Earlier this year I started using Instagram just to see what all the fuss was about. A few weeks later, I was seeing the world through a whole different lens. There is something so awesome about the simple social validation that comes from a couple likes and comments on your photos and allowing people to see the world through your eyes (with some cool filters.)

Then, while sitting at the Formula One track in Valencia Spain, John O’Nolan rocked my world when he told me to check out Camera+ app for cleaning up pics ever further. I did and have been getting even more amazing feedback on my photos across all of the places that I have been sharing them on the interwebs.

So, to answer the some what frequent question I’ve been getting of “How are you making your pictures look like that?” I thought I’d share a couple quick tips for using Camera+

1) Take the pictures with your normal camera app and then upload them into Camera+. For me this allows me to easily flip through the originals and take pictures faster as things are happening.

2) Upload your favorite pic to Camera+ and hit “edit.”

3) Immediately add “Clarity” to the picture. This will pull out the true colors and even out the bright and dark spots.

4) Have fun with the filters and make sure to toggle the intensity.

As an example, here is one of my favorite pictures of my neighborhood park on a summer day:

And here it is with a little bit of love from Camera+:

Hope this helps explain some of my current obsessions and gives you a clue into the fun that I am having with my iPhone4.

If that helps, post a link in the comments to your favorite pics that you take, would love to see them.Tweet

Last week Annie and I were in the Hamptons for her birthday and discovered some of the best Mexican Food that we’ve had in New York. The Hideaway in Montauk is aptly name and only determined foodies will find it on their first try. But the Black Bean Mango Salsa is a great reward for those that do.

Tweet

Last night, Annie and I went out with one of our favorite couples to The Smith in the East Village.  Our dinner conversation ranged from the insanity of extended families to politics to Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting (happy little trees!) The discussion also turned to the lists that we all wrote down as kids about what we wanted out of life when we grew up. We all recounted the categories and the hilarity of the details that we went into when describing our expectations of the future.   My favorite was the description of the perfect husband though the eyes of a 17 year old: “He must be good looking (if at all possible) and not go bald.”

This morning, still relishing in the glow of the great dinner (think beer battered green beans, bacon wrapped apricots, and a culinary piece of perfection:”Stout Braised Beef Short Ribs.”), I got to thinking: when do we stop writing down what we want out of life with the expectation that it is still something that can and should happen? When do our lists have more to do with this week’s to-dos and less to do with the biggest ideas that we can imagine? When did the lists we make change from our dreams and goals to a detailed account of this week’s groceries and bills that need to be paid?

My favorite book in the world is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Early on in the book main character, a young boy name Santiago, meets a wise king. The king exhorts the young boy to not believe the world’s greatest lie:

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. The King responded, “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

At a certain point we all run into a brick wall on our way to achieving what we committed ourselves to when we had the innocence of a child. That brick wall, the first failure or set back of our adult life, is the end of their pursuit of the much larger vision they envisioned for themselves before the toils and responsibilities of “growing up” were upon them. That first roadblock is enough of a disappointment for the majority to stop, slow down, and put away their childhood lists. It is enough to convince them to believe the world’s greatest lie.

But for others, like Santiago in The Alchemist, it is just the beginning of an incredible adventure up, over, around, or through that wall.  It is hitting that wall, and the next, and the next, that strengthens our resolve to go through this life with a resolve that we were made for the things of our dreams and the only thing standing between us and the life we’ve imagined is our own cowardice and willingness to turn our backs on the dreams of our youth.Tweet

When Annie and I landed at LaGuardia this morning, we must have pulled the winning lottery ticket and actually had our luggage come out within 3 minutes of arriving at the baggage claim. Our good fortune continued when we hopped in the back of the next taxi queued up and asked our driver to take us home.

When he found out that we’d just come back from a weekend in Texas seeing my family, he asked what we thought about Rick Perry running for President. We talked a little further as he zipped in and out of traffic on the FDR and found out that his son is a Spine Surgeon having finished up at Cornell Medical School and his daughter is a banker in Midtown having completed her degree at NYU Stern.

