As much as I have the travel bug to go anywhere and everywhere, I just can't stop coming back to NYC. This particular trip is a solo affair, focusing on honing my creative eye to further clarify my visual voice. Once I arrived in Midtown, I grabbed my Vivitar and set off in search of food and photos. While the emphasis of our February visit was to try any and all foods, this time I simply grabbed a sandwich and coffee at the Cambodian restaurant Num Pang Kitchen (talk about tasty!) and hit the streets again. This won't be a long blog post because in all honesty, I didn't really DO anything other than take photos, but I'm totally ok with that.

After lunch, I walked around searching for the best moments with no set destination in mind. For years I've wanted to become a bolder street photographer, not simply documenting scenes as I see them but capturing portraits of people I find interesting, that I may tell a piece of their story. Today, at long last, I worked up the courage to start asking random strangers on the street if I could make their photo - and every single person said yes! They're all on film so I won't know until I get home whether they came out, but the experience itself was just as valuable.

The other objective of this trip was to schedule several sessions to continue building my travel portfolio. Thanks to the ever-wonderful Girls Love Travel Facebook group, I got to meet up with Denise for a solo portrait session around Grand Central Terminal. We spent an hour playing with lights and motion, jumping in and out of traffic on 5th Ave for the perfect steam shot and getting to know each other. By the end of the session, we were already talking about hanging out and taking portraits for her family next time I'm in the city; sometimes the internet is a helpful place!

After our session, I walked the mile back to my hotel (with a couple wrong turns since I wasn't using GPS) photographing the evening, then grabbed some food cart food (a lamb gyro AND a hotdog since I walked nine miles!) before turning in to watch movies. Oh, and I almost forgot the serendipitous walk past a Zagat-praised macaroon shop where I definitely indulged myself. All-in-all today was good for both my creativity and my soul (really, they're on and the same.) More stories to come this weekend!