El Presidente

I had what feels was my first genuine "decisive moment" in the aftermath of the 2016 US Election. I was walking in mid-town Manhattan yesterday and admittedly preoccupied and not paying too much attention to my surrounding.  I was head down on my phone trying to find my next meeting location when I noticed the foot traffic slowing dramatically and there was a noticeably large police presence.  I looked up and realized I was standing outside of Trump Tower, the home of the new President Elect Donal Trump.  

I whipped out my camera and just started shooting as much as possible while the police kept moving me down the street.  After downloading my photos into Lightroom, I noticed one photo in particular.  In front of the Trump Tower sign, a public bus was driving by.  One of the signs on the bus was partially obscured and the statement "this is us" appeared.  Apropos given the contentious election and state of affairs in the US.  And it dawned on me that the decisive moment can happen after the fact.  I've spent so much time talking about my lack of a decisive moment and I need to learn that I just need to shoot.  And shoot often.

I wandered further down the block and snapped a bunch of photos of people commemorating this moment in history.  Protestors, the press, and people snapping selfies.  I decided not to edit and keep these photos raw - including those that are off focus - to try to add some narrative around the chaos around me.  I was being pushed by the crowd and by the police to keep moving.

I crossed the street and noticed a group of officers standing on the corner while maintaining their attention to one person in particular.  It was a girl struggling to light the American Flag on fire.  it was raining and she was obviously frustrated.  At one point she asked for my help and I refused. Instead - I took out my camera and shot photos of her.  The narrative wasn't lost on me - she was trying to express her frustration at what she perceived was the election of a person she did not support and in her anguish, was trying to do something drastic.  And the rain prevented her from lighting the flag.  Much like those who are frustrated at the result of the election, factors outside of her control prevented her from expressing herself.  I wasn't able to see if she eventually was successful or if the police arrested her, etc.  But it was an interesting day.

Happy Girl

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Lego Store cures everything

Hua Hin

I had a relatively free day last Saturday so I booked a car to drive me south of Bangkok to Hua Hin.  Not much street opportunities so I made the best and have selected these photos for my week 8 assignment.

I'm not dead yet

Ok.  So, i've taken a bit longer on my week 8 assignment (45 days) but I have a valid excuse.  I've been traveling a bunch for work and have left the camera in my bag.

I'm in Bangkok for the next four days and will try to shoot as much as possible.  Will participate/finish this challenge once and for all but may need to change my final assignment.  Stay tuned.

Focus

Week 7 Assignment was to talk around a neighborhood for an hour.  Take a photo of something.  Wait 5 minutes and take another photo.

I was in the city last week and wanted to walk around on the west side for this assignment.  I need to play with my focus settings.  My camera is super fast (A6300) but I can't seem to capture what I want in focus in the necessary time I need.  Results are sub par for moving subjects.  But here are the pics.

Moo - send me better settings.  I'm at Aperture priority, back button autofocus.  Honestly, last week's assignment felt a little stale/repetitive and lacked any sort of creative element that was new and needed practical application.  But I guess I'm over basics and just need to shoot like crazy.

Mexico

Some photos from Summit Series Mexico.  Played around a bunch with exposure.

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Hi Moo

Moo is my first out of two regular readers.  He's complaining about me slacking off here with the lack of new posts.

Hi Moo.

Last week's assignment (week 6 of 9) involved taking a  picture of someone without their permission and explain to them why I took the shot, then offer to send it to them.  I actually set out this time to "mark" a person but missed my decisive moment.  

I first found this older gentleman walking in town with a cane.  His hair is whispy and he was wearing a long winter coat on a 70F spring day.  I tried to get in front of him the first photo and he turned around.

I missed the decisive moment.

My second "mark" was much easier.  A girl sat pensively on the street smoking a cigarette.  When I first took her picture, I wanted to capture the fact that she was lost in her own thoughts.  I also was initially drawn to her hair and patterned shirt.  Part of the assignment was to explain to her why I took her picture and share it with her.  She agreed to let me text it to her and to be honest, I thought the picture was rather average.

After I uploaded the photo, I discovered other elements to the photo that work quite well.  The left to right pattern of black/white, blue/white, white works really well.  I sat and thought about this and the lesson I'm teaching myself is that in street photography, things may not feel perfect in the moment but was is discovered after lookng at a photo in post production is part of the appeal.  I can discover something much greater after the fact.  New elements, new styles, new patters, etc.  The analysis of photos after they have been shot is an aspect of street photography that is really enjoyable.  Seeking emotion, movement, patterns, meanings in photos is why I love this genre.  The search for these hidden/secondary meanings and how individuals might interpretate a photo differently determines whether or not the photo is "excellent".  I also realized something.  The decisive moment doesn't need to be freezing a moving target into time. I can capture sometihng that is stationary that still has meaning and intent.

