New York City
This, well, wow. This was one of my favorite experiences of my life. I don't even know where to start.
First let me get into things stepping a few feet back. Being from Boston, I had to learn the culture of photography and street-art by myself. There was no mural chasers in the night and no kids shooting rooftops in Boston. I had no one to look up to. I had no one to look to for spots and new experiences. That is, well, until Dave and I became good friends.
Being from CT, Dave was always just a train ride from the city. So he knew the spots. He knew the culture. He knew what the game was like.
And little old me from Boston. Well, I wanted to be dealt a hand.
So we collaborated and hit the blackjack tables together. Shooting for the Aces and the Tens, we went in with limited money and unlimited opportunity.
Thankfully, my mom hooked it up and got us a beautiful hotel room downtown New York for two nights.
I jumped in my car and drove down to CT to meet up with Dave, then from there we had our cameras and our brains and we just, well, we went.
Arriving in the city with a Sup bag full of clothes I had designed and a few nice SoHo appreciated fits, we un packed in the room then headed out.
On voyages around New York we just chilled and shot photos. Hit different rooftops. Met up with different homies.
These two chicks that we know that model weren't doing anything and luckily enough I had brought Ohkay clothes that were fit for girls so we hit a rooftop on Wall Street (can i say that? if you work for the government don't read on). We were on the roofs and we shot some nice portraits. This is where I first met Greg .
Greg is a person whom, well, I guess I could say I have lots of respect for. When we had met a few months back, he told me about this movement he had founded. He said it was called "Post Emotion"
It's this thing where you basically shoot a photo of someone doing their thing, like a person cooking or even a street artist mid-work. Basically a toned out portrait. One that portrays emotion. The kind of photo you look at and say 'wow, that does show a thousand words'.
At the time, there were a couple hundred posts in the #postemotion hashtag.
Now, there's over 10,000. It caught on so quickly and in such depth.
Although he came off as one of those 'i'm older than you, i'm superior and i shoot the best photos here' vibe, I still backed his intentions.
So we shot and we shot and I got some nice feet-dangling shots (my favorite) overlooking the famous Wall Street (if you work for the government or something get out of here i hate u).
That night we ended up just shooting around the city and got some more rooftop photos. Did some whack stuff but that's not for the blogs. Teen shit. New York shit. Like i said, not for the blogs.
The next day we shot and we shot and we dined in SoHo and peeped a bit of fashion and shot some more stuff for Ohkay and then the sun went down and we rested above New York City.
One of the most meaningful moments of my life was on the roof top in the Projects that we shot that bridge shot on.
Dave and I sat there. Doing whatever you do on top of the Projects as hellicopters patroll the nights' sky in New York City. Smoke leaving our lungs and endless thoughts coming in, we let out a uniform sigh. A sigh of disposition. A sigh of realization.
In that moment, watching the world move around us, and the wind tremble, we began to realize.
Realize that in a few months our entire world would be shifted. Dave planned to move to San Francisco to study business in the Entrepreneurship capital of the States. And for me, I was becoming a senior. Something that i had always thought about as a younger kid, when i had began to write and shoot photos. But i never thought I would have gotten to that point.
And I never thought I would spend one of my last East Coast moments with one of my best friends on the roof of the Projects in New York City.
But life brings you to mysterious depths and bounces you to locations unexplanable. It's all about the visions and the looks and how you want to be seeing your life.
Of course I could have stayed home and went to some stupid high school party. I'm sure I could have done endless dumb things in my home town. And I'm sure that Dave, in his semi-parallel universe of Conneticut could have said the same.
But we're different. We don't think like that. We want to see the world for what it is in the present, not for what it is with a hangover the next morning on some random kids' couch.
So we sat and we sat. Pondering and realizing. Connecting the dots and leaving some lines open ended. We watched as the cars passed over the bridge and the night turned lively. As it always does in a place like New York.
I shouldn't say that. There is no place like New York.
and i think that statement, well, that's what made this so important to my life.
Because as cliché as I sound,
as we watched the bustling metropolis flow through its' roots, and the veins of the city fuel themselves just as fast as they begin to drain, we felt infinite.
We learned the importance of what I had initially put on T shirts.
Start Somewhere Never Stop took hold.
It became bold. Explicit. Real.
Because we weren't those kids at that banger that night. And we weren't those kids trapped in our local town doing algorithmic weekend turn-up activities.
We learned that we deserved to be more than that.
We were put here to capture and to make of something.
And that we did.
In the moment.
In the instant.
In the frame.
Forever to admire and for life to look back on.
And as we desended from the rooftop and back to our ordinary positions in life, we knew.
We knew what it had meant to be creators. And what it meant to be visionaries.
Becuase we are those kids that people call crazy. And we are the kids who, well, i'm sure categorize as crazy.
But for that, I stand my point in society and culture. And my legacy will stand exactly for that as well.
Ohkay 2015 taught us Start Somewhere Never Stop.
