Flowers at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

It's flower power season over at the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn. Macro shots of these petals and stems are all over the internet (well, maybe just flickr) and they are impressive and intimidating to me because I can barely get a good shot with my little pink Sony camera! But also, they are inspiring. And they are the types of things that look so different when photographed than they do in real life.

More flowers here!





Check out my related guide on guidespot.com

Wildlife at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

I love the color Cherry Blossoms are famous in Japan), I know people who really like turtles, and someday I want a pet duck, so the wildlife on view at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens inside the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden are fun as can be for me!

orange Koi fish being koi

I couldn't keep up with this one!

Check out my related guide on guidespot.com

"Creeping Mint", "American Onion" and more!

I mentioned the many plant and flower species that are at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and here are some of the entertaining and unique ones that I came across.

Which one is your favorite out of the bunch?

Check out my related guide on guidespot.com

Walk the "Cherry Walk"

Last year when I visited the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, it was a cold and windy May Day. This year, in late-April, it was as warm as can be. Rather than sweater and scarf weather, it was just plain sweat weather! It was so hot that I was even tempted to lay out and get a tan in the beautiful green fields among the famous Cherry Blossom trees.

It was great to revisit this plant-filled place because I got to see some familiar sights, discover some new spots, and gain a new experience in an old place.

The crowds came out to walk the Cherry Walk in its prime - the buds and petals were plentiful on these flowering Japanese trees. This is a wonderful place to visit with friends and family, from the hundreds of plant and flower species to the wildlife and of course, the cherry trees!

Check out my related guide on guidespot.com

At The Whitney

You would be much obliged to take yourself to The Whitney Museum of American Art on a Friday night—if you knew how much it costs!

Friday nights from 6-9 pm the museum allows you to "pay as you wish", and I'll admit, I didn't go as low as just $1 like most people did! I asked the cashier if pictures were allowed in the galleries, and sadly, they are not. So to make up for it, I took lots of pictures inside the lobby and outside from the street.

It was the Jenny Holzer Protect Protect exhibit that drew me to the museum but it was the Whitney's 5th floor permanent collection with works by artists like Edward Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Georgia O'Keefe, Jackson Pollack and Andrew Wyeth that made my night. I love these artists, their mediums and the movements they participated—or chose not to participate—in.

I could go on and on...

The exterior of the museum. Very modern and striking
among the fancy Madison Avenue shops!

inside the lobby

Walking up Madison Avenue

I remember three summers ago when I walked up Madison Avenue to the Guggenheim Museum and I took tons of pictures of the sky and buildings, and where they both meet. It was a long and inspiring walk, and so was the one I took last Friday afternoon up to the Whitney Museum of American Art on 75th Street. 

Madison Avenue is a narrow passage through the mid-east side of Manhattan, with buses and cars heading north and leaving the little people like me in the dust. 

It was nice to see all of the fancy stores like Carolina Herrara, Gucci, Prada, Juicy Couture and Oscar de la Renta. So nice. I can see it now, me shopping at these places in about 50 years, ha ha. 

Bottom line, Madison Avenue is a magical, miraculous avenue—because it would take either magic or a miracle for just anyone (and most everyone) to be able to purchase something along this pricey stretch, much less fit in...

The Fred Leighton store on 65th & Madison, 

right up the block from Chat Noir

In front of the Dolce & Gabbana store on 69th Street 

where they were doing a photoshoot on the corner!

"April showers bring May flowers"...

Hello Spring! Now, it is May, please stop being cold every other day : )

Please.

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Fellow Bloggers and avid NYC photographers, I have learned something: There are far more beautiful brownstones in Brooklyn than there are in Manhattan!

I came across the pointiest, curviest, brownest and beige-iest brownstones in a neighborhood called Park Slope last Sunday and I swear, it makes you want to uproot yourself from wherever you live and move on down to the Slope!

It was a colorful, clear Spring day but with the wind and weather, it felt like a brisk winter day (whatever brisk means, I dunno...).

I happened to go on a mini-road trip through Brooklyn with a friend who needed to stop by a restaurant in Bayrdidge where she left her credit card the night before so we stopped first in Park Slope for a little window shopping and sight-seeing. We walked along 7th Avenue (the main stretch—that and 5th Avenue), from 14th Street down to Garfield Place and over to Grand Army Plaza.

Plaza - Outside Views and Interiors too

Welcome inside The Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue and 59th Street, where wild dreams have come true (your wildest of dreams, however, may not - unless you're rich and classy)! Where Sarah Jessica Parker saw Big with his soon-to-be Bride, where Eloise bugged butlers, where McCauley Culkin outsmarted goofy-looking criminals, where Cary Grant starred in the first ever on set movie back in the late 1950's in North By Northwest, where Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway got married in the biggest chick flick ever...

