My theme was “Preparing for Christmas along 5th Avenue” mostly from about 59th street to 50th street and over to Rockefeller Center. I started by taking the R train to 59th street and 5th Avenue and walked along 5th Avenue, taking pictures of Christmas related scenes and objects until I got to Rockefeller Center because I knew I wanted a picture of the plaza tree. My slideshow shows that some places are already decorated and ready, but some are not. The captions on each one hope to slightly carry on a story, where some photos are bunched together and the captions attempt to bind them to make more sense.
I chose the Christmas in progress theme because I knew that it was still too early for a full Christmas theme since not all the decorations are out yet, and because Christmas is my favorite holiday. I wanted to capture getting ready from the very beginning of the slideshow and wanted to end with it. That is why the candy canes and the unlit tree pictures are placed where they are.
After the first picture, I wanted to show the grander decorations on buildings and in storefronts such as Tiffany and Cartier – places that decorate every year. I consider these the grander decorations because all of those stores sell expensive jewelry and watches, making them very luxurious. But I also wanted to make the slideshow more personal, showing the actual streets from holiday shopping bags, to homeless people to even street signs. I also thought that this would be a refreshing break from just seeing buildings. I tried to be creative and show a variety of ways that 5th Avenue was preparing rather than just trees and lights, so the sequence of the shopping bag, homeless man and street sign illustrate that. After that, I wanted to focus on a little more traditional decorations with the reindeer and red ornaments on The Peninsula. But again, I wanted to contrast the grand and the ordinary, so this picture is juxtaposed right before the picture with the two simple lit, small trees.
Continuing that traditional theme, I definitely had to include Rockefeller Plaza. The angels shown are lit every year and brighten the plaza. But the tree completes my theme of Christmas in progress since you can still see the scaffolding up even though the star is placed on top. Throughout the presentation, I tried to show both the grand and ordinary elements of decorating for Christmas and I placed the pictures to show that – from the luxury of Tiffany, to a simple man asking for money in a Santa hat.
Some of the challenges I faced were trying to show Christmas in progress in a variety of ways. I didn’t just want to show storefronts, or just evergreens or just lights, I really wanted a mix of everything from simple to complex. Finding all those was pretty difficult, especially because it was cold out. But it forced me to be a little creative in what I was seeing. I wasn’t expecting to take a picture of a Uniqlo shopping bag, but I saw it on the street and knew I wanted it for the slideshow. Asking a lady to take a picture of her bag was a little awkward. But she liked the idea and let me take a photo. Getting a decent shot of the homeless man was also a challenge because I didn’t want to have that awkward encounter. So for that picture, I needed to wait for a while for a clear opportunity between people walking by so that I could shoot the picture without him noticing me. Shooting clear pictures was also somewhat of a challenge because 5th Avenue is crowded. Some of my shots were ruined because people walked in at the last moment. That got annoying because of the weather. But even though it was cold, I took a lot of shots and even choosing which twelve to put in was hard. It required a lot of thought but in the end, I like my theme and the flow of my photos.