Our cabbie was 62 years old and moved to New Jersey 45 years ago after leaving Hungary as a young man. He waited in Italy for over 2 years to get his visa approved before arriving in New York and starting a new life in America. He met and married his wife of 35+ years and worked 7 days a week to put food on the table for his young family. He started driving cabs on the weekends to make some extra money and then realized he could own his own business. He took all the money they had in the entire world and took out a loan to buy an NYC Taxi Medallion. When he bought the Medallion, it cost him $27,000. He eventually bought two more and had a small taxi company of his own. This past December, he decided that he wanted to sell his business and only drive a couple days a week for a friend. He sold each of his Medallions for $910,000 and is now sitting on $2,700,000 deciding what he wants to do next.

He said something that really stuck with me: “Back then, everyone knew that if you work really hard to become really good at what you did, you could make a life for you and your family. You might not have everything, but with enough hard work, you could be happy. And I guess you could say that worked out for me.”

That is the kind of country I want to live in. That is the kind of truth I want to share when I’m in my 60s.

That is the reason I love talking to NYC Cabbies.Tweet

Since the day she was born, my sister Katie has been the first to do a lot of things. The first in our family to get a tattoo. The first to skydive. The first to give up her Thanksgiving holiday to serve people in India. Today she’s begun her next first: riding her bike across New York. The whole state. In five days.

Katie first told me about her ride last year and that she had found an awesome way to do something adventurous and bring awareness to an issue that is important to her (and the world), human trafficking. There are millions of men, women, and children that are suffering the injustice of slavery and worse around the world and Katie’s heart for these mostly unknown and voiceless people group compelled her to action. When she arrives in Buffalo today, she’ll be meting up with a group of other passionate adventures from around the world and their bikes and beginning a trek across the Empire State. Each day they’ll ride as a team and each night they’ll be hosting rallies and meetings in the cities where they’ll be staying to bring awareness to the cause and share how folks can get involved and help.

To say that I am proud of my sister would be a huge understatement. She is the most selfless and authentic person that I know and I can’t wait to see her next weekend when she rides into the Big Apple.

If you want to keep track of her journey, or cheer her one, check her out on Twitter: @EllweezieTweet

When Annie snapped this photo of me, I had no idea I would love how well it turned out.

The Plaza Hotel, a chauffeured Maserati, and my Pocketsquare all in one shot? Love it.

There is still time to help with Katie and my birthday wish.  Check it out: http://bit.ly/OurBDay

Tweet

My love for Breakfast Tacos is pretty well documented.  My sadness about not being able to find many good options here in NYC is as well.  But this morning, Annie and I made our way to Locanda Verde in TriBeCa with some friends and found a brunch that made me forget all about Breakfast Tacos (for a couple hours, then the longings returned.)

The freshly made Focaccia bread was ridiculously good. We had to remind ourselves not fill up on the breadbasket and not leave room for the main event.

There were a variety of pastries on the menu and even a sampler plate in case you couldn’t decide.  Annie loves all things lemon, I love all things Rosemary, so the Lemon Rosemary Scone was the obvious choice.  And it quickly became the obvious source of jealous from our friends.

The dish that we had heard about for a long time and everyone was excited to try: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes.  They lived up to any and all expectations.  Just incredible.

Scramble eggs are often over looked.  These shouldn’t be.  Fluffy, well seasoned, with leeks: wow.

One of the best things I have ever eaten was Shrimp and Grits at Hominy Grill in Charleston, SC.  So when I saw “Scampi and Grits with Coddled Eggs’ it was a no brainer.  Not only were the spicy shrimp and finely pureed grits wonderful, the coddled eggs took them to a new level.

It was a wonderful morning with great friends.  And if you can get  a reservation, you have to go.

Tweet

I have traveled a lot with in the past couple months, but have always loved coming Home to my city, my island. There is nothing quite so refreshing as seeing the New York City skyline poking through the clouds on descent to LGA or JFK.  No matter which airport I am coming back to the city from, I want to take the outside lanes of the Williamsburg Bridge for the incredible views of the Empire State Building and the Midtown high-rises.

Annie and I are fortunate to be pretty centrally located in the heart of Manhattan, just a couple blocks from Washington Square Park. Of all the things that I have come to love about living in New York, one of my favorite is that we can travel half way around the world by walking less than 10 blocks.  If we walk East, we can end up in Rome or Shanghai or Kiev 15 minutes later.  If we walk West, we’ll stumble upon memories of London and Paris. If we walk North or South, we might find ourselves in Milan or perhaps Buenos Aires.

