610 - The Vessel
Today I made my pilgrimage to the Vessel in NYC- a site I’ve had my eye on for over 5 years. But getting there wasn’t exactly easy.
In fact getting anywhere in New York isn’t exactly easy, unless you have a private helicopter.
The only reason we were in New York right now was because our friend needed his cat taken care of. He just so happened to have an apartment in the middle of Manhattan, and offered it up to Alara and I in exchange for four days of cat care.
A worthwhile trade, when you realize that the average cost of a hotel in Manhattan is easily $300+ per night. That’s not to say I haven’t slept in my Prius in the middle of the city several times. But it isn’t exactly ideal, and the stress of getting broken into is… a lot. I still have PTSD from my San Francisco ordeal.
Anyhoo, the point is we saw an opportunity and took it. The only problem was that we needed to get to that apartment and find a place to store my Prius for four days. Preferably a safe place.
My first inclination was to research spots in the city to store the car. But after coming across several offers that pretty much equaled the cost of a hotel, we decided to look outside the big apple. We ended up landing in a small airport parking lot near Newark Airport.
The idea was to park there, take the train from Penn Station to a subway station in Manhattan, ride the subway up through the city, and then walk to his apartment. All with our luggage, camera gear, and workout equipment for four days.
See, the thing is I love being a minimalist. But when you’re a minimalist photographer that enjoys running and rock climbing, you end up with endless, no matter how much you scale down. I ended up carrying a giant 35L camera bag and an 8L camera sling full of camera equipment, two Osprey daypacks full of regular and workout clothes/shoes, a tripod, and a bag full of snacks.
It might have been the longest 90 minutes of my life. Nothing makes you feel like an inconvenience to the world more than carrying an excessively large amount of gear on a crowded NY subway. But, we made it. Well, my back made it.
The apartment, which was located in Hell’s Kitchen and a couple blocks from Times Square, turned out to be absolutely amazing. His room was on the seventh floor, so we got killer views of the skyline and were far enough away from the ground to cut out the city buzz.
Once I plopped that big ole’ heap of bags on the floor, it suddenly all felt worth it. New York City was mine for the next few days. I could go anywhere I wanted.
And you can bet your ass the first thing on that list was a giant art piece called the Vessel. The Vessel opened in Hudson Yards back in 2019, and immediately became a viral sensation on Instagram as photos flooded the algorithm.
Being brand new to photography, I was more than hyped to get on the viral train and take a neat image of the architectural wonder. But I never quite got the opportunity. I’d come close on a trip to New Jersey, but ended up determining that the cost to get into New York City for a day trip photo wasn’t worth the hassle.
But here I was, six years later, with free reign to hit the city. Vessel, here I come.
And… it turned out to be everything I wanted- and more. Immediately upon showing up, sunlight began hitting the arches just right, creating the perfectly surreal scene:
Here’s an angle from below, arguably even more surreal:
You don’t even want to know how long it took me to Photoshop all of the people out of these images. (4+ hours? I didn't use an ounce of generative AI. It was all manually sampled and painted.) I think it was worth the hassle.
After all, this was a straight up pilgrimage. My dream had finally come true.
And as cheesy as it sounds, I think there’s something to making those small childhood dreams come true. Even if you’re not a child when you have these dreams. It makes life feel more complete, and like it’s moving along in all the right ways.
I couldn’t be more excited for this upcoming week in New York. ARCHITECTURAL MASTERPIECES, HERE I COME.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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