Shades of New York
Monochrome photography shot in New York City end of April / beginning of May 2018.
New York in Winter
If you travel to New York in April, you notice that it’s still much colder there than in Europe. There was a significant blizzard right before we arrived in 2018 (the last one in the season), and the mood in the city was rather grim. However it’s not a wrong time to visit the city as it was not as packed as I usually imagine it to be. There were some quiet moments to have, even in busy Manhattan. It is time to look around and observe the last moments of winter right before the dawn of spring.
A Day in Washington D.C.
Being in Washington, D.C., in 2018, you feel the turmoil on the streets. There are lively discussions between strangers about the country and its future. Very often, there are tourists from within America, many of them from conservative states, and primarily liberal and black locals. It’s a political town and one that tries to encapsulate the rich American history within walking distance. It feels like an open-air museum sometimes, but there are different parts of the city, of course. Like the American society itself, DC is hard to grapple with and can mean different things to different people. The city is fascinating for sure and worth a visit.
Azulejos of Portugal: 2019 Edition
2015, I put up a series about Portuguese tile art on this website. The article is still one of the most clicked on here. A couple of years later, I want to start the year by coming back to the topic and showing more of these magnificent Azulejos, as they are called. This time, though, they are not as clean and shiny; they are more washed out, sprayed, beaten, and rusty. They tell stories of everyday life in Portugal, how nature blends in with them, and how street artists use them as canvas.
Capri in Myst
Capri in the Bay of Naples is also known for being the island of the sun. Because of its natural beauty and the favourable weather conditions already Roman emperors used to come to Capri to spend their summers on the island. But even the most sunny island in the world can have a bad weather day, of course, and that’s what happened when I visited the place in 2018. You don’t see Capri very often in myst, and even in poor weather conditions, the island proved to be immensely beautiful.
A Journey to the Gulf of Naples
Naples, located at the Vesuvius volcano, and its surroundings were praised by many travelers throughout history. A famous saying states: “See Naples and die!”. The German poet Goethe famously expressed it would be beautiful “even if a few more Vesuviuses were to rise in the neighborhood.” Picturesque is also the coast of Amalfi close by and the island of Capri. The magic happens in the evening, though, when the sun is setting in and the sky turns red, the Gulf of Naples being one of my favorite spots in the world for sunsets.
Michael Hoffman Photography 