Author Archives: antitouristtraveler

Macro(ish) Photography of Springtime

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New York State (or parts of it, at least) is finally in bloom! After a pretty long, hard winter, the buds on the trees and the small wildflowers have finally blossomed. The sun is out, the rain has doth stopped, and the weather is finally nice for biking, hiking, and more! I decided to take a few photos of the blooms happening here in the Hudson Valley this weekend, so here are a few photos from 3 days’ worth of hiking.

Oh, and everything photographed is from the wild woods–no garden plants here!

(1) Scouring Rush bud (Equisetum hyemale)…looks like inverted blueberries, but that bud is just a 1/2″ tall.

(2) Baby ferns.

(3) A tiny flower looking up to the sun.

(4) An ant goes about its business.

(5) This is a bullfrog tadpole that was fine and dandy, but since I rarely edit my photos and wanted to do something different, I turned on the gamma. Looks like outer space, right?

(6) Waterfall foam making shapes in the river.

(7) Up close and personal with snake scales (and a clover mite) from a Shovel-Nosed Snake (Chionactis).

(8) Stinking Benjamin (Trillium Erectum), which actually didn’t smell bad at all.

View the rest of my weekend photos on my Flickr account, and enjoy the beautiful weather!

 

 

 

 

The Case for L.A.: Food, Fun, and…More Food

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My brother and I were recently in L.A. for meetings concerning his comedic web series, Concierge. Actually, he was there for meetings; I was just his unpaid, lowly chauffeur.

Before heading out to the west coast together, we knew how important it was to plan a food route, and not surprisingly, food became the main focus of the trips. We ate, ate some more, hiked, ate, went to meetings, and ate. Makes sense, right?

L.A. gets a pretty bad rap. Sure, there’s tons of smog, there are traffic jams, it takes forever to get anywhere, and people can’t seem to talk about much besides movies and tv. And everyone is from New York, anyhow. But outside of those complaints and the omnipresent plastic surgery, there’s a wonderful place. Most people who visit see the tourist spots, and frankly, if I only visited Times Square and Little Italy, I’d hate New York, too. But we did something simple: We avoided all the tourist spots. In fact, we didn’t see a single tourist our entire visit! Instead, we did what I always do on trips: Introduced locals to food and places they didn’t even know existed. We have quite a few friends there, but only a handful of the people we met up with had ever been to the nosheries we found. Together and/or with friends, we went to Sapp Coffee Shop, sketchy 24-hour burrito joints that were delicious (including Los Tacos), Surati Farsan Mart for Petish and more (it’s food, not a porn store…geez!), The Griddle Cafe, the Guppy Teahouse, Scarpetta, and much, much more. I loved hiking in the canyons, getting our backstage tour at the aquarium, fixing our flat tire in Beverly Hills, and more. Plus, the fact that there are vast national parks, waterfalls, climbing opportunities, beaches, and so much more for the outdoorsy person makes this metropolis a real pleasure to explore. In New York, one feels much more “stuck.” Honestly, I wouldn’t mind living in L.A. at some point. People are just too hard on a place that few have actually explored! Everyone was just so nice, which was perhaps most shocking of all. I surprised myself, because I was completely prepared to hate L.A. I ended up quite pleased indeed.

These are just a few of the photos from L.A., and they were taken on my brother’s Canon SD1400 IS–a nice, nifty little gadget. See my Flickr account for a more in-depth look at our rapid weight gain trip.

I can’t wait to visit again!

Flickr Pro Account Up and Running

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Did you notice that I now have the Flickr symbol linked to the right? Neither did I, and perhaps that’s because it’s as ridiculously tiny as a favicon.

Anyhow, for those of you who want to view my travel photos (but don’t want to scroll through every post), you can now simply click that tab, or, for those who are hard of sight, just click my link:

http://bit.ly/jgxKkq

Enjoy, and check in frequently for new photo updates!

Back from the Days of Food Network

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I worked for the Food Network for several years, most of the time on assignment as a researcher/casting consultant on Throwdown With Bobby Flay. Because it was a surprise show, I wasn’t really supposed to be shown on television. The other night, however two friends messaged me, “Coop, we thought we saw you on Throwdown, and then in the next scene, we realized it was definitely you!” The editors had a running joke that they’d sneak me into almost every show they could, and I think I was shown on about five of them. Below is a separate project I worked on with Bobby Flay (I did scouting and casting for this one). Knowing I love to be in front of the camera, my producers often scheduled days for me to be on-set of non-Throwdown shows so I could be interviewed and chat up the audience. I’ll take it! Here’s one such clip:

(Scroll to 3:09)