Street Photography: Broadway

I was drawn to photograph this on many levels. For one…what the heck went on here?! Did someone steal the rest of the bike and leave the chained wheel behind? Or did the owner take the bike and, for reasons unknown, left behind the prized wheel under lock and chain?

Or perhaps it’s the work of a mischievous artist making a statement of some kind? I don’t know. But I do see a sparse modern beauty to the circular shapes – one wheel is secured by a chained loop to another wheel. Even the curve of the bicycle tire is mirrored in the curve of the puddle on the upper right.

Curves have been used in art to suggest serenity and softness. You see them in cathedral windows and arches, in images of female nudes, and in other fluid depictions. In this photograph, the curves are counterpoints to elements that are the opposite. Elements that are not thought of as being serene or soft.

So like a giant clam with its shells wide open, the wheels form right angles. And these hard angles are against a backdrop of concrete sidewalk. Moreover, just as the puddle mirrors the tire’s curve, the concrete blocks of the curb form right angles that echo those of the giant clam.

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Street Photography: Pinstripes

Here we have one of the youngest Yankees fan as he crosses 34th Street clutching his bottle. If you zoom in and look close enough, you’ll see that an older Yankees fan is pushing the stroller.

In my workshops, I talk about negative space. Having done a class just last week, the concept is fresh in my mind. What was probably in my subconscious when I created this image is now more conspicuous. So now I’m seeing things in this photograph that did not occur to me when I first created it.

At first, it was about presenting an unusual view of the crosswalk’s horizontal lines by framing them within a tight crop. It also occurred to me that these lines relate to the pinstripes of the little boy’s Yankees shirt. The white lines of the crosswalk and the black lines of the shirt are perpendicular to each other.

Then, thinking about negative space, I saw the road in a different way. It was no longer white stripes on top of the black pavement of the road. Instead, I was seeing black stripes on top of a white background. It’s as if the stroller is being pushed across a Goliath-sized Yankees shirt.

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Street Photography: Smartphones

Street photography today – if candid images of people are the subject – is both easier and more difficult. The ubiquity of smartphones means that seemingly everyone has their eyes transfixed on their little screens. Even tourists are experiencing their visits via their LCDs. They are shooting video and posting their visual and textual snippets on social media all while their steps are choreographed to the commands of their GPS.

With so many eyes diverted, it’s easier to photograph people without being detected. But it’s also more difficult to create candid images that are not of people with their heads tilted toward their little slabs. It takes a lot more patience and keener observation to catch those moments when people are interacting with each other, enjoying being in each other’s presence, or simply being.

I’ve done a few radio shows where I’ve been asked about future technologies. A frequent guess of mine is that the functionality of our smartphones – and many other features that we cannot even imagine at this time – will gradually get integrated into our bodies. Screens and tapping will get replaced by mind control – an enhanced form of thinking, if you will.

People get tattoos, nose jobs, face lifts, knee replacements, heart transplants, and much more. So once the technology is advanced enough, early adopters will gladly go under anesthesia and the knife to get upgraded. When that happens, future generations will look back at our photographs and be amused by the primitive quaintness of when everyone was perpetually looking down at a smartphone.

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Street Photography: Rain, Rain, Go Away…

It’s definitely feeling like autumn, for which I have mixed feelings. I like the colorful foliage and the toasty smell of the dead leaves and crumbled acorns. I also like the crisp temperatures that put me in the mood for tea or hot cider. But I don’t like the struggle and the depressing feeling of waking up in the dark, especially since I’m definitely not a morning person. Nor do I enjoy commuting during those raw gloomy rainy days and then returning, once again, in the dark. Sometimes it even triggers that same dejected feeling I use to get when I was starting a new fall semester at public school, which was not a good experience for me.

Those are some of the thoughts that cross my mind with this photo. Everything about it was fast. The person with the umbrella was walking quickly so as to dodge collisions with other pedestrians. I could not even get a good look to determine whether it was a man or a woman. I took the shot quickly as well as I did not want to lose him or her in the crowd. I’m pretty sure that my camera was still moving in its arc toward my eye while I was simultaneously pressing the shutter. Plus I was walking fast during the shot to keep up with my target.

All of this contributed to an unintentional blur that I happen to like. All I did was to desaturate the color to tone down the intensity of the umbrella and to emphasize the somber feeling that a drab day imparts on my psyche.

Another byproduct of the motion blur is that it wipes away some of the detail to create flattened shapes, especially in the torso. At once, the image presents reality and an abstraction. And that is part of what I like about being in the moment and photographing without too much deliberation and trusting the creative instincts that have been developed over time.

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Street Photography: “Fuhgeddaboudit”

It’s been a busy week. I had a corporate photo shoot, workshops at National Parks in two states, and the launch of a Facebook group for workshop attendees. I continued to photograph on the streets almost every day, but writing the blog had to take a backseat to these other commitments.

It was fun to go back and finally see the photographs from the prior week. This one, among others, jumped out at me. It was a wet gloomy afternoon. It was a dropless rain that was so misty and fine, you don’t even realize how soaking it can be. Umbrella-less, I walked closely along the exterior of Macy’s department store on 34th Street in a futile attempt to stay dry. That brought me within inches of some of the decorative touches that grace the building.

Ahead of me I saw that the facade featured ornamental sconces. They were graceful, detailed, and – in the grey flat sky – radiated a warm inviting glow. The instinct was to photograph what I understood the object to be conceptually – identified as a sconce. But what if I had never seen a sconce or any kind of lamp before. What would I understand the object to be? And how might I go about observing it?

So in classic New York parlance, I decided to “fuhgeddaboudit.” Of course, I can’t really erase from my memory what a light fixture looks like. But I can always use my imagination. So why not look at the “object” from directly underneath? What shapes will that viewpoint reveal? How will the details and the warm glow appear?

It was an interesting thought experiment to provoke seeing an everyday object in a fresh way and to inspire an image I might not have otherwise created.

And, yes. As of 2016, “fuhgeddaboudit” is officially a word in the Oxford dictionary.

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Street Photography: Expression

What a picture of these polarized times. If you’ve read my last three posts, you will know that I have been photographing architectural features in the Fifth Avenue area.

On my way to those sites, I passed by Trump Tower. Across the street were these two lone protesters. Ironically, their physical positions were opposite to their political ones. The Trump supporter is on the left and on the right there is a member of the Resistance.

Despite their contrary views and the mere 12 feet or so that separated them, there was no overt personal animosity nor was there a police presence to deter any fighting. As tumultuous as today’s politics have become, it was refreshing to see these two extremes peacefully exercising their freedom of speech and expression side by side.

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Street Photography: Icons of New York

After photographing the Presbyterian Church and the gate detail of the Harry Winston jewelry store – both on Fifth Avenue and described in the last two posts – I walked down and took a side street. There were brownstones that seemed to be of mixed use – business and residential.

One brownstone, at 13 West 54 Street, had a restaurant with prominent signage. Looking closer I saw this carved stone face on the wall. It’s in very good shape and shows quite a bit of workmanship when you consider the level of detail in the facial expression and the top of the head as it morphs into foliage.

If it were in a museum, on a pedestal and encased in glass with a spotlight on it, I think it would take on an artistic gravitas. I can imagine visitors crowding around the sculpture and giving it a higher level of appreciation.

But as long as it remains on the side of a building exposed to the elements, the gargoyle remains a small detail that may, at most, get an occasional glance as it competes for attention with the posted menu.

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