A few nice upload photos images I found:
People keep staring at me ... I've got to stop borrowing my kid's bike, and get one of my own.
Image by Ed Yourdon
Note: almost immediately after I uploaded this photo to Flickr, it was published in a Jan 16, 2011 blog titled "New York City: 4 Flickr photos by Ed Yourdon, It's nice here in the sunlight, but it gets awfully cold standing here at night... - (more detail..."
Note: this photo was published in an undated (Jan 16, 2011) Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10025."
Note: I chose this one as my "photo of the day," among the 10 photos that I uploaded on Jan 16, 2011 -- because it reminds me that with street photography, sometimes the things that you don't even see when you're taking the photo turn out to be among the interesting elements of the final photo ... indeed, sometimes they even turn out to be the most important element of the final photo. (Of course, there are times when the "ignored" element of the photo ruin the whole thing, but in many cases you can crop those out of the final version of the photo.)
In this case, I was focusing on the woman (I think) on the tiny bicycle, as she rode south along Broadway and eventually passed by me. I saw her from half a block away, decided almost instantaneously that she represented a potentially interesting picture, and had enough time to get my camera ready and aimed in her general direction. I waited until she got close enough to me, and also until she was sufficiently far away from other distracting elements like the cars and trucks around her, and then snapped this photo. (If I had been using my high-end Nikon D300 or D700, I probably would have taken 3 or 4 photos as she moved past me, but I only had time for one with my compact Canon G12).
Because there were other people moving around, and other potentially interesting scenes presenting themselves, I had no time to look at my camera and see exactly what I had captured with this scene; I figured that I would just look at it after I uploaded it to my computer and then discover whether the photo was interesting and usable, or whether it was blurred or out-of-focus, or whether (as often happens on a busy street like this) a car, taxi, or truck had chosen this precise moment to zoom past me and cut off the picture. But it was fine: reasonably well-focused, reasonably interesting, and reasonably good lighting (actually, the sun was a bit bright and glaring as it sits low in the south sky and glares northward, which explains why the subject is wearing sunglasses).
But what I had not noticed, and/or not paid any attention to, while taking the photo, were the people on the sidewalk. The woman behind the bicycle, bundled up in her black coat and hat, was essentially irrelevant; she was a background detail that did not interfere with, or distract from, the main "focus" of the photo on the bicycle and its rider.
However, the woman to the immediate right of the bicycle was more interesting, and as a happy bit of serendipity, she actually contributed to the photo. I don't think she was looking at me, though her face was pointed in my general direction; instead, I think she was looking at the bicycle as it went past her. She may have just been squinting into the bright mid-day sunlight; but I think the average viewer would conclude that she was looking at -- and either frowning in disapproval, or perhaps frowning in puzzlement -- the bike-rider. And her stride could even imply that she was trying to keep up with the bike-rider ...
Anyway, had she not been there at all, it would still have been an "okay" photo; but with her there, I think I ended up with something far better than would otherwise have been possible -- and, quite honestly, far better than what I deserved. But that's part of the pleasure of street photography: you end up with "gifts" you didn't know you were going to get...
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This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009 and 2010 (as shown in this Flickr set and this Flickr set): 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. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom 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. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
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, 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. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless 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. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past three years, 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. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
Take Two: I feel like I'm going to puke
Image by JenavieveMarie
Two uploads in one day!?
I won't be able to upload tomorrow, and this would have been my photo, this story I'm about to post is worse than the first, so please, if you read it, read the first so you're not lost. It's difficult to post them. I may make them private for only my contacts so... yea... here we go.
Ruined. Completely ruined. My head, my heart, my mind.
This story is out of sync with the actual emotions only because I cannot comprehend the backbreaking pain of them.
So much pain I want to throw up, so much I want to keel over and hug my knees to my pounding chest. Remembering it all kills me, tears me to bits at what once was happy and developed into a living breathing monster.
Love.
A monster.
And so I'll begin again.
With another story, you'll learn to follow the skipping, the jittery feel to this sentence structure.
Take two, different boy.
You know the kind of love you feel for someone you've known your whole life? Someone you admire from far away? I waited fifteen years to tell my neighbor how I felt about him and was shot down immediately.
"Just a sister."
Just a throbbing pain in my chest.
It took me ages to patch that wounded little girlish dream hole. Ages. And he would consistently tear it open. Three year age gap, I didn't think it was too much.
Apparently neither did he when I reached the age of eighteen.
The roughest part of my life he had decided to re-enter. Offer advice, try to get a little closer, talk a little softer, a little sweeter.
And the cement around the hole began to crack and chip and fall away. Fleshy pink skin revealed itself and it began to sting.
Bad news. Bad news. Bad news. You should walk away. You're involved with someone.
But you don't know what you want. You don't know what's going on. He's moving in too close. How did he get this close to your face? How do you stop him? Do you stop him?
A sharp jagged pain tore through my entire being and I winced, shutting my eyes.
He took this as his cue.
The jagged pain turned to coursing lava and burned through my skin melting any preconceived notions I had as a child about how his lips would feel on mine.
Hell. A million demons sang in my head and I cringed at the sound.
Nails on a chalkboard. Screeching, warning. Bittersweet and painful.
The hole was a crater, open wide and pulsing.
Shifting away, I shuddered - that was wrong. The familiarity of the kiss was that of the kiss I had shared during a storm a long time ago. I felt like the tree again, snapped in two by lightning. I was beginning to forget, I was. I really truly was.
And as I looked up into his blue eyes to search for an apology he wouldn't give, I was stung by the sharp realization that it would be no different if his eyes were,
brown.
He was him, he was going to break me, too. Why must everyone go after the most tender parts of me? Gathering my things, I sprinted from the house, hot salty tears streaming down my face, burning, - burning like the demons that were singing to me now.
Awake - nightmares, you've napped for too long.
Orchidea
Image by bulliver
Uploaded this one from the archives, because I wanted talk about this tool I found, Tafoni’s Flickr Favorite’s Explorer. It organizes all your favorites based on username. I found it interesting to see which contacts/users I favorited the most over the last year of me using flickr. Some were quite surprising, some not so much. As of right now, I have favorited 1390 photos by 292 different photographers.
Here's my personal top ten contacts whose photos I have favorited:
sahlgoode, 137 favorites.
photofinish2009, 78 favorites.
Witty Nickname, 64 favorites.
one42chrisp, 60 favorites.
TIA International Photography, 47 favorites.
Sekkle, 43 favorites.
BCOL CCCP, 36 favorites.
Nelson-77, 33 favorites.
Stella Blu, 33 favorites.
LUMIN8, 25 favorites.
Probably not surprising, these folks have all been my contacts since close to the beginning.
One thing is for sure, it was great to see my favorites grouped all together, and it sorely reminds me that I need to look at these again, and more often. After all, I didn't favorite them for nothing! Thanks for all the great pictures everyone!