In a recent article in the New York Times, the author recounts their experience in living around the world and the way in which New York captures the best of the best. One line that truly rang true for me was the description of New York as “a city more at home in the world than in its home country.” With more and more access and understanding of the world and its cultures seen now from the global stage of the digital age, the knowledge of what goes on around the world is available for all to see.  But, it has been a special experience to see and experience glimpses of those cultures on a daily basis on my 7 block walking commute to my office.

One of my favorite parts of the digital world that we are living in currently is the ability to communicate and work from just about anywhere in the world as long as you have wifi and an international cell phone.  Just in the past few months I have traveled over 29,000 miles through 3 countries and across 2 continents. And, hopefully, most folks on the other end of some recent email and business negotiations were never the wiser.  In a Vanity Fair article this August, the author describe Angelina Jolie as “a high end nomad… beyond petty nationalism.” I believe that as more and more advances in communication and technology become mainstream, more and more people will choose the life style of a global citizen in pursuit of thicker passports.

As Annie and I continue to chase down the big idea of being geographically independent, there are countless talking points that we thread throughout a multicultural walk through our New York neighborhood. But one thing is for sure, there is no place that we would rather have as our base of operations and the place that we call Home.Tweet

I reserve my political and religious rants for those that I have an established rapport with and in settings that are conducive to conversation and respectful debate.  Usually.  But, this is a rant on a subject that hits too close to home for me, both in geography and in ideology, to wait for that kind of setting.

There is a group of Americans, New Yorkers, that purchased a building in Lower Manhattan over a year ago.  The building has been vacant for years and sold for an amazingly low price.  It is in a very slow part of the city without much action.  You have to be intentionally walking down that side street to even see the building.  These Americans want to renovate the building and make it a good spot for the neighborhood and a place that can revitalize this old building and this slow block in the city.

But, these Americans are Muslims.

So therefore it is an issue.

The absolute travesty of the “debate around the Ground Zero Mosque” is we even need to have this ‘debate.’ The fact that there are other Americans that feel that this is a contentious subject of conversation makes me extremely sad and extremely angry.  Sad that this isn’t an announcement in the local paper but a debate that the citizens of the freest country in the world feel the need to have.  Angry at the misinformation and sheep-like behavior of its opponents who obviously haven’t spent any time looking at the facts of the situation. The intentional ignorance and suspicions espoused by those saying that these Americans shouldn’t have the same rights as any other American based on their faith is ludicrous.

The Park51 project is going to be a community center run by one of the most publically moderate iman’s in the world.   Since the horrific acts of September 11, 2001, Mr. Abdul Rauf has decried the extremists in Al Qaeda and has been one of their most vocal opponents in the Muslim world.  The community center that will be housed at Park51 will be open to men and women, will have basketball courts and a cooking institute, and will also be a meeting place for the leaders of several interfaith communities that Mr. Abdul Rauf has been a leader of for years.

If could be said, that for those reasons, women and non-Muslims being allowed inside, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich share the same perspective on the project as Osama bin Laden.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was spot on when he spoke to the issue in early August: “If we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.”

The best perspective I’ve heard on this ridiculousness of this controversy comes from the media personality I dislike more than any other.  But, on this subject, and perhaps only this subject, Keith Olbermann and I agree. (Seriously, I really dislike this guy, but this is worth taking the 12 minutes to watch)

But, as a skeptic of the media in general, I went down to Park51 this weekend to see what all the fuss was about. What I found was what I had hoped (and known) I would find: New Yorkers of all walks of life going about their day to day, enjoying the freedom that we all have here in America.  The freedom that was, is, and always will be worth fighting for.

Freedom of Religion from Andy Ellwood on Vimeo.Tweet

Today is a day of celebration.  Today is the day that I found a grocery store in New York that carries REAL salsa, not “that stuff made in New York City!”  There is a big difference. (Classic Pace Picante commercial) Even if the jar was on the bottom shelf underneath all the other “mexican sauces,” there is just something right about eating salsa made in Texas.

But, that said, the hunt still continues to find really good Tex-Mex in NYC.  There are a couple contenders (Mole, Zarela, and La Esquina) but no true victor.Tweet