A still from a Brooklyn Bridge time lapse during a 2014 fashion shoot.
I'm not a city fan, but NYC definitely leaves you in awe.
This city is rough. It's crowded. It's loud. You'll never get good audio on the streets doing interviews and everyone always wants a piece of the action. You have to have permits and special permission from EVERYONE. The city. The store owners, the homeless guy in front of the subway station you're shooting at. Literally everyone has a stake in your finished film. The companies I worked for never wanted to get these special permits so it was always run and gun. This included never getting to use a tripod or a stabilizer because that meant "Professional" which equaled shooting permit required. As soon as a tripod leg hit the floor at Grand Central Station, the police were onto me. Same thing throughout Lower Manhattan and in Brooklyn shooting the Brooklyn Bridge. It's frustrating but part of the game. I shot this Soho fashion partnership between OtterBox and Christine Bibbo Herr a few years back and it actually worked out fairly well. Luckily Christine had permission and special connections with a lot of the business we featured in this spot which helped a ton.
On average, I was traveling to NYC two times a year and I felt like I was getting to really know the city better and better each time. Being from Idaho, it's easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated, and each day I'd return to my hotel exhausted yet energized. The city had a strange way of doing that to me.
There were no bed bugs in this classy hotel since the accommodations in Soho are top notch.
My last trip to New York was to shoot the OtterBox around the world spot known as "Pass it On" where we sent a cell phone around the globe and shot it in different environments with different folks. This was my favorite shoot since we were working with the talented Thai chef known as Chef Bao Bao. Bao Bao was incredibly down-to-earth and very humble. Her story was one of searching out the American dream which was very inspiring. I ran the 2nd unit on this particular shoot and we ended up with a great piece shot by director/dp Adam Bove, and edited and produced by the awesome production company known as "Friends of Mine." Love that name.