Garbage In NYC

[photosmash=]

At any one moment there are thousands of bags of garbage, trashcans, and dumpsters strayed across New York City. Endless piles of black bags pile up along the sidewalk, green cans stand at every corner, and dumpsters stalk the city’s alleyways. Even though garbage is all around us people try to avoid it at all costs.  Whenever a tourist, a magazine, or a native describes NY they almost always leave out the huge role that garbage plays in the city’s look, smell, and sound. The glistening bags, the roar of the garbage trucks, and the garbage’s subtle smells are ignored or avoided by the majority of pedestrians. This is why I chose garbage as my theme; in order portray garbage in a new light, to show people the hidden beauty of the most reviled and most omnipresent substance in the city.

In order to kill two birds with one stone I decided that I would take most of my pictures of garbage while I walked from Baruch to Grand Central, so that I could take the seven train home. I would look down every street, and if I found an interesting trashcan or pile of garbage I would snap some pictures using different angles. I took some other pictures in the 17 Lex building at Baruch, Flushing, Grand Central Station, and my house. It turned out that only the pictures I took in the 17 Lex building would make the cut, along with the rest of the pictures I took on my walk.

I ended up taking over one hundred photos of garbage. What followed was a very selective process of elimination. I chose the photos, which I thought, had the most creative potential. After the selection process was over I had fourteen raw photos. I took these photos and edited them all extensively. Since my theme was more about garbage in general, and not a particular style I was able to change up the style of my photos. I knew from the start that I wanted a photo with a really high aspect ratio. I think that two of my photos succeed at this. The first thing I did with each photo was crop it, so that I could get the best image out of the picture I wanted. Then I would adjust the contrast, saturation, exposure, definition, etc. I would adjust the photo until I achieved the desired affect. This varied from photo to photo; sometimes I wanted the whole photo to be saturated with color, while for other photos I would leave no color at all.

After I edited each photo I looked all of them over and then decided which two I would delete, since I would only have twelve photos in the final theme. I chose the captions using the same method as someone who takes a Rorschach test, by using the first thing that came into my mind. What I tried to accomplish, as a whole, was to illustrate how garbage was everywhere, as well as to show that, sometimes, garbage can look kind of nice.