Archive for September, 2012

Flamenco


Image by shiladsen
The first day ended with a "welcome" capped by live Flamenco. The dancer was hearing-impaired, She must have felt the beat through the wooden floor. Amazing!

She signed a powerful recitative at the end of the show. It was captivating.

Amusing anecdote: the lights were out in the audience, and at the start of the show one hundred laptops shone like little light bulbs. As things heated up (or more cynically – batteries drained), laptop light bulbs extinguished.

People-watching at Starbucks


Image by Ed Yourdon
I always walk past this Starbucks, between 94th and 95th on Broadway, when I walk down to my neighborhood gym. There are always people sitting at the window — sometimes working on a laptop, sometimes reading a paper, sometimes carrying on a conversation with their friends, and sometimes staring out the window at me.

In addition to the people, you’re also seeing the reflection of the stores and buildings across the street, behind me. As for me: I cleverly positioned myself right in front of the vertical steel bar in the middle of the picture, so you wouldn’t see my reflection…

Note: this photo was published in an Aug 2009 Mahalo blog titled "Advantages of Steel Buildings."

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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

IMG_7376


Image by shiladsen
The first day ended with a "welcome" capped by live Flamenco. The dancer was hearing-impaired, She must have felt the beat through the wooden floor. Amazing!

She signed a powerful recitative at the end of the show. It was captivating.

Amusing anecdote: the lights were out in the audience, and at the start of the show one hundred laptops shone like little light bulbs. As things heated up (or more cynically – batteries drained), laptop light bulbs extinguished.

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