Awakenings

Street photography is a category of documentary photography that features its subjects in various locations in the public domain. I tried to stretch this definition of street photography to not only fit people and objects on the street, but objects and people in restaurants, hookah bars, parties, and even my rooftop. Along the way I faced several challenges, particularly taking a theme and then more importantly, developing that theme to create a message. There were also other issues, including technical camera settings, missing shots, and probably the worst, garnering enough courage to take close up shots of random people. Despite the challenges I faced, the end result of my flirtation with street photography has left me with some powerful pictures that I can be proud of.

The first roadblock in street photography is simultaneously the easiest and hardest to overcome – developing the idea. What does one take pictures of, especially when the pictures must have a unifying theme? I fumbled with this question for some time, but I was surprised to realize that the answer was simply to go out and take pictures. I shot anything and everything that looked interesting. I took pictures of furniture put out on the side walk, of bicyclists, strollers, and scooters, of people with red lipstick, stripes, and crutches, and of flags waving in the air. Soon, when I looked at my pictures, I saw that there was indeed a common theme behind it.

The common theme of my project revolves around smoke, cigarettes, and the people who smoke cigarettes. Before this project, I never realized how crowded the streets of New York City were with smokers. They were very easy to find – usually prowling the corners of streets and buildings – since New York City has banned smoking inside public institutions. My first form of inspiration struck me when I visited my rooftop. I had no idea what I was going to do up there, and the fact that it was drizzling did not help much. However, despite the fog and mist, I could not miss the dark black smoke that poured out of what seemed to be chimney tops. Looking at the photo, and the way I framed it, the gray cylindrical chimney tops reminded me of cigarettes. From there, the rest was history.

Now that I had an idea and theme, the next challenge was to find suitable objects to photograph. I did not want to simply take pictures of people smoking. That would get boring and all the pictures would nearly be the same. My passion was to capture the smoking culture in New York and the different types of people who smoked. Therefore, I had to find the right type of people and the right type of circumstances or scenarios. For instance, one of my favorite photographs is of a musician sitting and smoking on the sidewalk with his back leaning against a closed shutter. I knew he was a musician because I was with my band and we were outside of a rehearsal studio where we normally practice. The musician caught my attention because of his pose and his attitude. He looked indifferent in his small t-shirt despite the nasty howling wind. It looked almost as if he were looking far away and lost in his own world of music. It’s hard to come up with pictures like these. I found out that it is all about chance and being at the right place at the right time.

One of those right places was not very far from Baruch, and I found it much easier to overcome my shyness of snapping strangers. Outside of the Baruch vertical campus, I took numerous shots of students smoking in-between classes. I did not see many of them react, and that’s because the trick was to take pictures from the side. I didn’t walk up and flash them with my camera but rather I stood aloof, almost as if I were not taking their picture. This technique helped in many situations. Throughout the entire project, only once did someone probably ask me what I was doing, and I was quick to explain my project. Luckily I did not run into any real conflict during this project.

I learned many things from my street photography project that could not be taught in a class room setting. I learned about technical stuff such as choosing different contrast levels, saturation levels, exposure levels and gray tone or sepia colors. More significantly, the project provided me with an instinct or natural feeling about photography. I could feel that a certain object or person was right for a photo. Of course I took many different shots, but I really feel like this project developed and honed my eye for pictures. On a real life practical level, it also helped me deal with people and strangers on the street. I enjoyed this project and love the pictures I have produced.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm and is filed under