Underground Dining in NYC + LA

My friends over at Gusta.com have had some nice press lately. For a guide to underground dining in NY and LA check out these Business Insider articles: New York,  Los Angeles (and to see some of my photos :-))

Highlands Dinner Club at the Brooklyn Grange - A one acre farm on a rooftop in Queens - 7/11 -

through Gusta.com

Street Dogs of South America Project

The long forgotten members of Chile, as well as many other South American countries, are the countless stray dogs wandering the streets. As a foreigner their presence is striking. They can be seen sleeping in the middle of sidewalks, begging for food outside of grocery stores and wandering in packs through side streets.

I find these untouchable, lower class citizens fascinating and thoroughly entertaining. Although I seem to be the only one. Almost everybody else ignores them and in some cases even abuses them. A small group of people treat the dogs with love and affection and take care of tiny neighborhood groups, but this is rare. Apparently it is common for dogs to be kicked to the street once they grow up and are no longer adorable and pint-size. This obviously only perpetuates the stray dog problem in Chile, along with a number of other factors.

My very first day in Chile three years ago I noticed the number of stray dogs in the streets and since then I have been photographing them whenever I can. I have photographed well over a hundred dogs in Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina in the last three years and continue to document them as an ongoing project.

I have found that street dogs are the most well behaved dogs I have ever come across. Life on the street has taught them they need to keep in line and need to get along with everyone around them if they want to eat and get by without problems. They are free to wander around and run and jump and play with others when every they want. The dogs with owners in Chile are locked up all day and seem to go a little crazy having little to no space to exercise and no contact with any other people or dogs. They also seem to be horribly misbehaved with little to no training. They bark all day and night and jump on anything and everyone that they encounter. This isn't to say life is easy for a street dog, but they do have a level of freedom and manners that most other dogs don't have.

In upcoming posts I will recount some of the more interesting experiences I have had with these dogs. For now, here are some outtakes from photographing them:

 Antofagasta, Chile

 Antofagasta

 Antofagasta

 Guanaqueros, Chile

Guanaqueros

 Poor little guy is missing an eye. Probably from a fight.

 Guanaqueros

 Guanaqueros

To see photos from my actual photo series check out my website here: Street Dogs of South America

Random Photos

Some photos from Algarrobo, Chile:

 Reminds me of California

 South of Algarrobo

Felipe

New York is all about the People

I grew up 30 minutes from New York City, loving my fairly frequent trips in, but never understanding the depth, meaning and intrigue behind it all. When I was young, New York was a place where my family and I would eat, buy cool things, see shows and go to sporting events. So it was nothing but a place of pleasure and entertainment. It had an incredibly different environment than my suburban home of Suffern. Bigger, brighter, crazier, more people and more excitement. More everything.

Attending college at Fordham University is where my love affair with the most untamable city in the world really began. I began to explore the city on my own and with friends with common interests. It was no longer guided tours by my parents. I was going to the neighborhoods they wouldn't have taken me to. To places they didn't know existed. I began to see what the city could really offer to somebody willing to dig a little. And there is A LOT for those with the interest in going beyond the surface. And while my friends, my personal interests and my work have taken me to more places in New York than the average person, I have still only scratched the surface. I have my constantly forming impression of New York that still only encompasses 1% of what New York has to offer.

It is always crazy to think about how en route to one bar, you can pass 100 more. So many places I have walked past dozens, if not hundreds of times and I have no idea what they are like inside. There is just too much in New York that it would take insane amounts of motivation and even more time to experience it all.

It wasn't until I began traveling a lot that I realized what it was I had at home. How New York has an energy and life force all it's own. And where does it all come from? The people. Without them, New York would just be one impressive collection of concrete and steel.

New Yorkers are some of the most motivated, inspiring and creative people I have ever encountered. For the sake of this article I am referring to New Yorkers as somebody who lives in New York now. Not the standard, pretentious term of saying somebody is only a New Yorker after 10 full years of pouring blood, sweat and tears into the streets. The way that people make money and support themselves is astounding. There are entrepreneurs, self-employed creatives and unbelievable success stories around every corner.

I have photographed hundreds of apartments around New York working for Airbnb and have come across a wide variety of individuals. Seeing the homes and hearing the stories of New Yorkers from all different backgrounds has given me loads of perspective on the lives of those who keep the city running and progressing to new heights. The reasons people come to New York, the reasons people stay, the places they have come from and the things they do to make it all work. One thing I have learned is that New York truly is a place where people come to make something of themselves. To do things you can't always do everywhere else. And the number of people who actually do make something of themselves is truly inspiring. Sure, there are tons who don't make it, but at the very least they are made stronger through the process.