It leads me to the assigned readings.  I really enjoy looking at street photography.  The candid nature is awesome.

That's Life - An Indian Street Photographer journal makes me miss and want to be in Asia.  Vibrant colors, energetic streetlife - you can almost smell the spices and feel the energy.  You can check it all out here:  http://www.thatslife.in/

I'm in Mexico this week.  I will definitely be brining my camera.

Bye Moo

14:23

Week 5 Assignment - Stand at a busy intersection for 20 minutes, don't move, and shoot anyone that walks up to you.

I ran out of battery power at 14:23 into my 20:00 session.  Rookie mistake.

A couple of observations: People really don't pay attention

• Because folks don't pay attention, I can get a lot closer than most of these photos.
• I need to be quicker at focusing and taking the picture.
• The decisive moment is hard to capture

Here are my photos from this week in all their unedited glory.  I like three - the child looking at the statue was completely unaware of me taking his photo.  The other is the crooked photo of the blond businesswoman I snapped without the viewfinder.  The last is the juxtaposition of the tall african american girl standing next to to the shorter blonde girl.

Shameless

I now have my first follower.  Welcome to my biggest fan - my wife.

This week's assignment - approach someone on the street, take their picture without their permission, say thank you and waive.  Again - I think I cheated a bit.  The more interesting characters I'm drawn to are probably the ones a little more edgier and I'm fairly safe in this little town of Princeton.  I am thinking more about this genre in general and have become somewhat introspective regarding the emotional connection to the action of taking a street photograph.

My two photos were taken with the comfort of a wingman.  I was walking through town with my friend James and told him what I wanted to do in terms of this assignment.  Having him there was a bit of an icebreaker and long term, I will need to do this on my own.

On one hand, shooting in NYC can be edgy at times but also fairly easy given the massive amount of movement, people, and just general energy.  Sure, I might get yelled at for taking a photo, but more than likely people will just shrug me off.  Because of this, I really enjoyed the required readings and videos this week.  The two video clips this week were stylistically different in terms of approach.  

Bruce Gilden is an in your face street photographer with a flash.  Ballsy. 

Joe Wigfall shoots without the view finder.  From his hip.  

I'm going to shoot both styles but feel like something up close with a viewfinder is ultimately where I will land.

Here are the three photos I took this week to complete the assignment

Cool color juxtaposition

Cheated - guy wanted me to take his photo.

Thinking more about my upcoming photo essay and the idea came from my wife.  The purest form of street photography, I'm learning, is to have a child like mind in terms of curiosity.  To just shoot something because it looks interesting.  To shoot something without fear of reprisal, of criticisms, or rejection.  

My daughter is really into photography.  My essay will be a joint one with her.  I want to see the streets through a child's eye.  Where she shoots, I will shoot.  And that will be my photo essay. Will be awesome.

My Indecisive Moment

I am lost with this week's assignment.  I call it my indecisive moment.  After reading about juxtaposition and being enameled at the examples in the assigned reading, I set about to tour the best small city in America to find the perfect sign and seek out the decisive moment when something ironic would magically appear before me.

What a dud.  I couldn't find a decent sign.  I settled in on the fact that I started to observe lots of dads pushing strollers around town.  Since it's Mother's Day next weekend, I noticed the storefronts started to market to the impending holiday.  What better way to capture some sort of juxtaposition than to find a dad pushing a stroller in front of a "mom's rule" sign.

Never happened.  I waited outside for three days in a row.  When I did see a group of 6 dudes and one pushing a stroller walking down the street, I missed the decisive moment because I was around the corner grabbing coffee.  So I settled on this shitty fly by of a dad and a middle school student.  

To try to make up my pathetic attempt at this assignment, I tried to practice stealth photography of two individuals in town.  Again - not close enough.  So, back to the drawing board for this week.  

On a brighter note, I'm becoming more familiar with Lightroom thanks to my buddy moo.  All these cool filters - I think I'll be with this hobby for a while. 

Planning

It’s been a busy week of reading, demoing lenses, and experimenting with some photos this week.

Week 2 syllabus detailed a few articles to read, the purchase of my first real photography book, and a field assignment that I felt would come easily to me.  So let’s get that out of the way first.

The assignment asks the student to “have a conversation with a stranger and ask them for permission to take their photo.”   I was not at the least bit intimidated by this.  My work requires a lot of professional networking, interfacing with many different people across the startup ecosystem including entrepreneurs, investors, the press, and a I also do a lot of public speaking. I find that networking and having general introductory conversations with folks comes naturally to me.  So I was able to go downstairs to my local coffee shop this morning and after grabbing a table, I quickly chatted up this lovely couple.  

