After my foray through Europe in July my plan was to spend some time getting back into street photography in NYC, particularly with my analog Minolta SR-T 102 and my first roll of color film. I had some friends and coworkers in town and was excited see the results of the vibrant city streets on … More Summer ’22
I haven’t done much traveling over the past few years since, like most people, the pandemic completely transformed my day-to-day life and for a long time going overseas was just not in the equation. Other than a brief visit to the Bahamas in January 2020 just before the Covid outbreak, my last time leaving the … More Europe on Film
It’s been quite the week. I’m still struggling to put into words all of the anger, sadness, hope, fear, inspiration, compassion, and determination that I’ve been experiencing lately. That these feelings which I, and others like me, have lived with our entire lives are now being distilled and compressed into such a short timeframe is … More Black Lives Matter.
One of my favorite things about New York has always been the diversity. Not just in individual people, but in all aspects of the city which are constantly evolving to support the ebb and flow of different cultures, lifestyles, and perspectives. Each block pulses with its own personality and character, and moving from street to … More 8 Million Stories
Portraits can be a divisive topic among photographers. Some folks enjoy the ease of working with a posing subject, while others find the results a bit too contrived. I count myself in the former camp, though my approach is often a little unorthodox 🙃 I prefer natural, available light sources to studio lighting or a … More Portraits
After a long summer, this month marked my return to Orlando, FL for Automattic’s annual all-company gathering: the Grand Meetup. It was my 5th GM (having missed a previous year for wedding season) and professionally it was one of the more productive GMs I’ve attended. The flip side is that I didn’t take nearly as … More Grand Meetup 2019
Each year I’m reminded of the fact that summer is my absolute favorite time to be in NYC, so it’s quite fitting that I’ve already spent half of June traveling outside the country’s borders… Don’t misunderstand me, though. The only thing I enjoy more than summer in the city is exploring abroad, and getting in … More Tunis & London
After a quick trip to Vegas with a handful of colleagues last month, I joined the rest of my Automattic teammates at the beginning of April as we descended on Central America for our most recent meetup. Previous visits to the region had only brought me as far as Mexico, but this time around I … More Pura Vida
It’s that time of the year again when all of Automattic gathers together in one place for a week of coworking, projects, classes, and socializing—the types of interactions typical for most colleagues, but which are unique for us due to our distributed nature during the other 50 odd weeks of the year. While the previous … More Grand Meetup 2018
Back in April, after an exhaustive search, I acquired a new lens—what’s commonly referred to as the “dream lens”—a Canon 50mm f/0.95. As someone who typically shoots wide open at f/1.4, the relatively enormous aperture makes this the fastest lens I’ve ever used. Indeed, for a lens nearly 60 years old it’s still one of … More New York is for Dreamers
It’s been about a decade since I’ve spent any meaningful amount of time in Washington, DC after leaving the city and my alma mater, George Washington University, for NYC in the late aughts. This fact came up over dinner with Dominique during a recent visit to New York when she mentioned that she had never … More 8 Hours in DC
A fair amount has been written covering the history of the Jupiter lenses, so I won’t go too deeply into it here. Suffice it to say, as the Soviets invaded Germany at the end of WWII, a factory producing the Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/2.0 was ransacked, and the equipment and lens designs were sent back … More Jupiter-8
As I mentioned in a previous post, my recent trip to Greece was the first time in a few years that I tried to shoot exclusively in black and white. Most of my lenses are well suited for monochrome and as fun as it was to change things up, sometimes there’s just no substitute for living … More Athens in Color
February was a particularly busy month for me professionally with a series of work trips that happened to stack up back-to-back. I began February out in San Francisco followed by a brief visit to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then I ended the month in Athens, Greece. This was my first visit to the Mediterranean since 2014 … More Athens in Black & White
Over the holidays, I spent about a month traveling around the Western Cape of South Africa primarily in Cape Town proper. It was my second trip to the Southern Hemisphere, but my first visit to the African continent and my first holiday season spent on the beach. The festive atmosphere of New York during December … More Cape Town
Fall has all but come and gone which means this year’s Automattic Grand Meetup is just a few weeks behind us. The company returned to Whistler, Canada, though this was my first time in the region as I missed last year’s meetup to attend a friend’s wedding. Having been two years since seeing most of … More Whistler, CA
With one day of our wine tour behind us and two more ahead, we began our second day in Margaret River at Canal Rocks. The granite coastline of this most Western edge of Yallingup has been carved into a small channel by the waves of the Indian Ocean making for yet another incredible natural structure … More Wine by the Glass; Sculpture by the Sea
When we last left off, Emile, Penelope, and I were waving goodbye to the martian landscape that is The Pinnacles in Nambung National Park. The day was already drawing to a close as we began the two hour drive back down south towards Perth, but there was still a bit of daylight left and our … More Marsupials and Margaret River
It’s been almost three years since two of my dearest friends moved from New York to Perth, Australia. They’ve been back to the States several times since then including their wedding ceremony last fall, but in all that time I had yet to make the journey to the other side of the globe to visit them. That all … More Do You Come From a Land Down Under?
2017 has ben an…interesting year, to say the least. We are truly living in a strange new world that many of us are continuously trying to come to terms with. Abnormal is the new normal and reconciling this fact with my usual expectations and guiding principles has been a tremendous challenge. While I’ve been doing my part to stay … More Bat Country
When we finally hit 5th Avenue, the scope of the march became clear. The chanting crowd stretched for blocks as far as the eye could see with no apparent end in sight. Unprepared tourists were caught by surprise as they stumbled out of department stores lining the avenue and made futile attempts to walk against the … More Part 3: United We Stand
The enormous volume of people crowded together in one place rendered cell towers all but dysfunctional which made it tough to get my bearings. After crossing a few more blocks of marchers at a standstill, I finally came across a group that was making some progress (if rather slowly) heading West along 42nd street, and I joined up with them. Access … More Part 2: The March to Mordor
On Saturday, I joined the 400,000 people in New York City (and the over 3 million people across the country and around the globe) marching not only for women’s rights, but also in direct protest of the recently inaugurated 45th President and his party’s insidiously dangerous platform. It’s rather difficult to put the experience into words, but suffice it … More This Is What Democracy Looks Like!
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