New York Day Trip: A Day of Contrasts

This is one of my favorite images from Sydney and Alex’s awesome day in New York, taken outside the American Museum of Natural History.

More pictures below!

Since I was shooting a family with a young daughter, one of the stores I suggested that we check out was American Girl Place. To be honest, as the mom of two boys, I was the one who desperately wanted to go there. But Sydney was, let me see, ok with it too. Actually, I think she LOVED it! And unlike in major stores in Tokyo, nobody in American Girl seemed to mind that I was taking a few pictures.

Our family session also included Alex, who I have known for many years. I had an idea that our trip to the American Girl store needed to be balanced with something just for him. So we also went to Kaufmans, the Army Navy store near Times Square. And what a contrast it was! I love the picture above, taken outside the store. You might miss the canons if you’re not looking for them. But if you do go, it’s really pretty cool to see these canons in the middle of Manhattan.

Speaking of the contrasts: I love this picture. Look how happy Alex is, and how dazed Sydney looks. But she knew our next stop was the American Girl store, so she wasn’t the least bit upset! American Girl Place is a BIG, beautifully decorated store filled with coordinated displays and bright colors and surrounded on the outside by upscale retailers and restaurants in the Rockefeller Center area. Kaufman’s, on the other hand, is small, jam packed with camo attire making it hard to find anything (because of the camo, see?). Still, Kaufman’s is a great store if you’re looking for anything in a military style. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, the owner seems to know every square inch of the place and can dig out a size small snow camo cap from underneath what seems to be years’ worth of piled up stuff. Across the street is the huge Port Authority Bus Terminal which does not exactly shout upscale Manhattan retail, if you know what I mean.

For Sydney, this is more her speed! But I have to say, what great kids they are because Alex was interested in all the things Sydney was interested in, being so supportive of his sister.

I swear if the Army Navy store had action figures all dressed up in camo and in a glass case like the ones they have at the AG Place, they’d sell fifty a day!

I think I could spend all day in that store.

After American Girl, we had an awesome lunch at Shake Shack. Yum, best burgers in New York! But if you’re into chocolate shakes, ask for a chocolate shake made with regular milk as opposed to chocolate milk or chocolate syrup. The chocolate shakes were TOO chocolaty for us. Oh, and massively excellent fries there too. We went to the one in the Upper West Side, which was fabulous. I loved it so much, I’d plan a trip to NY with my family just to go there for lunch! There’s another one in the Madison Square Park area. Go! (Making myself hungry. Must stop thinking about Shake Shack.)

After lunch, we hung out in Central Park for a while. As you can see from the fall palette, I took these pictures back in November. Once I get into November shoots, I have to put blogging and galleries on hold while I jump into designing holiday cards for my clients. Click here if you’d like to see the holiday card I designed for Sydney and Alex’s family! I love it!

People are often asking me why some pictures work better in black and white. Here’s a great example. First of all, I really love the expression on the kids’ faces. We get all we need from this photo from their faces alone. We don’t need color input to feel something in this photo. Now look at the color version…

…in the color version, the viewer is distracted by the bright gold reflection in the water. That’s a reflection of the sunset shining on the side of a building that has lots of windows. So it’s really a reflection of a reflection, and the shape of it makes a viewer wonder why it’s got such straight lines on the left side. When we take photographs of children, we want viewers to wonder something like, “What is Sydney thinking?” or “Why is Alex smiling that sly smile?” So, we make the picture black and white, and successfully strip out the things that take away from the emotion of the shot.

Love this one, with Syd’s mom in the background.

Central Park is a great place to take family photographs. Around every corner is some new awesome backdrop!

And fall is the best time to shoot there!

I like shooting in fall anyway because I love fall clothes! As a totally unexpected bonus in this shoot: Sydney’s sweater was the perfect medium gray tone. It made all the pictures come out with a perfect color balance. (Photographers call it “white balance” but it’s really based on what the camera “sees” as medium gray. The camera adjusts every picture based on what it “thinks” should be white based on medium gray tones. When there’s a dominant feature in a photograph that’s already medium gray, that makes color correction so easy!)

I had such a great time that day because my boys, Brad and Greg came too. Sometimes they stand behind me and do stupid things to me while I’m shooting, which the kids seem to LOVE. I, on the other hand, tend to get a lot of wet willies.

This is one of my all time favorite shots. Notice the castle in the background. I was losing light, and couldn’t decide whether to take these shots with the castle a blur in the background, or with everything in focus, so I decided to try it both ways. In the end I liked the blurry castle shots the best.

Love this one. She is a natural in front of the camera.

I also love how Alex owned his solo shot with his very own pose.

Here’s the one keeper shot with the castle in focus. I really only saved it to show the contrast, this being a day of contrasts. Note for all you mamarazzi photographers out there: the only way to control this shot is to take pictures with manual settings. With such low light, I needed a high ISO number, slow shutter speed and narrow aperture (high number) to get the castle to be as focused as the kids. There isn’t a programmed combination that would have gotten a successful shot of this setting, so my lesson to you for today is: practice, practice, practice! Then, when you’re in a situation when you want to capture something specific like this, you’ll have the knowledge you need to make it happen!

I love Syd’s hair!

Love this shot with her mom too.

Awesome!

One of my all-time faves!

Let me know if you’d like to see Sydney and Alex’s slide show. It’s so much fun! If you didn’t already click over to the blog post featuring their holiday card design, I wonder if you can pick out which pictures I featured on their card. Hmm. Take a guess, then click here to see.