Meet Louis and Jan.  40 year residents of Princeton.  Louis is a retired learning disability specialist and former professional at a local university.  Jan is a retired radiologist.  They have two kids who are grown, one is a researcher at the Brookings Institute and the other a lecturer at NYU.  I feel like I cheated a bit with this assignment not only because it was an easy conversation to initiate, but I was able to explain to parents of academics that I was completing an assignment and as part of it, I requested a picture.  Easy. 

The photo wasn’t the greatest because of the hard shadow but I accomplished the assignment. The nature of street photography that is most intimidating is not asking permission from someone to take their picture. It is awkward, intimidating, stressful to take a candid photo of someone in public.  I was in NYC yesterday and tried to take a few but you can see I am far away from my subjects.  I’m going to have to overcome my fears to really get in and take advantage of this genre.

On to the reading assignments.  We were asked to read a few pages out of Looking at Photographs. There were two pages and accompanying photos that stand out to me as I consider this journey:

Robert Capa, 1944

The first photograph (above) and passage to read is “Collaborator, Chartres. 1944” by Robert Capa, a Hungarian photographer who shot a lot of pictures in Europe before, during, and after World War II.  In this photo, we can see a French woman, head shaven, who is publicly ridiculed for loving and bearing the child of a German soldier.  What is disturbing is the smiles amongst the crowd and a mob-like glee they take in publicly shaming this woman.  The passage in the reading resonates with me during this selfie, instagramed, snapchat culture.

 “One of the interesting things about photography is the fact that its records of our selves and our works so often do not correspond to our mental images:  The photographs make our waistlines look thick, and our postures slovenly, and our house graceless and ill-proportioned.  Generally we assume that the difference between our expectation and the camera’s evidence is the result of some kind of photographic aberration.  We call it distortion an preserve our faith in the validity of our mental image.  Often we are right to do so, for the camera records many unintelligent, insignificant, and circumstantial kinds of of truth.  sometimes, however, we can learn from photographs that things were not as we thought they were."

Guilty as charged.  I’ve become preconditioned to Instagram and VSCO filters.  And it’s because the raw, unprocessed imperfect feel to street photographs is what is drawing me to this new hobby and to participating in this course, I’m going to do my best to adhere to these principals and capture imperfect, CANDID, non rehearsed moments.

Another passage from the reading assignment sums it up best:

“A photographer’s best work is, alas, generally done for himself."

So in that vain, I don’t care if anyone reads this blog, comments or likes my photos.  I’m not even going to add a mailing list.  Because this is for me, not you.  And my photos will be imperfect, and scary, and stressful.  And that’s ok. 

Game On

"Is my light on?" - me at 13,500 feet before every jump when I was a former skydiver and videographer

Ok - with my unboxed A6300 in hand, I’m now more than ever interested in photo-blogging and street photography.  This is really born out of my latest appreciation for art - photography to be specific.  I’ve been following food, plating, coffee, and travel feeds on Instagram and many of you know that I’ve attempted my own little DoF/Bokehlicious pics of favorite coffee shops, dishes, etc.  That all changed when I bought my 35mm prime + A6000. And now, my friend Mike has been shooting some abandoned warehouses.  I need a new hobby.

So I started Eric Kim’s open source 10 week workshop: "All the World's Stage: Introduction to Street Photography".  One of the requirements is that students build and maintain a blog.  So apologies for boring all of you the next 10 weeks.

Of all the articles I’ve read in the first week syllabus, “Street Photography Pie" by Nick Turpin is the most interesting.  But his other article, "Undefining Street Photography”, captures the essence of what I want to explore.  That is, candid photos are the very essence of photography and everything else is a extension and specific genre. 

"Now I understand that ‘Street Photography’ is just ‘Photography’ in its simplest form, it is the medium itself, it is actually all the other forms of photography that need defining, landscape, fashion, portrait, reportage, art, advertising….these are all complicating additions to the medium of Photography, they are the areas that need to be defined, ring fenced and partitioned out of the medium of ‘Street Photography’.

When a child picks up a camera and pushes the button that simple spontaneous image is a Street Photograph, it is, first of all, a raw reaction to the scene in front of it, a person, a car, a color. That primitive urge to react, to make a picture is at the heart of Street Photography beyond any other area of picture making, it comes before any other agenda."

I can certainly say I’ve now noticed ads are also staged/meant to look candid.  But the candid nature of street photography is both intimidating and exciting at the same time.  I’ll start on the small street of my hometown (Princeton, NJ) but I look forward to continuing this wherever I travel.  

For prosperities sake, you can see my previous uneducated attempts via my Instagram Feed.  

It’s go time.