...where my co-workers and I conversed and sipped champagne on Tuesday night. I wrote about our experience attending a magazine launch party inside one of The Plaza's private residences where I switched back and forth from being party-goer/wishful-socialite (yeah, right) to candid photographer, capturing outside views and interiors too.

A party at the Plaza.... is... well, there's just nothing like it! Here's to hoping we get invited to another one!

A peek inside the elevator on the south side of the lobby



A view of the ceiling inside The Palm Court

View from the 6th floor residence where the party was held

View of Bergdorf's and 5th Avenue, looking south

"Orange Cafe" as I call it!

There is an awesome, orange filled cafe on 58th Street and 3rd Avenue. It is the ING Direct cafe—where you can save your money! Well, coffee, water, muffins, etc. used to be just $1, but I went in just a few days ago and they were all up to $2. However, the quality is good and the atmosphere is the best! Orange is my favorite color and Promenade Magazine (an NYC Mag) has an article in its Spring Issue telling about the fashionable color, describing it as "the happiest color."

I posted this first picture, taken from a seat on the 2nd floor, on TwitPic and it's gotten the most views of any of the other NYC photos I've got. The orange appeal is popular!

Cool building on 5th Avenue

I don't spend much time on Madison Avenue, but thanks to my unfortunate root canal, I've been visiting an office on 46th and Madison to have a retreatment done. The whole retreatment process has been very painful, stressful and expensive. But this is a photo blog so I'll explain more about the photo than the dental misadventures of yours truly.

I took this photo on 5th Avenue from the corner of 46th Street on a rainy Wednesday—one of those rainy days where you have an umbrella that's about to break and you regret that last minute decision to not wear your rain boots or galoshes. 

It was a clear, sun-filled, poetic day, as you can see...

Lights

Here I have some street pictures, made colorful and full of light by the cars and the rain. I took these probably half a year ago or more (I'm on vacation right now so had to dig this up, lol) when I was walking around on a rainy Saturday night by myself in the Flat Iron District (around 23rd Street and 5th Avenue). Yeah, New York can make you do crazy, creepy things (like walk around by yourself in the rain. Well, actually, I was out shopping on 5th Avenue and couldn't find any cute clothes so I resorted to taking lots of pictures and videos!)





My Youtube video of the cars to Robert Miles' "Children."

Gustave Caillebotte at the Brooklyn Museum

I visited the Brooklyn Museum and zipped up to the 4th floor galleries to see Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, a permanent installation at the museum in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center's Herstory Gallery. This triangular dinner table is a FAMOUS piece of feminist art. Anyway, that's another post I believe.

Then I went on up to the 5th floor to see what I came to the museum to see, Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings From Paris to the Sea. Yes! I'm a huge Impressionism lover.

It was at this exhibit that I realized: I don't go to museums to see pictures, I go to museums to take pictures of people looking at pictures. It's always great to see the young ones educating themselves, or the elderly taking camera phone pics.

Black and White

This exhibit, on display at the Brooklyn Museum through July 5th, is a site specific work made of black masking tape that wraps around and covers the walls of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery on the 5th floor. The three mile long mural-like display took approximately 280 hours to put up on the walls and visitors could actually see the work in progress, all leading up to the finished installment on March 27th.

Within the gallery there are flowing black lines on the walls all around you. Like zebra paint. And from what I observed, both children and adults loved it!

Sun K. Kwak's Enfolding 280 Hours

Brooklyn Museum

On Saturday March 28th I went to the Brooklyn Museum in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. I'd never been before but I walked past it last year in May when I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens to see the last day of the Cherry Blossom Walk's bloom. The two venues are right across the street from each other.

I was drawn to this museum because I wanted to see Gustave Caillebotte's paintings in an exhibit that had just opened the day before on March 27th. The New York Times covered it and suggested viewing it, but I would have seen it no matter what. Caillebotte was a French Impressionist, and Impressionism is my favorite art movement of all.

It took 5 subway transfers to get me there, but it was worth it to not only see paintings by Caillebotte, but works by Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Judy Chicago, Auguste Rodin, Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley—all artists I studied throughout high school and college.

More to come on this wonderful place of art and creativity!

View from across the street on Eastern Parkway



the lawn out front

1st floor lobby, directing "Everybody" towards the exhibit halls

1st floor lobby looking out onto Eastern Parkway, with sculptures
by various artists including Auguste Rodin!