Posts from the ‘feature’ Category
Coney Island Mermaid Parade 2013
My wife, Laia, told me last week that she really wanted to attend the Coney Island Mermaid Parade this year. She’d been to it twice before, once with her family who were visiting from Barcelona and another when I had just started on tour with Justin Bieber, both times I was unfortunately unable to attend. Coney Island is a place I rarely get to, so it was a nice change of pace to zip out to the beach on my scooter with Laia today.
I’m not sure what to say about the parade other than it’s Coney Island’s official start of summer, it has a Mardi Gras feel to it with dancing, some brass bands, and lots of people dressed in ocean-themed outfits. Oh, there’s a fair amount of boobs too. Lots of these outfits are made entirely out of body paint, so there’s some partial nudity.
We arrived before the parade started and walked around, ate some hotdogs, and scouted out locations to shoot. We bounced around from the start and finish and decided to hang out for a while at the end in hopes some participants would peel off and head to the beach. They did, which was nice because it gave me an excuse to get into the water a bit. It was super hot and the sun was taking a toll. Laia and I got a lot of sun today.
We decided to call it a day pretty soon after as we had another 1+ hour ride on our little scooter. Coney Island is the farthest we’ve brought our little bike. Another fun day in NYC! My photos are in the order they were taken.
NY Times Restaurant Review: Jeepney – Balut – OMG!
About a week ago I was asked to swing by a new Filipino restaurant in the East Village for the New York Times Dining Section. I love shooting food assignments as I enjoy meeting the chefs, seeing the cool restaurants, and of course the amazing culinary creations they create!
This particular restaurant, Jeepney, was really cool…and like many NYC restaurants, was very tight. I shot my usual interiors, exteriors, and was set up at a table in the back to document various dishes the critic asked me to shoot. They brought out adobo chicken wings, a dish of pancit malabok negra, Bulalo, a short-rib and vegetable soup with a marrow bone riding on top, and finally the balut: a hard-boiled duck egg with a fertilized duck embryo encased inside.
I’ve never seen anything quite like balut, so in order to take proper photos, the owner gave me a demonstration how the hard boiled egg is served and how it’s cracked and eaten. After cracking open the large hard-boiled egg with a fork, she dug within the yellow yolky interior and came out with fertilized duck embryo (I’ll call it a fetus).
At that point she asked if I’d like to try the balut. Ok, sometimes I find it hard to turn down an offer to taste the food at these sort of assignments…but I had no problem respectfully declining this particular offer…
Anyhow, the balut may not be my cup of tea, but I’d definitely come back for one of their other great dishes on the menu! Fun place! 
2012 Filtered – Instagram Year In Review
With 2012 coming to an end, I thought it’d be fun to take a look back through all those iPhone photos I took and posted to Instagram over the past year. It was a daunting task to wade through over 1000 photos and narrow it down to the 60 I’m presenting here because every snap was a great memory. I saw many trends in my mobile pictures, the most prevalent were those of my cat, snaps in my picturesque backyard of Central Park, pics taken from windows of the various offices I visited for portrait shoots, and many taken from my window seat on my various flights around the world. If 2013 is only half as awesome as 2012, I’ll be a happy man. Let’s hope Instagram clarifies their terms of service so I can continue sharing my photos with you all through the platform!
If you don’t already follow my feed, you can do so from my Instagram homepage! Here’s to all of you and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Independence Day
My lovely wife Laia Prats and I decided to bypass the crowds last night and climb to the roof of our Upper West Side apartment building to catch the NYC Fireworks. We didn’t expect to see much, but as it turned out, the fireworks cleared the buildings and made for a beautiful show! Enjoy!
Check out Laia’s photos on her Meow Chicken Blog!
A week with Team USA Soccer in Salt Lake and Trinidad
US Soccer – Images by Robert Caplin
October turned out to be one crazy month involving quite a bit of traveling.
I was commissioned to shoot a documentary assignment for ESPN The Magazine to photograph the US Soccer team in their quest to make it into the upcoming 2010 World Cup being held in South Africa. The assignment was to generally hang out with the team at practices and hotels prior to and during two qualifying matches, the first of which against El Salvador held in Salt Lake City, Utah. The following day I hopped on a jet AND followed the team to their next game against Trinidad & Tobago way down in the Caribbean. I cant complain about that!
Though I was afforded better access than most to the team, I still was very limited. I was given only the first 15/20 minutes of practices and the normal press access during games. I worked with the team’s publicist to photograph them hanging out in the hotel, loading onto and off of the bus, as I was also staying at the same hotel.
Beyond working, the highlights of the trip including visiting my pal and fellow photographer Chris Detrick at his home in Salt Lake and firing up the BBQ. Also, down in the Caribbean I was able to spend the day prior to the soccer match buzzing through the windy mountainous roads to the exquisite beaches in Trinidad. I also had the opportunity to try Shark and Bake (fried shark sandwich), which is apparently is the national dish of Trinidad. It was alright. 
Check out the rest of the archives from Slat Lake and Trinidad.
Here’s how the spread ran in ESPN The Magazine:
Soccer Layouts – Images by Robert Caplin
Me? Write?
I was asked to write an article for a photography website about my recent trip to Cuba….so I thought it would be a perfect first post on my new blog!
