That’s one word to describe the New York lifestyle. It’s perfect for the young and ambitious – I admire the go-getter attitude and collaborative culture of the city. It does take its toll, you just don’t notice the time. Dinners at 11pm and average night’s out ending at 5am? My gosh. I spent most of the day recovering from the week’s madness – a night in Jersey, meatpacking dining, SoHo escapades amongst all the madness. Have a gander at some of my imagery from day five. Yes, I’m late again.

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Before I let you oogle over the imagery, wanted to give you a heads up on the Metro. It’s a visually unpleasant service, not at all comfy but way more efficient and reliable than the London Underground. Express trains are needed in LDN. However having a 24 hour service in this city means you’re likely to come across some bizarre people. Loud and just plain weird. Avoid eye contact at all costs, otherwise you’ll have a creep talking to you for 5 mins. Actually writing this post whilst on the N train back down to BK.

Just like previous YiNYC posts, I’ve experimented with different colours and styles of photography and post processing. Enjoy the wide-angle shots from around Meatpacking District and Broadway Lafayette.

So patriotic.

Haven’t forgotten about this feature! I’m still wearing my FuelBand like it’s some kind of religious ornament. It’s helped me keep tabs on my journey through the city – the last few days have been considerably less than the first few. Tiredness crept upon me! doesn’t help when you’re suffering from a cold/chest infection.

Thursday – Click here
Friday – Click here
Saturday – Click here

Can’t wait to get back to London and start working out again. All this soul food consumption must have taken it’s toll on my body. Vegetarian time!

Interesting social campaign link-up between Mountain Dew & Lil Wayne.

Blurred.

Majority of New Yorkers have a real bad sense of style – their shoe choices are laughable.

As I scramble through my thoughts, trying to mind map and organise the events that’ll take place for the next 10 days. Rather aptly listening to Brooklyn native Sean Carter as I patiently wait for this flight to lift off into the blue sky. Sat beside me are two friends, both you’ve probably virtually come across at one point: @Miss_Tosin of PinBoard Blog and @KolaBello, Wretch32 and Alex Clare’s keyboardist. As I embark on this Yang-less trip from the heart of London to the soul of New York; be sure to keep checking back as I’ll be posting my daily experiences from the city that never sleeps. Join me for the YiNYC series. If you’re a Y&Y reader from the big apple, hit me up at yin@yinnyang.co.uk or @niran7 – let’s chill and create. I’ll also be recording my daily….*hop on after the cut*

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Fuel points from my Nike+ FuelBand. Boom!

I’m leaving London. Going to be working across the Atlantic in NYC for a year. I wish – hol’ tight for YiNYC.

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So on Saturday was a day of two half for me. Having woke up after a deep and meaningful sleep that lasted all of 1 hour I headed down to the studio (photography studio), still intoxicated, to meet Yin. After the shoot was done I took my ass home and slept for a lil bit. Having returned to being a fully functioning human being I then took my self down to the second studio shoot of the day where I again met up with Yin. We had no business being on set really other than just to be there but it was good just to be in the presence of such talented people. Olan was busy doing his thing behind the camera creating his next Cardy Films masterpiece while Joel Baker and Monique Sian were busy looking pretty and showing off their acting skills. If you guys aren’t familiar with Joel and Monique then take a peak at our previous Eargasms post but before you do that just watch the visuals that Olan has crafted. May I just add that this was shot on Saturday, his turnaround is crazy I don’t know how he does it.

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YIN: I’m here, alive and well. You think I’m going to go on set without my camera? Please. It was another opportunity to play with my camera and see what I can do indoors. Especially since there is lighting involved – I’m a big fan of natural lighting, absolutely despise of the overly commercial ‘shiny reflective’ skin look that many people yearn for. To me, it’s like the autotune of photography but that’s just my opinion. I want to be able to make studio lighting look as natural as possible, will take practice! Here’s a few behind-the-scenes photographs, including a few funny ones. Poor Joel, he almost got Chris Brown’d by Monique.

