Photography: American Museum of Natural History 7/24/23

Photography: American Museum of Natural History 7/24/23

Last month, I was down in Coney Island to cover the 41st Annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade. If you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of its 13-year history, you’d know that I prefer walking around and taking photos of the chaos after the parade. I’ve found it as a wonderful opportunity to take quick portraits of my fellow New Yorkers.

This year, a random burst of torrential rain hit the boardwalk. Both of my cameras became waterlogged and stopped working. I was in a panic. The next day, I was scheduled to shoot the legendary Buddy Guy at SummerStage — and I had nothing to work with. Eventually, my Canon 6D Mark II started to work again. But my Canon 77D essentially died.

Thanks to help from my mom and some scraping and scrounging, I was able to purchase a replacement for my 77D, a mirrorless Canon R6. I’ve began to shoot with it a bit, in order to get to know it.

Earlier this year week, I took my new R6 to the American Museum of Natural History. I wanted to check out the new Richard Gilder Center of the museum — and to take pictures: The Gilder Center has a really cool bug exhibit, and I spent way too much time admiring ants, who were busily collecting materials to build homes for their colony.

I went on to the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals, which was actually quite fascinating. Plus, it’s perfect for gorgeous photos. As always, photos are below.