Link to article:
http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/2028
Cuba, A World In A Time Warp
I grew up in a small town in Ohio and have always known I wanted to travel – to meet new people, experience new cultures, to see the world. When I did travel, whether it was to another city, state, or country, I knew I wanted to do it again…and again. During college I was able to travel outside the United States a few times, which truly opened my eyes to the amazing adventures that await me. Now I’m trying to make my dream of travel a reality.
Although my most recent trip to Havana, Cuba was only 90 miles from the coast of America, I’ve never felt farther from home. When I’m an old man, I’m confident Cuba will have been one of the most amazing trips I’ve taken. Not just for the foreign experience, but it’s a time of change there. I’m certain within the next decade, the Cuba of today will be drastically different…and Cuba hasn’t been different for nearly 50 years.
Since I’ve posted my photos of Cuba, I’ve received numerous emails with questions ranging from…who was I shooting for, what gear I took, where did I stay, do I speak Spanish, what was it like, and most of all “How Did You Get There?” I hope this short article briefly touches on all of those topics.
I first decided on Cuba for a number of reasons; culture, people, color, light, but what intrigued me the most was the near half-century of embargo placed on the island by the United States. The mere fact that I was told I can’t legally travel there without the possibility of heavy fine by my government, made me want to go there even more.
I suppose one of the first thoughts that goes through many people’s mind when thinking about Cuba (Havana in particular) would be the old-fashioned American muscle cars, which I can certainly attest to – they were everywhere. But what I didn’t expect to see was that the majority of those beautiful antique automobiles weren’t just antiques, they were aged antiques…along with nearly everything else in the city – from cars, to equipment, the government, leadership, and infrastructure. The city is stuck in a time warp from the 1950s, but the wear and tear is definitely showing – from crumbling apartment buildings to a dictatorship that is near its end.
It’s really hard to describe the feeling of being in Cuba. Though the country is aesthetically beautiful, it’s hard not to notice the degradation too. The wear and tear on Havana, the capital city, is immediately evident. It’s a socialist society and it seems that most the people I met are living on the bare minimum to survive, especially where I spent my time.
For three weeks I stayed in Central Havana, what I would consider the slum of Cuba. I’m told that it used to be the main attraction, “the real capital”, but that’s hardly the case now. Children play, some in just their underwear, in the filthy urban streets covered in litter, dirt, animal feces, and oil that’s been dripping from those fancy, old American classics. Adults and children alike shamelessly beg, sometimes demand, any non-Cuban gringo for money, clothes, sunglasses…anything.
Overall, the experience there is very pleasant; the sense of family unity is great, as most live with their entire family. Because of their lack of communication devices, a Cuban’s neighborhood is the majority of their social network. Most people tend to hang outside their homes or in their doorways listening to music blaring from surrounding homes. They watch the stickball game in the street and people-watch as their friends and neighbors walk by. For the most part, the average Cuban home that I visited is rather small and usually a tight squeeze as they tend to be shared with a number of family members.
My original plan to visit the forbidden nation of Cuba was to just sneak in, but when I heard rumors of potential fines upwards of $50,000, I thought I’d peruse a legal route. I’ve gotten many emails asking how I got to Cuba, as it’s in a US-embargoed country. One way to get in is under a journalist visa, which was my first attempt, but because I wasn’t going while directly on an assignment from a publication, the US government told me that a journalist visa wouldn’t work – but I could apply for a “professional research” license, and I did so.
The government office to contact about legally traveling to Cuba is actually in the Treasury Department and is called the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). You must send a travel affidavit along with your reason for going. I sent in the affidavit along with a letter explaining that I am a freelance photographer, a letter from an editor that vouched for me, and a copy of my press pass. A few days later I received a phone call from a pleasant lady at the OFAC informing me that I could get in through the “professional research” license and a few days later she emailed me a PDF license. (Office of Foreign Assets Control Licensing Division, Cuba U.S. Department of the Treasury Tel 202.622.5790 Fax 202.622.0447)
After that was settled, I decided to travel through Cancun, Mexico so not to raise suspicion of the Cuban government by being the only non-Cuban walking off a plane from Miami. I wasn’t trying to deceive the government about my intensions of travel, I just preferred they not know I am a journalist by occupation. Like I said, I really went for myself, to have an amazing life experience, and I did. I just took pictures along the way.
The first night I stayed at a “Casa Particular”, a bed-and-breakfast run through the government out of a Cuban’s home (http://www.casaparticular.info/). But the next day I checked into an inexpensive hotel because I thought it would be more secure for my gear. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred a casa, because living with a family is more conducive to learning the language and finding out tips/ information you might not elsewhere.
I decided to also travel light in Cuba and brought only a Canon 5D, a few lightweight, prime lenses all of which I carried in an extra small Domke shoulder bag. I didn’t bother bringing a flash…it would only ruin the already beautiful light. I kept my laptop and external hard drive in the safe at my hotel room. As it turned out, I spent the majority of my time just wandering aimlessly through the streets of Cuba trying to capture the amazing light behind each turn. The best part was that I didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so I was completely in my own world, taking in the amazing culture, the people, color, tastes, and smells…(mostly unpleasant smells like exhaust from 50-year old cars cruising down the street burning unrefined, Venezuelan petroleum)…but there’s something special about the odor, something distinctly….Cuban.
When I arrived back home to New York, I found myself culture-shocked for the first time in my life. My trip and the people of Cuba changed me – while it was a truly amazing and memorable experience for me, it has made me profoundly grateful that I have the liberties to do anything I want with my life.
I hope to someday visit the island again and when I do, I believe I’ll find what I experienced in May 2008 to be a relic of the past.
