I was in Coney Island on October 11th. I was alone, without the intention of swimming or playing games or riding rollercoasters. I was there because I was in the process of gathering research for a subway ethnography which I had to write for anthropology, a process which involved riding a subway line from it’s first stop to the last. Coney Island is the last stop on the F line, which is the line I chose to research. By the time I arrived in Coney Island, it had been roughly two and a half hours since the train departed from Jamaica, and I was desperate for some fresh air. I stepped out of the train and immediately felt and smelt the sea breeze. It was incredibly refreshing, and so I followed it toward the boardwalk, and then even further to the pier. Engulfed by wind chill and afternoon sunlight, I walked all the way down to the end of the pier. It was reinvigorating to be surrounded by nothing but the natural elements – water, air, and light – after having been drowned in the industrial anti-nature of the New York City subway system. I turned to the shoreline, and I knew I had to capture this moment of beautiful juxtaposition.
When taking this picture, I made sure to keep in mind the placement of the horizon line and where the focus of the photograph would be. Following the rule of thirds, I placed the shoreline, the tall buildings specifically, in one of the focal points (the top left). I wanted to emphasize the presence of the city because, although I took the picture mainly to capture the feeling of being overwhelmed by nature, I could not forget that this was still, inescapably, New York. However, by filling most of the frame with the image of the sea and the sky, I feel I still captured the feeling of nature. Most of the photograph is water because, when standing on the pier, I was literally surrounded by it, and I was in awe at the immense volume of it. I also made sure to include the sky in a significant portion of the photograph because it was beautiful as well, and lent a type of symmetry that balance very well with the water below it. The horizon is placed in the higher third of the photograph to give the illusion of movement, specifically toward the shoreline. This short “getaway” to Coney Island was much needed after hours underground in the subway, but the city is still, for the time being, home, and we must always return home.
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