A photo of NYC’s new middle finger as seen from the James Hotel
Last night, I went to photographer, Ben Watts’ WattsUp wine party at Jimmy (the rooftop of the James Hotel). Besides being treated to free wine, cool people and an astounding view of Lower Manhattan, I couldn’t help to notice this huge middle finger sticking up from the bedrock of New York City. I think I’m in love with all 1776 feet of this building. You will never catch up working or going up there but it sure is pretty to look at and it goes well with wine, revelers and stormy clouds.
Jimmy
New York City
June 11, 2013
Rock and Roll Burlesque at Tammany Hall
Rock and roll, contortionist acts, comedic illusionists, burlesque dancers on broken glass. What could go wrong?
Tammany Hall
New York City
March 20, 2013
Click any photo to open gallery.
Timo Weiland After Party at Le Baron
Chinatown seems to be the growing hot spot these days as I’ve noticed my work continues to take me there. There’s a lot to like about it. It has the sleaze and grit of the Lower East Side from 10-15 years ago and lots of places to easily fit in a speakeasy or venue. I had never been to Le Baron before this night but it got an A+ in my book.
The band that is playing is called Cable.
Click on any photo to begin gallery.
(Photographed for UrbanDaddy.)
Le Baron
New York City
February 7, 2013
Pattern Clashing or Sexy Stockings/Long Legs
Studio time at the Chateau Noir.
Chateau Noir
Astoria, NY
January 12, 2013
The Stitched Up Jack-O-Lantern
Anyone who knows me personally knows that I’m a fanatical Halloween enthusiast (redundancy check here?). In saying that, I do a lot of Halloween activities that range from cemetery photo walks (alone of course) to haunted houses. Another thing I like to do is make Halloween-esque photographs such as the pumpkin below. I’ve done photos like these every year since 2009. I was going for a film noir/German Expressionist look here by casting the shadow on the wall. Enjoy!
After the Rain: Astoria, NY
Evening after rainfall. This is likely my last post of the month. Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans for a week. I’ll post some photos from the city that is a huge source of inspiration for me. It’s been a swell month and it’s ending in a swell way. Cheers. 
A day in the life of New York City
“Fire is beautiful and we know if we get too close that it will kill us but what does that matter. It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beautiful than to live a long time and be bored all the while…” – Don Marquis from Archy and Mehitabel, “The Lesson of the Moth”
he has a vision for your future.
Behind the Veneer of Times Square
This was sooooome process to create, lemme tell yeah. Although it’s 2 pictures it’s not done in an HDR method (+/- exposures). I just blended the 2 to get some movement in there.
I won’t bore you with the details about how I did this but I’ll tell you the programs I used:
+ Adobe Lightroom 3
+ Photoshop CS5
+ Nik Software HDR Efx Pro
My favorite parts of this image are the details (what is intentionally blurred and what is intentionally sharp).
This one is meant for HUGE (so click HERE to see it like that).
If you love it, you can own a print by going HERE.
Behind the Veneer of Times Square (2011)
New Museum, New York: Festival of Ideas
Here are some of my favorite shots from a project I did for New Museum for their first annual Festival of Ideas, which took place in early May in the Bowery. 
Ninth Ward (bar), NYC
Aryn and I visited one of my new favorite NYC bars called Ninth Ward. It bills itself as being a New Orleans style bar. I kinda see it. There’s voodoo folk art on the ceilings, shutter blinds, lit via bright artificial lighting, private booths, old wood beams crossing above its guests, and all very low lit.
I had my camera on me, as I always do, and the decor put me in the mood to take 1970s vampire, ghost movie shots. Here’s one I took of Aryn:
Nature resisted and nature died or 2 wooden ships!
Much of my work is environmental activism in imagery. Or better yet, it’s the reflection of what I see happening to the world. It can be depressing but destruction is often as beautiful as creation. How that works out in the end, I haven’t a clue. But this was my day at the beach — or rather a cove in Astoria, NY that I had no idea existed because “progress” has already sought all useful parcels of land.
Ok here’s the short story of it. New York City (Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens (the latter two being on Long Island)) used to be all forests, ponds, streams, hills, and waterfalls. It used to be an Eden and if you go North just 15 minutes from the heart of Manhattan, you’ll be surrounded by nature, which might give you a glimpse of what it may have looked like.
Check out the pictures of the mired and decaying old merchant ships. These are probably late 1800s — THE LATEST.
If anyone has any info about the ships below, please tell me about it!
My shoddy attempt at Dave Hill’s Style with pleasant results
I’m a voracious reader of photography blogs. A post I read on one of these sites discussed how to get that Dave Hill “look” in Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. I followed the instructions but somehow failed. Despite this, I created a preset that allows me to make my pictures quite interesting. I literally named my preset “Shitty Dave Hill Attempt.” I haven’t implemented PS yet but I’m liking the results I’m getting in Lightroom. It must also be mentioned that lighting is everything in photography, obviously, so it’s important to focus on the lighting and composition first before snapping the photo.
After I applied this preset in Lightroom, I softened our bodies, used more clarity to achieve more detail and contrast on the buildings and water, and brightened the highlights of our faces and parts of our hair lines to get the illusion of sunlight tracing our outlines. Poetic shit.
So out of a mistake came something I consider to be a nice effect.
The picture below was taken by the captain of the sailboat (Jerry aka Jerr Bear), using my Nikon D80 with Tiffen polarizer on the lens. I’m on the right, piloting this sweet ass sail boat, while my friend Jason is on the left, casually sipping from his sippy cup. Here we are, talking shit and drinking wine. Very Long Island of us.
Check out the before and after:
BEFORE. Nothing at all done to it. Just a RAW image converted into JPG.
AFTER. Settings above have been applied to RAW image and then converted into JPG. A bit more stylized. A bit more work but a much more “artistic” appearance than the previous shot.
