So I haven’t been on a proper holiday for ages, and me and Nell (the wonderful, beautiful and unexplainably patient girlfriend) had been playing with the idea of going to NYC for my 30th birthday and also our first anniversary.  We got an amazing deal with Virgin, Nell trawled Google for an amazing hotel to stay in and with a few days we had it pretty much all wrapped up.  I’ve not done a lot of travel photography before and was worried that an over-active photographer, the craziest city in the World and his girlfriend wasn’t a particular successful combination to relationship heaven.  The solution? One camera, one lens and no loitering.  Hmmm.  A 5D Mk2 and a 50mm ƒ1.4 were going to be my weapons of choice (that and an iPhone and Nell’s easy-peasy-point-and-squeezy compact).  Here goes . . .

First thoughts

NYC is basically like being on the set of The Truman Show.  Everyone’s seems to have their roles and you’ll hear crazy snippets of dialect everywhere you walk.  Everyone is nice.  Really nice.  Apart from one crazy woman on the subway who shouted at us for eating pizza, we felt totally safe everywhere we went.  Our hotelier basically said since 9/11, people seem to watch each other’s back.  It’s big; the streets are really wide, and your neck hurts from looking up all the time.  Above all else, there’s a strange but beautiful energy to the city that I’ve never felt anywhere else.  It’s busy, but compared to London, it doesn’t feel stressed or chaotic.

To save you from loads of personal portraits, I’ll get most of ‘em out the way and done with now.  (Note to self: taking pictures of you and your girlfriend with a 50mm lens requires longer arms than you think.)

Randoms 1

“Randoms 1″ I hear you ask . . . There’s a few.  Bottom left was our home for the duration; Margot Guest House, where the very very friendly staff (namely, Todd) made it a pleasure to stay.  And no, we’re not engaged (yet) and neither did we go in to Tiffany & Co.

The Natural History Museum

A bit of an archaic, old museum that kind of let us down.  (NYC hot-tip: the desk asks you for a $20 donation, but you can pay whatever you want)  Although it gave me a chance to give me a head start in wildlife photography, it kind of felt like a bunch of stuffed animals behind glass, with not a lot of information or interactivity.  I got TV for that.

Café Wha?

This place is crazy, but ace.  Near Greenwich village, we paid a fortune to get in, a small country’s GPD for a bottle of wine, and then got charged tax and a compulsory tip.  Change out of $90, just.  But the compere was cool, the stand-up was very funny and the band would make the best wedding band in the world.  These guys play five nights a week, and with 2 drummers, 3 guitarists, 4 vocalists and a bunch of other random musicians, they had it all covered.  And yup, that’s me passed-out with Nell dying for me to get up on my birthday for a busy schedule.

Birthday • Breakfast

My birthday was a complete surprise; Nell had it all planned out and was keeping me in the dark.  We headed down for breakfast at the legendary Pershing Square cafe opposite Grand Central station.  The food and service was amazing.  Yes, I look knackered; it was 30 degrees.

Birthday • Cake

Next up was a trip across town to Magnolia Bakery, where Nell had pre-ordered me an amazing birthday cake.  Coffee and cake?  I am easily pleased.  You guys who are looking for wedding favours and wedding cake – check theses people out.  I don’t know if they ship to the UK, but you could always take a holiday and pick it up yourself.

Birthday • Helicopter Ride

Nell, knows me better than I know myself apparently . . . I didn’t even imagine you could do this.  I’ve never been in a chopper (I know it’s helicopter, but we were in NYC and chopper’s easier to type), and always wanted to do it and what better place to do it?  Luckily Nell had given me a bit of a heads-up on this one, and I bought the iPhone to record some video (see below).  You really appreciate how big Central Park is and how much being on the ground is underrated.

Check out this video shot on the iPhone 4:

Birthday • Dinner

For dinner, my only instructions were to dress smart and be ready for 6:30 PM dead.  I left the camera behind for this one, as I think Nell had probably had enough of my picture taking by this point.  She’d booked an amazing restaurant river cruise down the Hudson at sunset.  let’s just say sailing past the Statue of Liberty whilst the sun comes down is the only way to see it. Check out the website if you want to do this: http://www.bateauxnewyork.com/ There’s a couple of cheeky pics from Nell’s camera at the end.

Anniversary

For our anniversary we headed into Central Park, where I hired a row boat and spent the next hour rowing us around the lake.  Now for those of you that know me, I know how to row (although I don’t do it often enough), what I hadn’t bargained on was rowing in 30 degree heat and then immediately going to our reservation at The Loeb Boathouse Restaurant for lunch (read: very posh nosh and ironed tablecloths).  Rowing in 30 degree heat brings on a bit of a sweat . . . I had to wait a little bit before we could go in . . . There are pictures, but clients read this.

