WHO IS THIS MONTHS WINNER WINNER? Learn how guest photographer Matthew Cohen & Chad Hoffer of TSK got started in their industries while we pick the winning photo of the month!
June #NLandL Photo Contest with guest judge & local photographer Matthew Cohen of @MatthewCohenPhotography !
This month Chad Hoffer owner and chef of Thames Street Kitchen otherwise known as TSK has offered a $100 Gift Certificate and a bottle of bubbly.
All you have to do is enter #NLandL in your photo comments and/or tag @NewportLivingandLifestyles and you will have the opportunity to win a gift certificate & a bottle of bubbly from a local business.
Get to know more Newportant Newporters that make Newport THE vacation destination on the east coast visit http://nll.flywheelsites.com/
#NLandL #TSK #ThamesStreetKitchen #MatthewCohen #butterflies #Sailing #winnerwinner #mission #burger #
#NewportBridge #50thanniversary #bodispa # #getthatshot #photography #local #photographer #winner #photocontest #giftgiveaway #June #lovewhereyoulive #newport #newportri
Welcome to Newport Living and Lifestyles I’m Christon and today we are hosting the
June photo contest where one lucky winner is going to have the opportunity
to win a $100 gift certificate and a bottle of bubbly from TSK! Thank You Chad!
And come back and take a photo with all of us and have the opportunity to
enjoy that bottle of bubbly and gift certificate. All you have to do is
hashtag your photo comments #NLandL and/or tag @NewportLivingAndLifestyles in your photos.
Here we are today with guest photographer Matt Cohen and Chad Hoffer
from Thames Street Kitchen and restaurateur. Tell us all about
your businesses and how you got started. I’m not really sure how I got started, actually.
My parents owned restaurants going up and I just started in the kitchen when I was young and moved to New York from there and went to culinary school
and somehow ended up in Newport. ( I guess he doesn’t want to tell us that story! Later! :D:D)
Started with the original TSK which is down the street were we now have Winner Winner.
okay winner winner. Which is a fried chicken joint if anyone doesn’t know.
Then we have Mission over on Marlborough Street.
I’ve heard best burgers in town. I would agree with that. Opening another Mission soon, on Monday.
Oh Wow! Congratulations. You’re on a roll ! It’s happening. Nothing to stop this train !
It’s not just me, we have a team of people. We have partners as you may know.
Yeah, we’re just forging ahead.
So you have burgers, you have fried chicken and how would you describe Thames Street Kitchen?
Delicious!
Brawny American. Is something someone said once. What is it? Brawny America.
Brawny American! I like it. Rhode Island Monthly said that. Its kind of fun and we are embracing it.
A lot of heavy food and bigger portions and shared food. Its delicious I
love eating here. That’s how I met Chad. I went back there and I was like knock knock.
He was like I’m trying to cook.
Thank you for hosting this month and one lucky winner! So on to the guest photographer!
Welcome Matthew Cohen! Thank you very much! Good to be here and Chad thank you very much for the opportunity.
How’d you get started in photography? You’re quite skilled.
Thank you very much. I was a sailor first I’ve been sailing for about 30 years and then when
I was finishing up college at Roger Williams on the sailing team with a
psych degree I decided to marry my two passions of sailing in photography and
after graduation I did not want to become a psychologist and spent another
five years in the library so I decided to grab my camera and sail around the world.
in about less than 10 years I logged over 30,000 ocean miles between
deliveries and the Caribbean and ocean crossings
teaching sailing and Sail Newport for 13 years in the summers whatever job was
available to work on boats and in the yachting industry that also a lot of me
to fuel my my passion of photography and keep the business rolling that’s how I
acquired all the sea time and making a business out of my two passions.
Most of your stuff I have noticed is sailing. Correct.
Hanging off of the main sheet and all kinds of fun stuff.
