More Strolling on the Streets of NYC

The actual conference sucked up my entire days. The classes started at 8:45 AM and ended just before 6PM. It was nice to walk back to the hotel at twilight. I snapped the picture above of the "umpire state building," as Jamie liked to call it, with my phone. But the real fun came after dark when Jamie and I tried to learn some tricks from Sandy, who is a "street photographer." A street photographer basically means that you set out to try to capture the essence of the city. In order to do this you must be willing to point your camera at strangers–something that has always terrified me. But I gave it a try . . . Here's me taking pictures of strangers.

OK, so maybe two of them were mannequins. That counts, right? Hey, I was trying. I finally did get brave enough to get some actual humans from the side. Baby steps. I'm getting closer.

And then I got real brave and snapped these:

There's no stopping me now! Look out city streets, here I come . . .

Friday night was quite fun despite the temps dipping down and the wind picking up. Sandy and I had a great dinner with a couple from the "Photoshop gang." The guy was a Photoshop instructor and the girl was a Mini Cooper freak. Needless to say we never ran out of things to talk about. We ate in a very funky Thai place and the spicy food got me ready for our walk out in the cold.

We strolled more and took more photos. My favorite thing to see this night was the walk sign. Which in our case was the 'Quick - RUN - I'm freezing' sign.

I thought my brain would explode by the end of the day on Saturday. I had photo and video overload. Not to mention PEOPLE and CITY overload and I was so ready to go home. We planned on taking a taxi to the train station, which was a relief given the fact that I practically ran a mile to get from the convention center to the hotel. But the bellhop told us it would be faster to walk the mile to GCS than taxi so that is exactly what we did. No, wait a minute, we more ran than walked . . . pulling our suitcases, in insane Saturday night crowds, in my dress boots. Holy smokes that was not fun.

And let me tell you . . . if you think there are lots of freaks in the city on a normal Saturday night, you should try visiting on the night before Halloween. After seeing several strange characters walking by, one of them a werewolf in a power blue tux, Sandy wanted to stay another night! Imagine the interesting street photography we could have gotten that night.

To see more pics from this exciting trip, please click here.