And the cover for DJB & Joel’s upcoming single – Changing Room (Drake Cover)

So last night, a few of us ventured down to Nike‘s Make It Count exhibition launch in Shoreditch. As you’ve probably realised already, I’m pretty fond of this campaign. So much so that I wrote an essay of a post dissecting each of W+K‘s media channels used for the campaign. You can read it here, if I had the time; I’d have loved to dissect the sociological aspects for using such inspire and motivate methods to grab people’s attention. That would require a hell of a lot research as it’s something that I know very little about. Sigh, I’ve blabbed on. The event was a private viewing of the exhibition space with the photographer Adam Hinton showcasing the Nike athlete portraiture for the campaign. More on the reverse.

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As always with a campaign launch, half the speaking was industry talk between the agency and representatives that worked together to create this wonderful body of work from the marketing through to Adam Hinton’s photography. It’s so simple, black & white images captures of stern faced, determined individuals. No fancy photoshopping or colour grading involved.

We ended up staying there till 9pm. Got carried away catching up with the familyand meeting some new faces. Win. If you’re in the Shoreditch area, why don’t you go check out 1948 and make your own pledge?

Details on where and when below:

Arches 477 – 478 Bateman’s Row
Shoreditch
London
EC2A 3HH

Click here for opening times.

Check out my imagery from the night, nothing fancy. Desaturated them for obvious reasons and I like the grain.

Yang! @erniedoto

Word.

Eniola! @EniAlu

Tara! @Tarajane181 #dontkillme

Mr. Pure Primary. @Murry_PP

@EniAlu Miss.YOLO

The famous food instagrammer – @SuperNoodleRach

Today was one of those days where I couldn’t decide on what song to use so I decided to call on the help of Yin to help me selected one song out of a possible 4 or 5. We ended up selecting a song but since then i’ve changed my mind and have now selected this Toni Braxton classic (no not that one). Peep what Braxton song I have chosen when you read on.

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I should really place these posts within the Yin’s life section but think they’re a little too long for that page, it’d probably take around 30 seconds to scroll down the page if I did. One of the best things about being on holiday is the free time; I certainly wanted to utilise the time to do something productive so I ventured down to Richmond Park on Thursday with my good friend Leona and photographer @GeekySneaks (check out his work – here) who I was meeting for the first time in person. The wonders of virtual friendships through Twitter, I’ve met a lot of good people via social networks. Judge me if you want but social networking is the new norm. Let’s face it. Our trip to Richmond Park didn’t out the way it should have, why? You’ll have to hop on after the cut.

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We never anticipated the size of Richmond Park – it’s ginormous. We never knew where to head from Richmond station, failure to prepare on our part but God bless smartphones and the Google Maps app. It guided us to the forest, I mean park. It’s huge and by the time we got there it was 2pm. Which only really gave us 2 hours to browse around before the sunset. You know damn sure that we weren’t going to hang around for werewolves to show up, as @GeekySneaks says ‘Black guys always die in horror films’. I’m Indian but still; we don’t even make the hollywood films! *screws light bulb & pats dog*

Enjoy the images and read the captions!

The epic District line journey from East Ham to Richmond.

Thai Square, grub before epic work.

Lovely decor in this place. Scary.

Buddha?

Beautiful detailing.

Mushroom soup. I hate mushrooms.

Lunch box. Thai green curry.

Church.

Leona.

@GeekySneaks.

Gardens.

Naked trees.

Pathway too?

Squirrel #1

Squirrel #2

Close up.

Squirrel #3 – Attack of the squirrels. They wanted Leona’s squirrel hair weave.

The light.

Logs.

Runaway.

Lost?

Random bench in the middle of the woods.

‘I see dead people’

More creepy naked trees.

Olympic skier.

No snow.

‘Bicycles are prohibited in this part of the park’ Yeh kid is living life on the edge.

No deers? =(

Never-ending.

Heading home…

One thing I mentioned in my ‘Reflecting on my 2011‘ post was time and how certain sacrifices had to be made. Some of my closest childhood friends have become strangers over the past year and in that time, strangers have become close friends. However there’s one set of friends that will always be there, even if we only see each other once or twice a year – it’ll always be fun: filled with jokes and laughter. Sounds cheesier than a disney film, but it’s true. What we usually do when we catch up is play FIFA/PES/COD for hours on end and consume unacceptable amounts of junk food. Now that we’re all somewhat grown, I suggested we should do something different; so we ended up at Stonehenge.