Yep, you know the variety…
Everyone nowadays with photography and digital and smartphones
everything is shot at roughly 6 feet tall
so there are billions of photos on the website and if you look through them
like if you look at… you search light houses everything’s shot from a
quarter mile away and during the daytime at noon or whenever one has free time
and I think it’s very important to change perspective on what you’re
looking at because if everyone shoots the same thing you’re all looking at the
same photos so as a professional sailor and raced here for many years
particularly in the bow position of boats you get all these great vantage
points and angles so lends itself to being able to showcase
and show the world all these unique perspectives that are not everything you
see on the web. How can people find your artwork? Mostly everythings online through social media on Instagram that’s
@MatthewCohenPhotography all lower case no space and then there’s
Matthew Cohen Photography on Facebook which are two great ones and then I’ve just
released a month ago a beta version of the new website which is
www.CohenPhotography.com and in about a month there be a revised website and I think
it’ll be quite present with all three versions. Well it’s gorgeous stuff, you really
should check it out and every Friday you host a gift giveaway
yourself. Friday evening there’s a kind of a great social media promo
that I do and it’s a quiz so the first person who can correctly answer the
random question along with its photo receives a complimentary hand signed
eight-by-ten print from Matthew Cohen Photography and it’s shipped to your
door free with that $85 credit the value that you can apply that into a larger
order and that never expires you will receive a coupon that guarantees that
and it’s it’s the whole thing on Facebook as a fun thing and when it’s a
kind of an intense question the comments just keep coming and going and
it’s a lot of fun so I recommend checking in on every Friday
evenings and see if you can guess it and have a nice piece of artwork for your
walls. What’s the facebook page one more time? Matthew Cohen Photography. Easy. Simple yep! So you want to go through some of these photos?
There were so many! It’s really hard to choose! Yes I would love to do this
process it’s it’s fun to choose it fun to see people’s results and how they
interpret the world through a camera which is what I’ve been doing for the
past twenty years so it’s I love supporting amateurs and professionals as
well it’s great to see their different perspectives.
Alright! You ready? I’m ready.
so first up to bat we want to thank all those that have repeated and won in the past but we appreciate
your efforts. Everybody’s photos are gorgeous. There is a lot of talent. yeah which makes it tricky to judge.
but we appreciate those that won in the past. One select was from Brian Kelly
of @20Eight2 which is this fantastic shot of the Newport bridge at night.
He had 71 likes on Instagram so well done, nice work. I love the blue hues
and it’s really unique to see a picture of the bridge at night. It is a unique perspective,. Which is very
hard to do whether it’s a drone or whether you’re from a helicopter or
whether you’re hanging the bridge at night work is very hard and it’s very
appreciative to nail something that’s tack sharp yeah so kudos to you Brian.
Thanks Brian! Next on the list was from a previous
winner, @kara_ann322 who had this creative shot. It’s
a photo of the photo. It’s the photo of the bridge from the back of a
viewfinder so we appreciate your creativity in thinking out of the box
this had 200 likes on Instagram, so well done Kara. Yay Kara!
I love the colors in this. It’s almost like that panoramic view
point which stated in the back and very crisp
and clean in the front. What do you like about it? I like the inception idea of it.
like you said oh it’s kind of blurry in the background…
It tells a little bit of a story. What story does it tell. yeah well you you’re you have a everyone
shoots the bridge right is it iconic. Which it’s ironic because today is
its 50th anniversary. That’s right! That was very coincidental. Today is June…. 28th. 28th!
50th anniversary of the Newport Pell Bridge. On the photo though everyone
shoots the bridge so it’s kind of cool to shoot the bridge but not make the
bridge the the focus of the photo it’s the photo of the photo which is pretty
creative. Clever! Another fantastic one which I had a hard time choosing to be the
select. You’ve already won one before so congratulations on the previous win
and making this selection. This was from @RentSons and it’s a long exposure clearly.
because you have the the stars down at the ficus at second Beach where the surfer is
sitting on his Jeep with lots of cool lights. This received 376 likes, so well done.
well done.
Let me see this, I want to see if this is Patrick Brown, I can’t tell, but Patrick Brown who owns
Rent Sons, so I know that he’s a surfer.
Again it tells a little bit of a story, it shows that the surfer had you
know he’s done with his day from a nice session and he’s admiring the beautiful
sky it’s not just a shot there’s something behind it. He is sitting on his
surfboard which is sitting on top of his Jeep. Yes looking over the… he’s
looking over the fence to see where he just surfed. That’s my guess of what he is doing.
Relishing in what he just was involved in. and I love a good Jeep. Who doesn’t love a Jeep.
Next came from Ann Libby @AnnM816 which is a very great shot it changes perspective
and it’s very great. You did a great job in terms of clarity I think a lot of
a lot of smartphones and amateur lenses don’t provide the clarity so when you
have a shot that’s nice and crisp it makes it much easier to enjoy. so well
done to Ann, she received 32 likes on Instagram. So go like some more, go like this
picture some more! Give her more likes! Give her some street cred! Go like her page.
Well done on that for its creativity its kind of thinking out of the box and
using a macro setting getting really close and intimate with your subject
which is pretty tricky with a butterfly which doesn’t stand still for you
as a model. Colors on this are great too.
it really feels like summer’s coming and it is here, it just arrived. Yes finally.
