and its features are staggering in their editing and creative capacities. I still also tinker around with Snapseed and Noir.

As my editing app arsenal has grown, I have found myself deeply interested in how the current crop of photo-sharing networks differ from each other. I really love Instagram. The community (or I suppose I should say ‘communities’) there is/are enthusiastic and very welcoming. I can’t remember the last time I had such a high response to things I have shared relative to the amount of people following me. People seem far more invested in the people they follow on Instagram than on other networks I have tried out so far. However, my trials are limited since I have literally only been dabbling in phone photography for a little over 3 weeks and I have only been using a few of the newer networks I have tried for 1 or 2 weeks

A few people I know via other photography communities online turned me on to the world of EyeEm (you can view my limited feed and my EyeEm account here) a few weeks ago and I have been on Streamzoo for as long as I have been on Instagram.

I came across this article last week: Is Instagram Defining, and Therefore Ruining, Mobile Photography? which made for interesting reading in light of my photo-sharing network dabbling. While I feel that some of the author’s points are a bit muddled, there are some interesting points made that could probably be applied to all networks online in terms of the democratization of all forms of photography, mobile or otherwise.

One thing that I think the author may have wrong is that there are some very vibrant, serious mobile photography communities on Instagram that are focused on the art of mobile photography. Instagram is the most popular out of all of the photo-sharing mobile networks though and with multitudes of users comes an increase in noise. I think this is where EyeEm shines for people who are interested in viewing and sharing mobile photography that transcends snapshot-status. I find the talent on EyeEm to be staggering. However, I think that the interface design (specifically for iPhones) is a bit lacking and in some cases non-intuitive. The community is also very small in comparison to a service like Instagram and it can be hard to break through and find other people to interact with.

I will continue to post to all 3 networks though for now. I find that each network has its own strengths and weaknesses. I do enjoy the random spontaneity of my Instagram feed and slipping in a cat photo (or two, or three…or ten :) ) doesn’t feel like an assault to the people following me versus on EyeEm where the level of photography is higher and I feel compelled to post more serious photos!

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Buy “New York City - Cloudy Day on Broadway” Prints here, My mobile photography for sale here, My regular photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.

Faded brick storefront and a bicycle. Lower East Side, New York City

Is there anything that tugs at nostalgic feelings more than a beautifully faded storefront? Maybe. Maybe not. I love this one in particular though especially on bright, sunny days when it feels as if the sun is imbuing the faded memories on the brick with a warm touch.

This was taken with Instagram. As I mentioned last week, I only started using Instagram a week or so ago and I love it. My name there is newyorklens. You can read about my thoughts on mobile photography and Instagram here. Most of my phone photos are now processed in Snapseed first and then tinkered with in Instagram. I decided I am going to post one phone photography image a week here since I am really having a lot of fun with it!

I received a really bizarre question the other night shortly before I disabled anonymous commenting altogether. Someone asked me something like “do you use a camera to take your photos or just some app?” saying something else about how my photography has “changed” over time.

I would like to say first: thank you. We can only evolve in skill if we change and grow. My photography is constantly evolving and I feel more and more at peace with the work I am producing recently because it is closer to what I have been trying to achieve in terms of conveying emotion and how I view the world around me. Additionally, every image I ever post here unless it is tagged (like this post) with “phone photography” is taken with a camera.

I approach all of my photography as a mixture of painting with light and tones and I strive with everything in my power to capture the feelings and emotions that are stirred up within myself with certain scenes here in New York City. If you are interested in hearing more about that, I was interviewed a month ago on a photography show hosted by Thomas Hawk and Lotus Carroll and you can read that interview and listen to that broadcast here.

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View this photo larger and on black on my Google Plus page

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View my photography for sale here, email me, or ask for help.