The Intervention

44th St and Eleventh Avenue, New York

Contravening the street photography ethics previously mentioned, I took a few shots of this group as I passed, drawn by some of the dramatic gesturing. I heard the man on the left saying he wouldn’t continue the conversation with the participation of the man on the right and the woman’s rejoinder was that he would remain part of the conversation since he also cared about the baseball-cap man. Of course, I have no idea what they were really discussing but it was impassioned.

Fence and Wall

Eleventh Avenue, New York

One thing I was looking for on this trip was back plates for additional images in my Word series, so I took lots of pictures of walls and architecture, not all so fascinating, but you may see them again if they do become backgrounds to future creations.

Birdman

Back from my travels. Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting snapshots from my travels in New York and Chicago. This was a trip to catch up with friends and family and take care of NY personal business. So it was extremely fulfilling in those areas, not so productive on the photography front.

57th St and Broadway, New York

My current ethics of photography do not really include taking shots of people in the street without their consent and/or collaboration. In this case, I crouched down in front of him so he knew I was there and tourists were clearly photographing him with their phones from bad vantage points, and he was not complaining so I took it he was tacitly consenting. I will probably post a few other street shots over the coming days from this trip that contravene this personal rule of mine, where, for one reason or another, I felt taking the shot was validated in some way – we shall see…

Trees and Chairs

West 57th Street, New York

In this waltz through the archive of September pictures we’ve now arrived at 2009, a mere 14 years ago. In the course of this archival stroll we’ve advanced from a 5MP digicam to a 6MP DSLR (Konica Minolta 7D) and now to the 12MP Nikon D300. At the time, each one felt an important step, now I find it hard to pay attention to each new year’s technical refinements.

Netting

Poughkeepsie, New York

From September 2008. I just finished reading Teju Cole’s Blind Spot a week or so ago. This feels like the kind of picture that might have been found in that book, though it lacks his mordant, poetic observations.