New York In Black And White

I have visited New York a number of times now but I still remember my first visit and how I fell in LOVE with this city. Although the reasons for travel have been  many including friends, work or even a travel pit stop or change of flights. I remember this one time when I had two days to myself just to wander around. There was no agenda, no meetings or anything and it was just me strolling the streets with my camera and clicking away. Most of the times I prefer doing non touristy things (unless it’s something very famous and worth seeing) and explore the streets of the city. So, I decided to do a little experiment and capture the city of New York in Black and White. Why, you ask? well follow along and I’ll tell you!
I did not have a blog at the time so I haven’t posted these pics before. But just the other day I was going through my photo archives when I came across them. And thought I had to share them with you guys and tell y’all about my experience.

New York is an extremely busy city with all sorts of noises, traffic, people, buildings, graffiti, street artist, restaurants, billboards etc. Sometimes when there is so much going it’s easy to miss the finer details. As humans scientifically too, we are biased towards certain colors or our eyes get attracted to certain colors and unintentionally we may miss out on our other surroundings. This happens to me a lot, I’m attracted to pinks, reds and yellows and all shades of these colors before I even notice anything else. There is an exercise you could do with your phones to find out what you are attracted to. Just choose a random street and click lots of pictures of what you think are most attractive. Come home and print them out. You will definitely find a pattern.  Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong in being attracted to certain colors. That’s how we all are wired I guess. But when you remove the color and start seeing things in monochrome, that’s when the eyes are not biased and you start noticing shapes and structures, contrasts and brightness. I wanted to see this beautiful city with a completely new outlook. And did I succeed? you bet!

I fell in love with the architecture, stone skyscrapers and level of detail with which they were designed. The carvings on the stone, the fountain at central park, the bridges, the juxtaposition of old and new, the shiny big windows of retail stores on fifth avenue, ah! There sooo much this city has to offer.
Of coarse and one cannot forget the all the street activity going on in NY right? The smoke from kabob stalls, food trucks on wall street, food festivals happening on the streets, the street musicians under the bridges. I clicked a pic of that pretty mime artist at a french food festival just off-Broadway.

I noticed little things like the fonts with which the names of shops and restaurants were written, the gorgeous carvings on some of the house doors, the beautiful vintage sconces and more. Amidst the hustle and bustle it’s very easy to walk by these without noticing them. I understand that most of the people there are in hurry to get to work or their homes but as a tourist it just felt nice to walk, pause, notice and take it all in and literally SEE the magnificent city which is not only a symbol of power and prosperity but also holds a strong history and showcases one of the best architectures in the world.

I love New York and will take any opportunity to visit the city. The next time you travel to a new place, or even visit an already known one, try out the black and white photography experiment. I bet you will have a completely different outlook towards the city or town.