We then headed to the nearest Ben & Jerry’s at The Rockefeller Centre for dessert, although this was a let down.  We wanted many many floors of ice cream, sprinkles and sauces.  All we got was grumpy service staff and no Half-Baked™.  For our evening meal we went to John’s Pizzeria; great pizza, a beautiful building and right in the middle of Times Square – a couple of pics at the bottom (that’s a pizza each by the way).

Further views from Central Park

Central Park is unreal.  You could spend a fortnight walking around and never see the same thing twice.  Once you’re in the middle, apart from the skyline, you’d never guess you were in one of the biggest cities in the world.  I took a bunch of pictures, but this post was getting out of hand already.  This is the Strawberry Fields area, which Yoko Ono built for John Lennon.  I don’t think she imagined it would just end up being a long line of people all waiting to have their picture taken sitting cross legged whilst doing the peace sign or a contemplative hand-on-chin pose.

The Subway

The Subway is a million times better than our Underground.  It’s airconditioned, it’s cheaper and the buskers are more talented.

Brooklyn Bridge

I’d been waiting my turn to pretend to be Jay-Z for a long time, and finally I got my chance.  Brooklyn bridge is huge and beautiful.  It reminds me of Whitby with the boardwalk and gothic arches.

The Guggenheim Museum

We didn’t go in here as it costs a lot of money, but it sure does look pretty from the outside.

Randoms 2

I didn’t take enough people shots; I think you kinda need to be on your own to do this, but here are a few characters snapped up whilst walking by.

Greenwich Village

This is Greenwich Village which is apparently where Bob Dylan hung out and wrote songs.  There are cool markets here and people selling watermelon and home made lemonade.

Randoms 3

The obligatory yellow cab, and some big big buildings

Wall St.

I love this movie, so had to go see where it all happens.  It’s crazy how much you see the Stars & Stripes and how proud you feel Americans are of their country, yet when you see a British flag you feel the displayer may be slightly too proud and a little bit xenophobic.  Also I wish police cars looked this cool over here.

Final mentions

Here are some other cool places we went to: The Comic Strip (very funny and great value for money) The M’n'Ms store (what Ben & Jerry’s should’ve been like), HBO Store (not enough Sopranos merchandise), Ground Zero (both moving and uplifting), the Apple store (a glass cube and a lift is all you can see from street level), hotdog stands (I want my $2 back), King Kong at an outdoor cinema in Central Park (bring cushions next time), The Rockefeller Centre (we flew past it, so we missed out on doing Top of The Rock), Dunkin’ Donuts (we couldn’t find any Krispy Kreme’s damn it!).

To sum up, NYC is incredible, you should go.

The bungee jump is about 160′ and after dialing my camera to cope with the black pit of light (ISO 6400 at 5 fps for you camera nerds), Liz went through the safety checks and the rest is history.  There’s a cheeky video Nell caught on an iPhone at the bottom.  Nervous/relieved laughing non-optional.

Launched by Aviva, for every entry they will donate £1 to the Street to School Programme – a global initiative with the aim of reaching 500,000 children worldwide, helping them get off the streets and back into education.

A weekly prize of £1000 will also be awarded to the local hero that captures the hearts of visitors to the site and receives the most votes.  One overall winner will be chosen by a celebrity judging panel for a prize worth £10,000.

Please check out the website and get involved!

Anyway, below are a few of my photos from the today’s fly-by visit.  Most of these were taken during recording, and being stuck in one place with one lens during the takes was quite restrictive but also quite liberating.

I’m excited for 2010 and have some great plans in the pipeline, including a trip to New York in August to celebrate my 30th.

I have lots of amazing weddings booked in some fantastic venues with some brilliant couples.  I have a new range of headshot packages, for all you actors and performers looking for a new year kickstart. More about these later this week.  Myself and the rest of the 3B Media team have our Urban Portraits photography workshop lined up for the end of this month – there are still a couple of places left if you’re quick!  Download the brochure here and we’ll be developing a full range of courses over the next year.  Phil Barber challenged us both to row 1,000,000 meters by the end of the year – just short of 20,000 a week; that should sort the post-Christmas weight out!  I’ll be creating my new Facebook fan page, so you’ll get to see more pictures and have fun tagging yourselves, and of course the blog will be updated regularly too, along with Twitter.  I’ve also got me an entire 6 season’s of The Sopranos to watch courtesy of my girlfriend.  28 discs and 4675 minutes of the best TV you’ll ever watch (Yes, even better than The Simpsons and 24).

Anyway, I hope 2010 is a great year for you, and see you all soon.

Rob.