New York I

Hi guys and girls,

Over the past week my wife and I took a visit at the amazing metropolis of New York City. This was one of an experience.

The gear I had with me was sparse.
All I had with me was the Fuji X-Pro1, the Fujinon XF35 1.4 lens, a spare battery and 56GB of storage space.
Thats all. At first I thought that will not be enough, I need the 18mm lens. But after the first few shots I noticed that I will be just ok with this set up.
I just had to get used to the new focal length as I have been shooting the Fuji X100 with its 23mm lens for the past year.

So off we go!

It all started with a great flight from Frankfurt to JFK International Airport in the huge Airbus A380-800  from Singapore Airlines.

The hotel we had booked was the Z Hotel on Long Island with a fantastic view over the skyline of Manhattan.

Unfortunately our room was not ready as we arrived at around 1pm local time. With a 6hour time difference and a nearly nine hour flight on hour backs you can imagine that we where quit tired at the time already.
But to avoid jet lag to much we had to get through until around 9pm or 10pm.
We did the only right thing and got our bags packed to walk around Manhattan and get a first impression.
And boy we did walk.



First of the Z Hotel has a shuttle running every hour from the hotel to the 59th street. From there on we walked.

As we walked the streets we suddenly came across some that were closed for traffic and a kind of market was put up.

You could buy t-shirts, shoes, jewelry (but not the Tiffany style) and food. Lots of food.

After that we set our way to Times Square. The people you see are just amazing. All kinds of them in such a short period made my shutter finger just crazy.
I love to take pictures but this was just to much to capture all at once.

So I had to cool down a bit.
Well not really.

Feel the city?

This was at Times Square and this is just unbelievable. The people, the noise, the lights just everything.

On we went. Had to keep going although we were starting to get very tired. From Times Square we did not quite know were to go. We decided to take a "small walk" down to the Flatiron building. It was not really that short at all.

You can easily see what is one of the most used types of transport in NYC.
Can you guess what?

After we had an hour walk to the Flatiron we just stayed there a little bit and tried to get the best shot.
Not so easy with the Fuji X-Pro1 and the 35mm 1.4 XF lens which is a equivalent of around about 53mm in full frame terms.

I must admit that my wife was better of with the little Nikon 1 J1 and the 10-30mm lens.
But I managed and got this shot.

Not the best I know but as I say. That was the wrong lens. But as stated above that was the only lens I had with me.

Waiting for my wife to get the picture she wanted I turned my back to the Flatiron Building and just had to take some more ones of the many yellow cabs driving around NYC.

This first day the I developed a theme that most pictures needed a yellow cab in it.

We then noticed that we had got really hungry and wanted to go to have something to eat. The problem was that this was near 59th street and we where way down on 23rd. What did we do?
Yeah correct, we walked.

I did not take too many pictures any more so I will just show them to you without further commenting them.

And that was the end of day one. Sunset was near and we decided to call it a day.

The Z Hotel shuttle which had taken us into town got us back to the hotel again.
On the way to the hotel I had to take on last yellow cab shot.

By the time we arrived at the hotel and settled down in bed the clock had turned 10pm which for us meant it was 4 in the morning.

After a good nights rest we where ready for day two.

All shots with the Fuji X-Pro1, the 35mm 1.4 lens and untouched jpegs ooc. There has been no post processing what so ever.

Come back to see day 2