Time and again, I am drawn back to a particular set of photos in my collection - a set of some 30 or so photos I had curated into a special folder, all taken on a day trip to New York City a couple of years ago. If you love street photography this story may sound familiar. It was one of those days that you know you will cherish. A day you clicked the shutter away because there were so many photo ops at every street corner, every alley. A day like any other day, tourists and locals out in force to sample the city's eclectic facade, have tea and lattes at sidewalk cafes. Yellow cabs, cyclists, pizza delivery man, cops, homeless people make up familiar Big Apple landscape. On that day I had a 35mm film camera and a dSLR, one with a medium telephone lens and the other a wide angle. I shot a roll of black and white and may be 100 or so frames on my dSLR. As the day went on, I became more excited as I knew I had many shots in my cameras I would cherish for a long time. I did not exactly stake out at street corner or city bench, I was seeing the city through my lens and took the shots when the image moved me. I walked a great deal, spending the entire day in the city on foot. When dusk set in, I hurried to Grand Central Station to catch the bus for the return journey home.
IT was a journey I started out the same way I returned, I took the daily commuter bus early morning. When I arrived at Grand Central Station and stepped off the bus, the air felt dense, mist descending on my nose. I was exhilarated, happy to finally be able to spend a day in the city with my cameras. As I walked the streets, I stepped in and out of the long shadows cast by the morning light on the towering skyscrapers, stopping from time to time to take a picture. The view in front of my eyes was a scene reminiscences of the black and white photography of New York city, minus the horse carriages of Alfred Stieglitz and André Kertész.
See more of my NYC photos in a photo montage video I created for Youtube
A Day in the Big Apple... I finally put this video together, a video made from a collection of photographs I took in New York City, downtown lower Manhattan more specifically, the few square blocks around the World Trade Center Memorial Site and South Street Seaport. The trip took place in 2011, on a wintry day. I walked and stopped to photograph whenever and wherever a scene spoke to me.
Having a camera, being a photographer is a privilege. Dorothea Lange once said - To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically
unattainable. But when the great photographs are produced, it will be
down that road. But I have only touched it, just touched
it.
On that day, I remember a famous quote from Ansel Adams - “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”
I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoy taking my long walk in the Big Apple that day
