The Inhabitants of NYC
When I started out my photography project I had no theme set in mind, so I began wandering around the city, taking random pictures of random things, when it came to me. It’s the people that makes NYC so special, but not just the people alone, all living things in it.
Some of these pictures were not put in the slideshow but are some of my favorites from this adventure into the city.
Sunday morning I woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. As I set out to capture the essence of NYC, I grabbed two cameras with me. I’m not quite sure why, I supposed it’s better to be over prepared than under. One is a Nikon Coolpix 5400, a bit on the bulky side, to look “professional” should anyone inquire on why I am taking their pictures. The other: my trusty Samsung S630, an old friend who is used to seeing the bottom of my handbag everyday.
Too afraid to venture into the city and take random pictures by myself, I decided to go with Ernest. We met at 11:30AM and began our adventure at the heart of the city, Time Square, so we would be able to blend in with the tourists. It wasn’t difficult to snap random pictures at skyscrapers and passersby, but we soon realized that it was too crowded to get a decent picture. So we wandered away from the crowd and headed downtown on foot, stopping at random corners, taking random pictures.
I soon realized that I was just taking pictures of the scenery rather than the streets themselves. I lowered my camera and began taking pictures at eye level. Some people ran out of the camera frame, assuming that they were blocking my view, when it was them whom I was trying to capture.
I had to be more subtle and cunning. Since my camera had a two-second delay flash, I knew it must be taken off, because the perfect opportunity will have passed within those two quick seconds, not to mention it was a lot more noticeable. The downside to having no flash was the difficulty of getting a sharp image. So I had to stop every time I wanted to take a picture, which then led to the conclusion that it would be simpler to just take pictures at every corner with a streetlight.
I captured a picture of a guy standing by a telephone booth with an umbrella, but he caught on that I wanted to take a picture of him and started glaring me down, so I snapped the picture quickly and hastily walked away. Another time, when I was trying to scare the pigeons for them to fly away and catch them midair, a street vendor guy began yelling at me. Telling me off and to leave the poor pigeons alone, and proceed to cursing Ernest and me out.
By the time we embarked on the train ride towards the south street ferry my batteries were exhausted. I ran into the nearest Duane Reade and purchased an eight-pack of AA batteries, which my Samsung seemed to eat like water.
On the ferry and the seaport, people were more oblivious to being photographed and I was able widen my variety of frameworks. I felt there was so much potential at the seaport, but without a theme, I felt like I could not go much further. I had nearly a hundred good potential pictures, most of which were unconnected and I was running out of time, memory space, and batteries. Then I decided to be bold and aim for the faces of NYC. I knew that this meant the potential of getting told off yet again, but I decided to go for it. I began walking up to people and snapping their pictures without them realizing. One guy in particular saw it and posed, trying to look sophisticated. I had a decent amount of pictures that I wanted to use before we headed to Chinatown. I wanted to go to Coney Island for the sunset and scenery, but by the time we arrived at Chinatown, it was already dark.
Not to my surprise, people in Chinatown were ten times ruder than any of the others that we’ve encountered. I decided it was futile to attempt to take any more pictures, because it was too dark to go without flash and these people obviously did not want to get involved.
When I arrived home and looked through all my pictures, I fell in love with a few, but I realized I had so many good pictures that were unrelated. I then decided to expand my theme to the Inhabitants of NYC rather than just the people and included in pictures of animals. It’s interesting to see all these different variety of people all around NYC; it’s amazing how diverse we are. I really wish we had more time; these photographers take months and years to complete their series while we only had three weeks. I feel as if my collection is incomplete, but maybe I’ll be able to complete it one day.