My name is Dan Nguyen and I am a web developer and journalist in New York.
This site is a showcase for a few of the photos I've taken in the past three years. There's not much here yet.
I hope to do more coding, more writing, more thought-out design to turn it into one of those trendy Internet multi-platform story-casting spaces.
Right now, it's just photos.
Steal these photos: Use or republish (most of) my photos for free. Details...
New York winters deserve their soul-grinding reputation. But the first days of snowfall can be beautiful.
(Yes, I did help push)
These are takes from a Fashion Week casting I helped out at. There was little instruction given other than to stand and face the camera. The contrast between the similarity in facial expressions and the variety in posture and attire is fascinating to me.
The World Trade Center is just a few blocks from my workplace, so I have an overhead view of the Towers of Light
The following photographs are arranged in rough chronological order and include the three anniversaries that have passed since I came to New York in 2008, as well as two rallies: the protest against a proposed Islamic center and the celebration of Osama bin Laden's death in 2010 and 2011, respectively.
I know this is pretty cliché but I had fun trying to catch it.
Nothing too sophisticated here, I held the camera tight to my face and pretended that I could predict the next strike while periodically hammering down on the shutter.
I am a self-taught photographer whose experience consists mostly of taking pictures while on my way to work and back. I took up photography to complement my other journalistic work in the rare occasions when I need to take photos for my own stories.
I sometimes talk about my other work on my blog
Virtually all of my photos are available, free of charge, under Creative Commons for non-commercial-attribution use (and commercial uses, but email me first).
Visit my Flickr account to get the get the usable versions of (most of) these images.
I don't at all think photography is easy, anyone-can-do-it-well-for-cheap work. But I've benefitted immeasurably from the generous help and advice of experienced photographers. And, my day job in programming and web development, wouldn't exist without the free work of the open-source community.
OK, secretly I'm secretly hoping that you're thinking: If this is what he's giving away, what he's selling must be worth gold!
Most of my available work consists of photos I've shot casually. I don't know how much use they are to others; most requests are for images to illustrate an academic paper or organizational report. If you're interested in the settings I used, Flickr includes the metadata for each image.
My style is to stick close to photojournalistic tradition. I find it helpful to think – before pressing the shutter – what makes a particular scene interesting and understandable to someone who isn't there.
I limit my post-processing to color and contrast adjustments acceptable in any newsroom.
I think Woody Allen and Robert Capa sum it up best: "Eighty percent of life is just showing up" and "If your picture isn't good enough, you're not close enough."
This portfolio site was designed, written, and hand-coded by me, on top of a vast foundation of open-source work.
I started with a HTML5 template from initializr.com and the 1140 CSS grid sheet. I've included jQuery – with Ben Alman's throttle-debounce plugin, Leandro Vieira's lightbox plugin, and Ariel Flesler's scrollTo plugin – for the simple interaction bits.
No portfolio is complete without cute animals.
