A Cloudy Day, Perfect Light

It's wonderful to be out walking in New York on a sunny day. People's spirits are up and there's more smiles all around. But a bright sky and dark shadows at street level make getting a well balanced exposure almost impossible, especially with the way I try to shoot surreptitiously. But with a cloudy overcast sky the light is much more evenly balanced, even if people's moods aren't, and that makes for a much easier time of it on the street.

I've been out shooting for a few days this week. They've been days in the bank, so to speak. I love being out with my camera. It's something I must do, otherwise I go through street withdrawal. But that doesn't mean that every time I'm out shooting I come away with great material to work on. It's being out on those days when I'm not in the 'groove' that the grunt work gets done. I have to look harder, be more alert, and try new techniques. 

I worked with a new focus technique with my X-Pro1 today. Put the camera on manual focus mode, and using the optical viewfinder, zoomed in with the control wheel and refined focus with the AF-L button. There's definitely a learning curve to be worked out with the technique, but the results were promising.

 After reviewing my work I realized that I came home with more than I thought I had captured. I spent the day around 14th Street and Union Square. There's a Christmas market set up in the square and the aisles are very narrow. Isolating one subject was just about impossible. But on the fringes of the square, at the farmers market, the crowd thinned out a little. I aimed to get an image of this gentleman, but somewhere in the deep recesses of my unconscious I framed this. A shot of just the one person may have worked out, but the girl looking at me from the background adds a much deeper dimension to the image on several levels.

That's why getting out to do the grunt work is so important, sometimes ya just get lucky!

Why Do I Shoot Street?

This is a question posed by blogger/streettog Eric Kim. There is a rather sophomoric video that accompanies his post, and while the question is legitimate and admirable, to attempt to posit an answer by using an approach designed to address corporate/industrial issues is akin to using methylene chloride to clean a Monet painting. The question is way too complex to seek to answer with such a simplistic analysis. The premise of the video might however serve as a rudimentary starting point.

Why do I shoot (at all)? For me it's the same as 'To be or not to be. That is the question.' It's who I am. I must do it. I love it, and I'm happy when I have a camera in my hand. Why do I shoot street? Because I feel compelled to do it. I love it. I'm happiest when I'm out doing it. I love to watch people, to schmooze, to connect with them. And I constantly search for stories (or sometimes make them up). If I get a good shot, process and post it, and thereby touch something in a viewer, so much the better. But the end product (the image that I print or post) is not the prime motivating thing for me. It's the self-exploration, the opportunity to recognize a challenge and solve it, that sings to me.

For your viewing pleasure, a face and hand gesture I captured about a month ago on Fifth Avenue during more clement weather:

The Process Is Everything.

When I was a young man playing the violin was my greatest passion. I couldn't imagine going through a day without having the instrument in hand - whether practicing on my own, rehearsing with an ensemble, taking a lesson, or performing. It didn't matter why, only that it happened. Indeed, I couldn't imagine my life without the violin. Playing still gives me pleasure, as does teaching. My need t probe and explore myself still drives me forward. But my instrument has changed and the medium for exploration has changed from aural to visual. Now I have my camera, but the process is the same.

A quote from Art & Fear : 'If artmaking did not tell you (the maker) so enormously much about yourself, then making art that matters to you would be impossible. To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing of it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work ..... The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.' 

When I played the violin it was making the music with the instrument that was important - to hone my technique, to rehearse with the ensemble and make beautiful music. The performance was to make money to pay for groceries and clothes. And so too with photography. My 'bliss', as Joseph Campbell would call it, is to have the camera out on the streets and make the connections with the people I see around me, grab that slice of time that says something special to me. When I have gallery shows it's to sell images - to pay for groceries and clothes.

This photo, which I titled Stupido! happened this past Saturday. I heard the woman's Italian vitriol half a block away. The hand gestures say it all.

Stuck In My Mind

In this video, about the celebrated Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, I was impressed with his way of shooting and his approach to working in b/w. So much of what I do is intuitive that I find it difficult to answer questions my students put to me about my processes when I'm out on the street. Just as Moriyama says, I need the city, and I need the people. Stories are constantly unfolding in front of me, and with the camera I can freeze moments of time in those stories.

This past Saturday was my first day out shooting at the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The holiday is exciting for me because the crowds of people present constant opportunities.  I was shooting on Fifth Avenue when I happened to turn around, and in front of me was a woman with glowingly dyed red hair, wearing a furry yellow and black striped jacket. Without thinking I fired off several shots - I knew I'd caught the 'money shot' for the day. It was impossible for me to look at the image and see anything but the color in the shot. As so often happens, there's something in the image that sings to me and I need to draw out. But as Moriyama points out in his video, the color was making decisions about the picture, dictating something vulgar. B/W is exciting to me because of my body's instinctive response, the monochrome image has a strong feeling of abstraction and symbolism, a feeling of taking me to another place.

I was relaxing after I'd processed and created the image below, reviewing some of the photo blogs I'd seen during the past week, when I ran across James Maher's blogpost of last Friday. There was something stuck in the back of my mind when I was out walking on the Avenue, and I had no clue that it was there. And then this:

The Dreaded 'C' Word

In a recent blogpost of the World Photography Organization several videos were presented about creativity and photography. Generally I tend to shy away from the new age philosophy that we are all inherently creative, but the first of these videos brought the issue more into focus for me (pardon the pun). 

I'm always searching for that kernel of whatever it is inside me that makes me a productive artist. In the video the speaker makes four points, and I think it is the extent to which any of us is willing to engage all of these points that separates the 'milk from the cream'. 

Being open and embracing experience: When I go about my day I have to be always aware of what goes on around me, open to a new situation or experience, and be willing to become engaged in it. It's what shooting on the street is all about. I can't go out with preconceived ideas of what in particular I will be looking for - that's like wearing blinders - but rather just observe the world around me and jump into a new situation (sometimes with fear and/or trepidation).

Embracing life's challenges: It's what connects us all together, and in reflecting that in my images I can draw the viewer into the subject to see the world through the camera, with my perspective. The more difficult or challenging the situation, the more effort I have to put into it. But I can't run from those experiences to look for what is more comfortable or familiar.

Pushing up against the limits, and what you can't do: When I hear a voice in my head that says 'You can't do that' I have to listen to it, and then go and do it. Succumbing to that voice is to admit defeat. Were I to have listened to that voice I would never have become a violinist nor a photographer.

The embrace of loss: This is the most tragic to run from. Loss is part of everyone's life, in myriad forms. It's part of the natural world and the inexorable passing of time. As time moves forward, what was once, in an instant, is over - gone forever - and if the way I see it is not documented, the memory of it will fade and disappear over time. 

These are all not easy to commit to. To the extent that I am willing to do so will determine the force and impact of what I seek to portray.

On one of my photo walks in NYC I happened upon this gentleman and was struck by the disparity of the sadness in his face and eyes, and the sign he was holding. I hope he, and all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Becoming and artist

From Art & Fear : '..... becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.' Reminds me so much of Joseph Campbell's idea of following your 'bliss'. Every artist has to forge a path through the forest in search of his grail. If he follows another's path, it's not his own and the message in the art will be derivative. 

When I see a scene or incident that catches my attention and piques my interest, when it speaks to me and I photograph it, that says something about me. As I work on an image I look for what caught my attention and for the flaws and weaknesses it reflects in me. Again, from Art & Fear : 'Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them.' There definitely is an undercurrent of fear in taking photos of people on the street, but having overcome that and having nailed the shot leaves me with a buzz. When I see reflections - in windows or mirrors - the image takes on new levels and planes of focus. There is the background that stops the viewer's attention and forces the eye back into the scene. There's the street merchant facing the camera and pushing attention back to the middle ground, and there is the woman in the foreground, really just a non-descript dark presence that stops the eye from drifting off the side of the image and forces attention back to the center of the image - the reflection in the mirror of yet another person who does not bodily appear in the shot. 

Why do I do it?

There's so much pithy information in Art & Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, that it's difficult to decide what points to address first. The first point that hit me right between the eyes, and it's on the second page of the first chapter, sucked me right into the rest of the book.

Making art .... means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside ethese doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment with the work itself.

So, why do I do it? Why do any of the many street photographers with whom I correspond regularly use their precious free time to go out with a camera and walk the streets looking for that visual pun, that 'decisive moment', knowing that not many people will ever see it if it's posted on the internet, and of those that do, few will comment on it (except to tell you how great the shot is in the hopes that you'll look at their work and tell them how great their work is).

When I was out this past Saturday, I went to one of my favorite spots in Manhattan. It's a corner in the Meatpacking district near the lower end of the Highline. I like this spot because there's a bench to sit on just outside of a biker's bar. Since the area has started to become gentrified, quite a few trendy shops and restaurants that attract a hip young crowd have opened. It makes for an eclectic mix of the people that pass by the bench. I love a crowd - they increase dramatically the possibility of serendipitous moments. Grabbing those instants of time give me a rush, a feeling of 'got it!' And after I 'get it' I love to digitally develop the image to make it tell the story that made me push the shutter button in the first place. Once the image is created and posted, my process is finished. I'm done with that shot and on to the next one. I enjoy showing the work and getting feedback from viewers, but that's not the real motivation to taking the shot and developing it. During that whole process I'm really looking at myself, like looking into a mirror.

Now about this shot - there's just something I enjoy about taking a photo of an attractive woman. Here I was, standing in this small crowd of bikers who are swilling beer and chowing down cheap bar food, and this pretty blonde girl walks by followed by a preppy looking luster. I got a couple of shots of the girl, but this one in particular grabbed my attention because at the moment I pressed the shutter button the preppy guy stopped dead in his tracks, thinking he was going to  courteously give me space to get my shot without walking through it. 'Social Distortion' filled in the space and made the image speak. 

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