New York at 50mm

I went down to New York City this past weekend to visit some friends I haven’t seen in a while and to do some photo shooting.  I took the Bolt Bus since it was +$130 cheaper than the train, flying, or driving.  It was fine since it had Wi-Fi (not the fastest, but doable as long as you weren’t watching videos) and power outlets.  Since I was taking the bus, I wanted to keep my luggage to an absolute minimum, so I decided to not bring my full camera bag and lenses.  I decided to only bring a 50mm f1.8 lens on my Nikon D90.  No camera bag and no zoom lenses.  I wanted to see how dependent I had become on a zoom (a lot it seems by the results of the weekend).  So all of these pictures and for the next couple of posts were taken with that 50mm lens.

Composing shots of buildings was awkward at first with a fixed lens length.  What I saw first with my own eyes, I had to adjust when looking thru the camera and walk forward or backwards to approximate what I “saw”.  This view of the Chrysler Building was from the front door of my hotel.

I didn’t eat lunch when the bus made a pit stop, so by the time we got to NYC, I was starving.  I decided to head down to the East Village with a place in mind to grab something to eat. This picture was south of Union Sq.  I just like the neon. 

I liked some of the architectural features of this building along with the way the sunlight looked in the clouds. 

This picture was the reason I came down to the East Village to begin with: Porchetta.  I had heard great things about this place for a while (couple of years), but hadn’t had the chance to make it down.  The way I would describe it would be to call it just perfect Italian roast pork.  Just the right amount of seasonings, not too salty, not too fatty, but not dry.  You can get a plate with potatoes and green beans or a sandwich with just pork and a small bit of crackling (see below).

 

I went the sandwich route since I made a stop at Pommes Frites first (killer Belgian fries that I had with black truffle mayo).  Pommes Frites is another extremely tiny place, but they had a very healthy line at 5PM.  So much so that I couldn’t take a picture of the front of the store without some people obscuring the view, so I didn’t take any photos at all.  I haven’t had fries that good since Amsterdam in 1999.

 

One real benefit of taking a lens with an aperture of 1.8 is that you can take night photos without flash (which I prefer) fairly easily.  The sun had already set when I came across this cool looking store. 

 

Xi’an Famous Foods is another place that I walked by.  Since I had been meaning to visit the one in Flushing for a while, but never got around to it, I stopped in also.  I knew they had opened in Manhattan, but I had no idea where it was.  I wasn’t even hungry at that point, but justified it in my head as lunch and dinner.  I got the savory cumin lamb noodles.  The noodles were hand-pulled and definitely had that chewy texture I was expecting.  The sauce was spicy with lots of vegetables and shredded lamb.  Extremely tasty, but I could only eat half which seemed like a huge waste.  I would definitely recommend going, but be prepared for a little wait and no place to sit.  I can see what all the fuss is about.  I knew this place had been featured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, but they had a couple of screens showing segments from Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, Kelly Choi’s show in NYC, and Foodography on the Cooking Channel that featured Xi’an Famous Foods.