New York has a way of waking you up before you’re ready. I drove in the city with just enough time to get my bearings, grab a coffee that could strip paint off a wall, and figure out how I was going to cover the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade without freezing my fingers off.
This wasn’t just any shoot. For this trip, I brought the ZEISS Distagon T* 28mm f/2 ZE—not some vintage diva, but a modern manual-focus prime with its own personality. It talks to the EOS-1D Mark IV just enough to confirm when you’ve nailed focus, but the rest of the work? That’s on you.
I won’t lie—some shots were missed. That’s the cost of manual focus in real time. But the ones that hit? They hit hard—crisp, bold, full of the kind of life only New York can deliver.
The weather tried its best to be miserable. Cold enough that my breath looked like smoke signals, but the sun—God bless that sun—kept drifting between the buildings, warming just enough of my face to keep me going. It also gave me the kind of light photographers dream about: crisp, golden, directional. Like New York knew I needed a little help and decided to show up for me.
But the real heartbeat of the day? The people.
The city gets a bad reputation for being cold, impatient, always a seconds away from honking at you. But on this day, everyone transforms. You could feel the happiness hanging in the air like static. Folks were excited—really excited—to be on camera. Kids waving at the floats like they were watching magic in real time. Performers dancing as if they couldn’t even feel the temperature. Even the cops, usually carved from granite, cracked smiles.
By the end of it all, I had fired off over 1,200 shots. My arm was done—sore, numb, and I was questioning every life choice that brought me to that sidewalk—but it was worth every frame.
Traveling to New York, freezing on a curb, wrangling a manual Zeiss lens with a mind of its own… that’s the kind of chaos I live for. The kind that reminds you why you pick up a camera in the first place. Not for perfection—not even close. But for the moments where everything lines up for just a second and you get to bottle a piece of the world exactly as it is.
And the Macy’s Parade? It gave me plenty to bottle.
