Today was one of those rare days when things kept happening right. To start off, I got to hang out with my godson Damien, who I haven't seen in a while. He just turned 13, and is handling the first week of teenage life very well.
We took him to the Bronx Zoo to meet up with my former college roommate Chris, who I haven't seen since around 1993, and who I've been looking for since then. He sort of vanished from the planet (do you know how hard it is to find someone with such a common name?) and I was really upset I lost touch with him. I started hanging out on Facebook a month or so ago, and about four days after I joined up, he friended me there.
It was really wonderful to see him, and to meet his wife and his two awesome kids. We spent the day at the Zoo, mostly noticing how very few animals there are and how far it is between them. Really, one tiger in the pavilion. Yawn. Oh look some bison. Yawn.
Even the muti-gazilion TV-show and movie inspired Madagasgar area had just a few animals. As usual at the Zoo, I enjoyed the bats and the butterflies the best, and was amused by how many pea fowl there are wandering the zoo. Mostly the fun was hanging out with kids and friends at the zoo.
Speaking of Tigers, while over at the tiger pavilion, Chris pointed out that a couple had just gotten engaged that very moment and so I stopped photographing the bored-looking tigers and started shooting the excited-looking couple, which is soft of cool because really how often do people get engaged in front of a photographer with a few grand in pro photo gear?
The only bad part of the day was that the zoo exhibits seemed even less inspiring than I had remembered, and even farther apart. A good portion of our day was spent looking into cages with no animals, then walking to more cages with no animals.
Lots of time spent over at the butterfly pavilion, which is perhaps my favorite place on earth. If I were doing the engagement thing at the Zoo, I think I'd do it there. Butterflies are astounding close-up, and I brought along a lot of my macro gear to shoot them. 
Back home and Abby and I weren't in the mood to cook at home or order in, so we hopped in OpenTable and found a last-minute reservation at X20. If you haven't been there, go. Really. It's one of Peter Kelly's restaurants (Freelance, Xaviers...) and Peter is one of my champs for beating the obnoxious Bobby Flay on Iron Chef. The food is sublime, the views of both the TZ Bridge and the George are fantastic and the service is top notch. Get the red velvet cake for desert. Really, I don't care if you're full, get it.
We were also lucky enough to run into Keila's friend James there (he's the wine master? What's his title there K?) while we were sitting at the bar, and he had an amuse sent over to us on the house when we were seated. How great is that? An upscale shrimp toast with lobster bisque.
After stuffing ourselves obnoxiously on food and wine and desert, Abby and I rolled home and since she was wearing an incredibly chic late-50's inspired outfit, I set up the lights and backdrop and started to photograph her. Some really great images, including these:
First let me say that I was very jealous when I saw you post on FB that you were going to X20
Second, James is actually the GM at X20 but I guess since he's been working in restaurants for so long, he also knows his wine...did you know he used to be a Captain at Gotham?
Posted by: KBP | October 06, 2008 at 03:33 PM