This is the fourth post in a four part series about Brooklyn and it is a partnership with Brooklyn-based retailer Focus Camera. All images in this post were created with the Samsung NX500 which retails on their site for $798 currently.
On the same day that I visited Prospect Park, which I showcase in this post, I also visited the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. It’s an area of the borough I’ve long been curious about so I was excited that Focus Camera gave me the freedom to blog about it along with the other locations I chose for this series.
If you live in NYC, you’ve probably heard this is an area mainly for all The Strollers. That is, the young professional families with children. My question to myself was, “Could I uncover more than that?” My question to Carroll Gardens itself was, “Is there more than that?”
There, of course, is. Just like you cannot judge a book by its cover, neither can you boil down this neighborhood (nor any other) in Brooklyn, down to only one stereotype. It is evolving and changing just as the entire city is. It is more than any one thing.
I started by walking away from the Park and through Grand Army Plaza’s intimidating Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch. I walked through other neighborhoods whose names I was unsure of, and eventually caught a bus to give my aching feet a bit of a break, until finally my Google Maps told me I had found the epicenter of the area I was looking for.
I found out that great cafes share the same block with trendy boutiques that share the same side of the street with community gardens and shops that are not trendy but are in fact critical to life in a place like New York.
It’s a real place, not manufactured for tourists like Times Square or the area around Barclay Center. There are young people, old people, and children both in as well as out, of strollers. There are people of every race and ethnicity. It is, like the city itself, a melting pot.
I hope you have enjoyed this series where I showed you Red Hook, Greenpoint and Prospect Park before concluding with this look at Carroll Gardens. Follow Focus Camera on Instagram for more about the other great partnerships and events they have coming up this year. Like…this travel photo contest!
Focus Camera is compensating me for these posts on this blog however, all opinions and words are my own. Including the decision to link to the Focus Camera website and social media accounts.
