We took a Lyft into downtown New York to shoot the financial district. Literally the second I popped out of the Uber, I saw this perfect scene with the cloud centered right on top. I had to quickly get my settings right to snap the photo even before I was fully out of the car! I’m sure the driver thought I was some lame tourist… and, well, I guess I am! I’m okay with that.

Freedom Tower

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2019-09-22 22:39:12
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/400
• Aperture9
• ISO250
• Focal Length24.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

If you make it to this city, don’t miss this spot! They didn’t let me take a tripod in there, so I had to get pretty inventive when it came to securing the camera. Sometimes I would just jam it up against one of the columns… and that’s what I did here! The only way I could get it stable was in this off-center way, but decided it looked pretty cool!

The Ancient Roman Cistern under Istanbul

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2016-10-02 22:32:24
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time13
• Aperture4
• ISO800
• Focal Length11.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

I only had 48 hours there, so I did my best to make the most of it. One great thing about the city is there are several rooftop restaurants, so it’s always easy to get multiple views of the Hagia Sophia. I knew a lot about the Hagia Sophia ahead of time thanks to how many times I had built it while playing Civilization!

Exploring Istanbul

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2016-10-02 18:33:39
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/1000
• Aperture6.3
• ISO200
• Focal Length115.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias+0.3

I slept inside one of these old farmhouses for a few nights. They look very cozy, don’t they? Well, let me assure you… they were absolutely freezing! The only warm room was the dining room in the middle where they made my dinner, but when I went back to my little room, it was way below freezing. I had about 30 seconds to get onto my futon under a blanket before I froze to death. The worst thing was waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, which was quite a long way away!

Snowy Fantasyland in Japan

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2019-02-14 20:57:40
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/320
• Aperture7.1
• ISO200
• Focal Length26.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

I was so surprised to walk into this cathedral at night and see this! They were showing images from deep space and playing all this crazy minimalist music… something like Phillip Glass. I sat in here for about half an hour just kind of staring at this giant movie screen. It’s definitely one of my best church experiences! 🙂

Inside the Cologne Cathedral

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2016-09-24 04:53:53
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/160
• Aperture
• ISO12800
• Focal Length
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias-0.7

Haha… I usually don’t take photos like this… it’s quite hyper-sexualized, if you didn’t notice. I’m actually friends with her and I took photos of her and Hans Zimmer and the rest of the band at two of their concerts. I wasn’t so sure about sharing THIS particular photo. I liked it a lot… but, well you know how people can be super-judgy. I didn’t care about them – mostly Tina. Well, it turned out that she LOVED it and re-shared it on her account. So, that made me feel a lot better and a bit silly about having so much self-doubt!

Tina Guo on Stage

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-06-09 22:26:41
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/320
• Aperture6.3
• ISO1600
• Focal Length141.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

I only had one quick day in this awesome city. I tried to make the most of it by taking as many people photos as possible. Some of these Russians had the grumpiest faces I’ve ever seen. I think they were so confused while I was taking the photos… it doesn’t seem like a hobby over there at all. I hardly saw anyone else carrying around cameras for street photography. My theory is that the older generation that lived in Communism for so long are just generally distrusting of others… especially others with cameras. But that didn’t stop me.

Happy Woman in St. Petersberg

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-06-05 11:24:24
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/8000
• Aperture
• ISO400
• Focal Length
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias-0.7

The kind of art that was in this museum was not incredibly exciting to me, but the museum itself was beautiful. This one is the easy-to-pronounce Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. You know how sometimes you’re in a city for a while and you keep saying the same word over and over again. And then, you FINALLY figure out what the word means just as soon as you leave the city? Yeah, well I saw that word “Wien” everywhere. I then felt dumb when I figured out that’s the Austrian name for Vienna.

Exploring Vienna

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-05-28 10:37:31
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1.3
• Aperture7.1
• ISO100
• Focal Length11.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias

We received an amazing invite from some friends from New Zealand to visit their apartment in New York to take some photos one evening. It was in a very unique location, and one of my favorite things about this angle is that it doesn’t even look like New York!

Passport Sunday Fun in New York

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2019-06-20 21:17:19
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time4
• Aperture2.8
• ISO100
• Focal Length29.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

I was glad I chose to spend several nights in this mountain town and jump around to a few different ryokans to stay in. All of them were very similar in that I had a very tiny little room. That’s okay. I don’t need much. But there was barely room for my bags and my body. I slept on the ground, on a futon, that was prepared for me while I was having dinner. It was so cozy to get back into my little room when it was freezing outside and curl up inside my cocoon.

Exploring Shirakawa-go

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2019-02-14 20:45:36
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/1250
• Aperture4
• ISO160
• Focal Length35.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias