Chicken or the Egg

In discussing Ivan Sigal's work The White Road, The New York Times Lens Blog for Wednesday, May 8th makes an interesting point about the development of a photographic project. Mr Sigal is quoted as saying 'First images, then ideas'. To which I couldn't agree more. It's fine to have an area of interest to go after photographically, but in my own experience, when I cast about for an idea to pursue and make into a project I usually come up with over-intellectualized and/or superficial images because I'm not shooting from my gut. That's important for me. For my images to have impact, I need to feel the intensity and honesty of the moment so that it's transmitted into the photograph. When I 'go with the flow' of my guts over a period of time the collective story of the series of images evolves of it's own. If I don't honor that emotional impetus, my work becomes a sterile construct of my consciousness. The point of all this is that for quite a while I've been shooting on the streets of New York with no particular end in mind except to go where my feet take me and photograph what I respond to emotionally. Over time a body of work has evolved and taken shape that has now become more clearly structured. In Sigal's words 'first images, then ideas'. It works for me.

On another note, while it may not be a great idea to be out shooting in the noonday sun - heavy shadows, strong contrast, and all that - sometimes when I'm walking around a photo just begs to be taken. I sure hope the guy survived this lady's wrath.

What's Up With That?

I spend a lot of time in Manhattan. The pickings for street shooting are so abundant  there that every time I come out of Penn Station I hear midtown calling to me. Sometimes I go for a long walk - usually about three miles - uptown, downtown, crosstown. And sometimes I find a good spot, sit, and watch the parade go by. The stores on Fifth Avenue are an abundant source of characters for me. But one thing I don't understand - maybe it's my ancient sensibilities - is the attraction for people to stand in line outside the Abercrombie & Fitch store just to get in and pay an outrageous price for cloth stitched together in China. I might expect it on a weekend when there's lots of tourists and weekend shoppers from out of town, but during the week? Could it be the scantily clad models they have walking around the selling floor?

That seems so crass, but then again, so are the shoppers that wait in line, to wit:

Christopher Street with a Martin 000-18

I'm deep into the new project I mentioned in my last blog post. Its a bit difficult to reference just yet because I haven't quite figured out a name for it. I've been going back through my Lightroom catalog for the past several years and refining the keywording of all the appropriate images. As I looked at the processing work I can see how I've evolved, and I want to go back and redo many images but I need to do so much more shooting for the project. And then there's other shooting I want to do also - if only I had more time ..... 

Christopher Street in the west village is known for it's gay bars. It was the locus of the Stonewall Riots in 1969. As I was walking around this past weekend, I happened upon these two gents sitting on the stoop and I asked about the very weathered guitar. It was a Martin 000-18 model made in 1963, not old by my standards, but then I'm ancient. When I was playing bluegrass music, in the early 1960's, pre-World War II dreadnoughts (D18s and D28s) were the holy grail. At that time a vintage D28 might cost  about $1k. A few weeks ago on the Antiques Road Show and old prewar D28 was appraised at a value of about $60k.

Epiphanies

An epiphany is an enlightened realization that allows a problem or situation to be understood. Some are small, some large. When one happens to me it always seems as though I've broken through to the other side of something with which I didn't even realize I was struggling.

I'm not at ease with living routinely. I need to have some kind of over-arching focus or direction in my life. I can do the mundane stuff comfortably if it's in service of something creative to which I feel dedicated. For the past several years, since my recovery from serious eye surgery, I've been on a path that's brought me full circle back to where my image making journey first began - documentary photography. In the early 1990's, when I walked away from my short catastrophic foray into the corporate world, a seemingly disassociated series of events led to my producing several documentary photographic projects. It's been a long time since I felt that kind of commitment and involvement. Although I've felt the impetus to get out and shoot - which I have been enjoying thoroughly - there's been a bit of unease and underlying doubt about what it is I'm trying to do. Somewhere in the back of my mind is a tiny voice pushing me in a certain direction. When I listen to it, when I get out and shoot the kinds of images that my instinct tells me is what I need to do, I get buzzed. When I do something else, not only do I not feel the buzz, but the images usually bore me to tears as I review them at the end of the day.

As often as has happened in my life, 'things' usually fall into place and eventually everything makes sense. But when I'm going through the process - as I have been for the past year or so - even though I enjoy it -  there's an underlying uneasiness about what the end result might be.

And then eureka - all the 'why's fall into place and make sense. It happened earlier this week. I've been drawn to a few spots in Manhattan to shoot street, one in particular. I've really enjoyed the variety of characters there, but had no clear idea or direction of what I was trying to accomplish, until I had that epiphany. Once I did, ideas were popping like firecrackers. Without having to really think, images fell into an orderly structure that seems to have been, unbeknownst to me, somewhere in the back of my mind all along.

One of my favorite spots is on the corner of Washington St. and 13th St. in the Meat Packing district just south of Chelsea (not the location of my epiphany). There's a biker bar called the Hog and Heifer which caters to some rather 'colorful' characters. Just around the corner on Washington Street there's several trendy bars and bistros that attract a more genteel clientele, and the juxtaposition of the two leads to some interesting contrasts. The shots in my most recent blog post were taken the same afternoon as these - one block apart.

Before/After

On Saturday, which was a gorgeous spring day in New York, I took a walk around the Meat Packing district and the lower end of the High Line. There's a number of trendy hangouts underneath the High Line that are magnets for pretty young women on the hunt. When I walked past this group of young 'uns they looked at me as though I was an old fart with leprosy, I grabbed their expression before I raised the camera to my eye.

Then  a few seconds later, I picked the camera up to recompose and focus, and they gave me this shot when I told them I was shooting a story for a hip magazine about hot spots to meet young women (yeah, I lied. So shoot me).

Expressive Hands

Telling a story is key for me in a street photo. I look for expression, attitude, and gesture in the characters of a scene, and those qualities are most often expressed in the face and hands. If I see a scene unfolding near me, I take a series of shots as it unfolds because the slightest movement of a hand or the tilt of a head can make a big difference in the dynamics of the the shot. 

But then again, luck happens to those who are prepared for it. I do a lot of walking around New York, and take a lot of photos - often shooting from the hip. Sometimes serendipity just happens ..... honest, you can't plan for this.

Flâneur Techniques

Firstly, I found three interesting read today while doing my morning surf. All pertain to photography and in particular street, and all worth a read. The first - Thoughts of a Bohemian - addresses the changing landscape in marketing and controlling the rights of digital images. Second - The New York Times Lens Blog - looks at the varied approaches that France, England, and the USA take to photography and the right to privacy. Third - Ming Thein's blog - considers, with some tongue-in-cheek poetry, why he (and I too) must always have a camera at the ready.

To grow as an artist, craftsman, or whatever you would choose to call a street photographer requires practice. No different from anything else. What we choose to practice determines in large part how we grow and in what direction. When I first studied photography at the New School my instructor, Mario Cabrera, suggested to me that I put aside my whiz-bang-boom SLR with the fancy light meter and zoom lens, and get myself a Leica M4 (no internal light meter), a 35mm lens, and a hand held light meter. He suggested that I pick a spot to plant myself and spend a few hours there watching and measuring the light, and photographing that one spot. Over the course of a month I chose a variety of locations, mostly in Greenwich Village - Sheridan Square in particular - and by the end of the month, after becoming so annoyed with having to measure light with the meter before I picked up the camera, I no longer needed the meter to be able to read the light. And I knew spots around the Village where I could go at a particular time to find a certain kind of person to photograph in a known lighting situation. It's a practice that I indulge in to this day.

On Sunday I was at one of those spots. The sun was blastingly bright, and a good many of the shots I took suffered from lens flare. The challenge for the afternoon was to use the light as a backlight and still get a good exposure of the person(s) walking towards me - their fronts being in shadow. The second shot had big blobs of flare from the aperture blades which I was able to adjust in Lightroom and with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. I would have passed on processing that shot, but with the expression on their faces with their chins up and the wind blowing their hair, it was too good to pass up.