My name is Steffen Kaplan. I’m a born-and-bred New Yorker and a former NYTIMES Photo Editor with a passion for photographing the incredible buildings, design, and architecture that make this city unlike any other. Nothing jazzes me up more than walking through Manhattan and Just Looking Up! I love showing people how to experience the city from a completely new perspective simply by lifting their eyes.

I’m a former New York Times Photo Editor and freelance photojournalist whose work is part of the collection at the Museum of the City of New York and has been published around the world. My photographs of the NYPD “On the Job” are featured in the opening title sequence of the Emmy Award-winning NBC drama Law & Order: SVU.

I created the Just Look Up walkabouts to be much more than a photography lesson. Your camera is simply a tool, an important one, of course, but the real experience is learning how to see, anew! Together, we’ll discover the remarkable details — the angles, the colors, the patterns, the reflections — that millions of people pass every day without ever noticing. My goal is to help you uncover the hidden beauty of New York by doing one often overlooked thing: Just Looking Up.