@ChefKen Ken Durbin received 100 likes for this fantastic shot of surfers rock with
a nice little silhouette of the tree and the sun setting on this this cloud.
( a cumulus cloud ) and very dramatic, very intense.
well done.
That’s purgatory chasm I believe. From the cliff, surfers beach is
over here. You can see the moon and it’s just about to rain that looks
really cool, sun shining down. Very Dramatic. Darkness underneath. You’ve got a lot of cool
contrast so what they call chiaroscuro is the contrast between light and dark and
the bright part of the cloud is illuminated but the shadow of
the dark part of the chiaroscuro sort of frames the center plane and your eye
typically goes to the lightest part
first so it’s kind of the trees and the silhouette frame the cloud
even more so, so if the silhouette was not there it wouldn’t be as dramatic.
Well done on composition. And you turned the ocean pink, which I love. That’s magical, right? yeah exactly.
Our next one… He is struggling with which one is gonna win, I can tell. I’m just lining up the right words.
A local favorite business in town @TheBodhiSpa takes the second place. This is a
fantastic shot of in their spa in the water journey. I’m a big fan of their
their facility and use it quite often. What’s your favorite thing at the Bodhi Spa?
The water journey. Is there a particular water feature you like? No, I like the whole package! but I can tell ya
it’s $55 for all day (???) I apologize if I have the numbers wrong, but it’s
the best bang for buck in any sort of spa or treatment place. You go their website
www.TheBodhiSpa.com and check out their prices. An amazing facility with different types
of pools and refreshing drinks and just a well-run management system and
facility that’s in a nice quiet part of town not downtown it’s a great place to
relax. Perfect!! What do you like about this photo? It’s dramatic and the use of the steam is pretty cool. It’s it’s a trick
that a lot of photographers use to help diffuse light and who ever took
this shot did a fantastic job of diffusing the light and using the steam
as a prop or a tool to silhouette the person entering the plunge pool.
There’s two people in this photo which I did not catch originally. Is there really?
There’s a female sitting right at the edge looking back. It’s kind of like, it
looks like the viewer or the participant is debating whether he wants to go into
that pool or another pool. Yeah it must be the cold plunge then! They received 246 likes
on Instagram. It tells a story, it’s well composed, it’s crisp.
I think they did a great job. Nice work
Harmony or Cedar or Somebody at their facility. so I think we’ve come up with is a decision on the winner .
The winner goes to @JMich78Photography Jason Michalski photography who produced the spring shot
of Upper Thames Street kinda near the Brick Alley Pub. The reason we
chose this one is for what I call the four C’s which is creativity, color ( not
to be confused with saturation ), composition and creativity. and I’m sorry
and clarity and what I think is unique about this part of the picture is like I
was saying before about lighthouses the standard photo this person had the out
of thinking out-of-the-box idea to get on the ground and shoot up and
you capture the detail of the cobblestone which is, not notorious, but known for
downtown Newport and a nice characteristic of it.
and great color and clarity so we think that @JMitch78photography (that’s Jason Mitchalski )
Thank you Christon. Yeah Congratulations! and you’ll be down here taking a photo
with us picking up your gift certificate and your bottle of bubbly.
This is gorgeous. What do you like about this photo? It has a lot of texture to me, on a lot of different components and it all comes together.
yeah and another cool feature about this is kind of the storytelling is which is
great. There’s no one on the street so it’s yeah it is cool and empty. You don’t
know whether… I mean it’s pretty and sunny out but it could be in December, it could
be in July. Oh that’s true. and I think it’s really cool that someone was there and you know 6AM
or something. yeah there’s nobody on the street till 8AM
Which is kinda cool because that street is known to be packed.
so that person who took the time to think about well let’s do something
different and showcase a busy place, empty. Yes, Definitely. Thanks so much
One more time, how can people find TSK and website? We do, TSKNPT.com come on down. What is your favorite dish?
We are running this thing called “Mission cuts” At Mission Burger we get full cows.
We break them down for burgers and then the prime cuts, the rib eyes, the strips
actually cut into large 30 to 40 ounce portions. Come hungry!
Good for sharing! It’s just a good cut of meat done right. Simple but good.
Sounds delicious! Find them on the web and just come right down the street. Make sure to “like” all these pages.
Thames Street Kitchen and Matthew Cohen Photography so you can follow them on a daily basis
and while we are at it. “Like” Newport Living and Lifestyles.
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Have a great day everyone !