Pedaling Through NYC

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I love biking, though I rarely get to do it in New York City. I spend my summers at my grandfather’s house in the countryside and I bike everywhere during those months, from my friend’s house to the nearest food store, which lies miles away. The feel of the wind on your face and the different sights and smells that you experience cannot be felt anywhere but on a bike. In addition to being enjoyable, biking is also a great way to stay fit; a much more stimulating form of exercise than a treadmill or a stationary bike.
 
Though I have my own bike here in New York, I never use it. I do not feel safe pedaling through the streets on my tiny bike, among reckless drivers in oversized SUVs. On top of this, my dad has many alarming stories of all the injuries he and his friends have sustained while biking in the city. Despite the apparent danger of biking, I have noticed that it has been growing more and more popular in New York over the past few years. Biking is no longer just limited to Central Park and deliverymen and this is what I wanted to capture in my photos.
 
There has been much talk over the past few years of building more bike paths in New York City. The goal is to have them extend all the way throughout Manhattan. There have been efforts in NYC lately to emphasize transportation via bicycle rather than car as part of the budding “green” movement. Lower Manhattan especially seems to have been affected by this cause. When I was taking photos there I noticed that the streets were full of chained up bikes. There were many young people biking on the new paths, schoolbags on their backs. Biking is becoming a “hip” thing now, which means a lot of support from enthusiastic youths in the current efforts for a green revolution.
 
One major issue for me in this project was taking pictures of people on their bikes. I felt very awkward doing this and would therefore jerk away my camera too quickly when snapping pictures of people in order to avoid being seen by them. This resulted in many blurry shots. I definitely missed out on several good pictures due to my hesitation.
 
Initially I did not edit my photos in any way. However I thought the colors in the pictures were very dull and I enhanced them using iPhoto. This did not really alter the pictures too much, it just made some of them lighter and brought out the greens in the park pictures.
 
As I mentioned before, I started out in lower Manhattan taking pictures of people actually using their bikes as a means of transportation. This contrasted with the Central Park photos, where people bike for pleasure or for exercise. I think that I captured a fairly wide range of images. However, I regret my reluctance to photograph people as this was the main element I want to convey in this project: the relationship of New Yorkers to their bicycles.