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Stonehenge – Website | Wiki

Although our paths and interests are somewhat different, there’s always something to talk about and reminisce on. That’s not the case with some of my other friends, our goals/dreams are so different that there isn’t much to say. The awkward silences in between short conversations full of umm’s and ahh’s. Uncomfortable. It’s sad to see a friendship turn this way but there isn’t really anything that we can do when circumstances/people change, other than to appreciate the good times that we had. Okay enough self reflecting!

Why Stonehenge? Um. No idea, my friend Roy picked it. It’s a common preconception that the Stonehenge is one of the world’s seven wonders but it’s not! however it is a listed UNESCO world heritage site. No one really knows who built it, archaeologists think it was some form of ancient burial site, but who really knows?!

‘Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many aspects of Stonehenge remain subject to debate’

Many believe it was built for supernatural purposes. I felt nothing there with my Krypton-inherited blood. Check out my images below, these are probably my best landscape shots since Rome. I’ve added a little soundtrack for your picture viewing, Temper Trap seemed apt with the sunset and all.

Stonehenge over. Time for our first meal of the day at 4pm.

At this point, the camera had to be put away as I savagely destroyed that piece of chicken. BEAST MODE. The end.

We’re a family. Not just a bunch of WordPress nerds who sit behind a mac all day blogging away – we actually do meet up once in a while. Honestly, the family is so diverse, we have developers, designers, writers, critics, music aficionados, marketing execs and more. What brings us together? Our love for London and it’s booming creative culture. It’s been a glorious year, bring on 2012 already – time to up the game with the relaunch. New content coming your way! Hope on after the cut to peep a few hilarious photographs of the family.

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Best part of meeting up with the family? The talks, seriously, the topics that arise up in our meetings need to be filmed. The discussions, mixed opinions and the debates sparked from them = amazing. Who knows, maybe I’ll start filming them in 2012…

P.S. Tis a shame I’m not any of the photographs. However it’s my fault for not letting anyone else hold my new camera.

Don’t kill me. Caught DJB off guard. Look at that rage!

Amon looks like he’s praying!

Sorry for the inconvenience, I know you missed our constant updates on the world of fashion, music and art. First of all, noticed any changes? If not clear your cache, voila. Welcome to Y&Y v 2.0. We started the site over 2 years ago and the journey from a blog started by 2 university kids about all things ‘cool’ to a website that offers daily inspiration for London’s flourishing creative scene. Although the old design was still loved by many for its simplicity and constantly complimented, we felt it was time for a change in order to grow. As always I’m sure a few readers will prefer the old design but change is good, give it a week and you’ll love this layout.

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So where to begin? Well start of by having a browse through all the pages. The site took me over 2 months to design – 2000+ layers, 15 psds, few hundred images and a few litres of caffeine. I can’t say how pleased I am to see it finally go live, much props have to be given to Kuba. The 18 year old developer from Poland who’s responsible for taking the site from a flat design state to what you see now. Skills.

Guess I should start off with the main page. The core of this page is still essentially the same, I didn’t want to compromise the simple navigation that many enjoy browsing. It’s the foundation of the site and that is still there. We’ve added a header which includes a features carousel, LDN.365, iPhone app (soon come!) and a what’s on guide. As a site all about London culture with a team full of eclectic minds living in the city – it was only right to create a weekly guide.

I’m not going to break down each and every page, most of them are pretty easy to guess what they’re on about. Some of the main new additions to the site  include the features section where we can showcase all the original content we produce, a lot of this was previously featured under ‘reviews‘ on the old site. We’ve got a whole bunch of content to release – starting with our christmas gift guide for men.

Another one of the main new features is the opportunities page where we’ll be listing across all the different internships and jobs that we come across. As a group of working individuals in the media industry – this is a daily occurrence, sharing is caring.

There’s also a few other sections that we’ll reveal in the next few days. Till then hold tight, enjoy the updates! Let us know if you spot any bugs and errors on the site but if you’re using IE7 or 8 then don’t bother. We won’t fix it. Upgrade your browser -> Firefox & Chrome. Thanks for all the support so far, greatly appreciated. Keep on reading folks! :)