614 - PUBLIC Hotel
Mother Nature finally caught up to me.
My goal for the day was to shoot the Manhattan Bridge in New York, a towering monstrosity that’s lived in my dreams for years. And today- of all days, was the day I would finally see it. Live and in the flesh.
I’d prepared the perfect bait. New York in the spring was a recipe for fog, and this misty morning was the kick off before a week of rain. The perfect concoction of haze and drizzle right before the storm.
But first, I needed food. These photography guns don’t work in a calorie deficit. And since it was Manhattan we were talking about, I took the opportunity to snag an Italian hoagie. Not all heroes wear capes.
The only problem was that while I munched down on that delectable sammie, the weather was changing. Slowly, ever so slowly. And my pulse was rising in synchronicity. Perhaps this delicatessen of the finer variety should have waited for later.
A couple rain drops smacked on the window sill of the cramped restaurant, rising in progression like a devilish drum beat. The countdown to doomsday had begun.
But I just shrugged and said “it’s no problem” in an Italian accent. Then I said it again. I’d been through countless rainstorms, snowstorms, thunderstorms, and sandstorms in my day. Nothing was going to stop this gravy train.
I wiped a smear of olive oil off my face, took a final bite, and crumpled the paper into a ball. It was that nice thick kind of paper. Then I stepped outside to see what this lil’ storm was really made of.
The moment I stepped outside my umbrella did that thing where it turns inside out and tries to blow away. A thing that I thought only happened in movies. But here I was.
Nothing to be concerned about. I’ve shot in the rain plenty of times. Plus, I was going to be standing under the bridge where the rain wouldn’t even hit. But deep down, I knew I was lying to myself.
See, there’s a major difference between shooting in the rain, and shooting in the windy rain. It’s that directional blow- it’ll fuck up your lens before you can even say “RAW.”
I finally made it to the bridge. I was not quite covered in water, but I was definitely covered in water. I pulled out my camera for a test shot. Rain whipped my umbrella away again and water coated my lens.
Got damn. I even had a lens hood on.
I wiped off the lens with my already wet shirt and tried again. Within milliseconds my lens had water on it. It was like putting your camera in front of a mist fan and saying “I think I can get a shot before the water hits it.” Not gonna happen.
The hard truth came out. While I was munching away on a sub, the haze had decided to fade away. Perhaps the fog was synced with my hunger.
I sighed. Well, time for more architecture photography. Not that the bridge wasn’t architecture, but you know what I mean.
Allow me to introduce you to my backup option- the PUBLIC Hotel. And yes, it’s actually capitalized like that in the branding. This place, unlike my last adventures at The Beekman and the Morgan Library, was a futuristic hotel that looked like it was built in 2078:
I swear New York is the only place where the hotels either look like you’re boarding an alien spaceship or like you’re trapped in 1920’s prohibition.
The hotel bar didn’t even have bottles on it. There were simply glass jars filled with mysterious substances:
Imagine you get a job as a bartender and they tell you there're no bottles, you have to memorize glass jars. I’m just imagining them pouring Bacardi into them at the end of the night wondering how they’d gotten to this point in their life.
Finally, I ended the shoot with a simple shot of a painting. Because, you know, a small shot tells a million stories:
I’m sure there’s some lesson in this shoot about looking for fire in the rain. But that’s for you to figure out.
Until next time folks.
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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