Behind every amazing store, innovative company and perfectly executed restaurant is a group of people that made it all happen. Somebody who had an idea and the motivation to try. And in a city with thousands and thousands of bars, restaurants, stores and entertainment venues there must be a lot of people pursuing their dreams. That in itself is inspiring. To stop and think of all the people that keep New York moving and evolving.

Living in Chile enables me to see New York in a way not possible without being so far away for longer periods of time. For myself, it is New York, but it could be any other city or town for somebody else living far from home. Living abroad offers the opportunity for invaluable life perspective and personal reflection. I am learning things about myself, people, and the world around me everyday. What does it all mean? I have no idea. But at least I'm able to think about things in a new way.

Oh, New York City...

Anybody who has spent at least several years in New York City and enjoyed it, can't help but compare it to every other city they go to. I am very guilty of this. While wandering around Santiago I can't help but draw constant comparisons, which I know isn't always fair.

I can't expect every city to have 38 Thai restaurants within 20 blocks of my apartment or hundreds of options for food at 4am. I know that not every city has entire neighborhoods dedicated to everything from Korean food to chandeliers, fabric and everything in between. Not every city has hundreds of free, top-notch entertainment options throughout the year. And it sadly isn't even a standard for all cities to have metros running 24 hours a day. Yet, after so much time living and working in NYC and growing up 30 minutes from it I have become a bit spoiled.

So, almost 4 months away and no return trip in sight, I am beginning to miss certain conveniences and luxuries more and more. Of course, in between adventures and daily life in Chile I have moments missing my family and friends, but I tend to think of NYC on a more frequent basis. Living in NYC is nothing but a love/hate relationship. It is the extreme, "THIS is life." highs, and rock bottom "I hate this fucking place with a passion" lows that make NYC so wild to live in. The city is always interesting and constantly keeps playing with your mind and emotions. I was so ready to get out of New York and live somewhere else and I still am very happy to be away, but NYC is still never far from my mind whether I want it to be or not.

That being said, here are a few images I took in my last month in New York:

Pushing through the crowds on Fifth Ave

Biking up Broadway

Occupy the heart

Highline Park overlooking the Hudson River

Classic NYC pretzel cart

The Time Warner Center

Reading the paper by Cooper Union

feeding the squirrel who would hangout outside and sometimes in, our apartment

He was harmless, funny and adorable... Oh, New York City...

New website is live!

It has been a little while since I've updated the blog, my apologies :). I've been working hard giving my website a complete makeover (in addition to searching for an apartment and work). I have launched it today in what we will call Beta mode. It's almost there but just needs some final tweaking, some rearranging of images and a few other minor details. But I wanted to get it out there and see what people thought.

My new logo, designed by Camila Meza is there as well as a couple new photo series and some new work that didn't fit into my old site. I've decided to go with Viewbook for a number of reasons. At first I was skeptical about using a site with fairly limited options for customization (there are a good amount, but I was hoping for moveable objects, text, slideshows etc). As an emerging photographer I never want to use anything generic or too similar to what other people are doing. Yet in the end I was able to create mostly what I would have wanted regardless of what platform I was using to do it. With Viewbook I was just able to do it much more easily and with no knowledge of html.

My old website was created by my friend and coworker, Chris Collins of Gusta and formerly of Airbnb. The problem was that once changing computers and moving to Chile I had difficulty catching up and reinstalling all the software necessary to update my site on a regular basis and get things flowing smoothly. I had wanted to redesign it for sometime now as well. I stumbled upon Viewbook on some random blog, did some research and discovered it offered tons of convenience and enough features to make it worth a trial at the very least.

Some features that attracted me to Viewbook:

-no html or coding necessary

-no software to install. All done on the website, from anywhere with internet

-Simple user interface with the ease of dragging and dropping

-Adobe Lightroom plug-in

-storage of up to 5,000 photos (with pro account)

-automatically resized images depending on browser size for fast uploading (more and more important with short attention spans these days)

- automatically converts to mobile site for iPad and iPhone

-downloadable images and password protected galleries for clients

-share options for a variety of social media outlets

-Fotomoto integration to easily sell images

-Video, blog and Twitter feed embedding

And of course I can use my own domain name. The sites are all visually appealing as well. So as you can see Viewbook offers quite a lot and from what I can tell they are incredibly helpful when you have any issues at all.

SO, please head over to my new SITE and take a look!