This series reflects a couple of recurring themes. One concerns mobile technology - subjects using cell phones tend to be distracted, walk slower and are easier to photograph. There is also a connection/disconnection feeling to cell phone photographs. Or ones where subjects are texting or reading their BBs. A BB documenting the use of another and then another BB.
A second theme is my taking taking multiple pictures of a subject. As a rule this only can happen when a subject is standing (or sitting) or when I am following a subject, like this example. "Head on" photos are "one of a kind" interactions usually. "Ships in the night" situations. I do like cliches....
Third, it is interesting how the BB reacts to differing levels of light - the top picture has the most diffused light and it looks most like a "photograph." Somehow I was able to prevent the BB from jiggling which also makes for a more traditional picture. By the last photo in the series the subject was in a dark area and there fluorescent and dim lighting affect tone and quality.
This bottom photo was taken as I approached Track 20 to board my evening train. Shot like most from the hip, I estimated when subjects would enter the frame. I was a little early clicking, to fortunate result.
Shooting from the hip is harder in portrait mode since there is smaller window for error.
The BB lens does wonder to the human figure in portrait mode - the wide angle elongates the torso or legs, but not to the the extent of an El Greco.
I close this post with some final Thursday night photographs, the first as my train approached Bellmore (a composed image, not shot from the hip) and then the nightlife at the station. Here we have commuters waiting to head to Manhattan and a small collection of cars in the station parking lot (again, the last two being composed in the viewfinder)....
Have a great Sunday.
3 comments:
The woman in the wild print dress, 3rd from the bottom, is FABulous!!!
I could swear you stalked my daughter, but she's in Texas, so it's impossible. A nice little thrill of recognition, though. There are some great shots in here, some of them almost nostalgic in their expression. A very defused style of expressionism, bordering on Vincent van Gogh's style of painting and colorful too in all the right shades for these kinds of light conditions. There's an ungraspable sense of homesickness in some of the shots, dating them back to the 30's and to prewar America. I would not pick all of them for an exhibition, but a lot of them, yes. They're worth examining over and over again.
Thanks for sharing your process.
I can sense an inter-galactic kind of mystery in the first blue series the way you describe BB to BB connection.
As though the BB has an extra sensory bit, which it just might, and you working with your BB and invisibly connecting with these ships in the night... a sci-fi story in pictures. There is a sense that you are following your subjects in to find more of yourself.
BTW, I like these blue ones. THey would also be appropos to Marine Day,which, as you said, was yesterday. Thinking no one would notice, I slipped my Eel Day post in on what was actually Umi-no Hi
(Ocean, or Marine Day).
Did anyone ever tell you you'd make a good detective?!
I like cliches too,
tou-chè, with a backwards accent.
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