Family photography when travelling - the Staten Island ferry

On our last day in NYC we had planned to take the Staten Island Ferry. It’s an old time favourite of ours, and a great free way to take the family to see the Statue of Liberty. It didn’t quite go to plan given the weather was intensely dark and moody, but we decided to go anyway despite the rain and I’m so glad we did.

On the way out, the visibility was so poor, which probably explains why the ferry was so empty. This was great for me to have a bit of space for the photography, and to appreciate the foggy aesthetic. It definitely had the vibe of ‘the world has gone back for its first day at work in January.’ We had a brief moment where the Statue of Liberty emerged from the mist and there was a strong debate about whether my husband’s iphone could get a better photo than my canon R5. Obviously not. It was an eerie sight but different from any of the other times we’ve seen it. I still managed to get in my favourite type of photography – my boys taking it all in. If you’re interested in the things I think about when taking my family photography on our trips, you can read my blog post about it here.

We did the classic round trip – off at Staten Island and waited about 20 minutes for the return ferry. On the way back the rain had a brief hiatus and we could see much more, though the tones were still pretty dark. The orange of the ferry giving a warm contrast in the mizzle. Then, we were done touristing for a while, and retreated back to the apartment for pizza, because lets be honest there’s a limit to how many steps you can make kids do in the rain before it all kicks off.