I trudged outside about 2am last night with a tripod and a camera in a plastic bag for these shots. The exposure was about 10 seconds and there was a wonderfully surprising effect that I hadn’t counted on, which was tree limbs blowing in the wind and blurring, while the heavier branches remained still, making for a somewhat surreal scene.
When I began toning the photo to fix the orange light cast by the street lights, I stopped here when the photo took on a pinkish hue, which reminds me of the Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto, Japan.
Taken about 2 am on a tripod in Irvington New York, where more than 18 inches of snow fell.
Until recently I enjoyed a career as a visual journalist at a newspaper. I have watched over the past few years how newspapers have had to change and adapt while at the same time being behind the curve and losing ground daily in a rapidly evolving industry. As the business end of journalism has changed, the journalists themselves have had to make substantial adaptations in the way they gather and share news.
Joe Grimm made a point that, through my experience so far in my life after newspapers, is becoming all to clear.
Where are the opportunities? As I look into 2010 and beyond, I see these trends: More of us will have to be much more entrepreneurial and independent. We may need to cobble together a living out of several smaller jobs. We may have to start companies that sell content or products. More companies will seek to speak directly to audiences and will hire journalists into their non-journalistic organizations.
As I have mentioned in this blog before, I have all sorts of little schemes and grand plans running around in my head to try to make a living being creative. And I coincidentally launched one of them today. I placed a button in the side bar in this blog to try to sell some of my paintings. Today I posted four, and it was a quick and dirty job. I hope to have lots of work there at varying prices, and I also plan to on adding post cards and high quality archival prints. Eventually I will be sporting a nice PayPal shopping cart, but for now if any one out there is interested in purchasing any of my work, you will have to do it the old fashioned way and contact me by email.
While working at my last newspaper job, I got wind of a day-long multimedia seminar being held for the photo department. I was tipped off by a photographer on staff and I finagled my way in.
Few people there knew that I worked as a photographer when I was in college. I went to the Northern Star shortly after classes started freshman year and worked there till I graduated.
When it came time to decide if I was to be an artist or a photojournalist, my decision was easy. After photographing a 19 year dying (after collapsing) in DuSable Hall, I broke down crying in the stairwell before taking more pictures as they brought his body out. I knew then that this wasn’t my first choice for a career. But I loved taking pictures and I worked for the student newspaper till I graduated.
For years I worked as a graphic artist at newspapers while my old 35 mm Nikons collected dust.
But the day I sat in this seminar listening to Brian Storm (of Media Storm), it sparked a fire in me to take pictures again. So I bought a digital camera and an audio recorder. When the idea of this project came to me I was ecstatic because it gave purpose to a revived passion. And while the Internet has indirectly cost me my job it has also opened new avenues for creativity. I didn’t have to sell this project to anyone or convince anyone that it was worthy of space on the world wide web. I just started working on it and and sharing it with whom ever cared to look and listen.
These are the two latest photo essays that I have done for this project.
She described him as a young thin Japanese man with a heavily accented speaking voice. But she said if you came across him playing in the subway and only heard his voice rising above the crowd, you would swear he was an older African American man from the deep south.
Key holds down a full-time day job and takes the day off to rest on Thursdays so that he can perform four hours or more well into the night on the L Train, First Avenue platform.
He performs on a long wooden waiting bench on the platform right in the midst of passengers. He doesn’t perform during the summer because he says people can get irritable in the heat and “playing in the subways is like playing in a battlefield, you never know what’s going to happen.”
When I entered the subway at 10:30 one evening, I didn’t know what to expect from Key and I certainly didn’t know what to expect from the late night crowds on on the platform. Nervously I descended into the subway . . . in the distance I could hear a harmonica and a guitar. And then there was this wailing of the blues resonating through the tunnels . . .
A couple of years ago I found myself struggling to find inspiration to paint.
Then one day as I was passing through Penn Station I came upon the cellist Ming Jun playing in the crowed station. Being moved by his music I scooted up close to enjoy his performance. It was there that I had a rush of emotions when the idea first flooded into my mind to do a series of photographs and paintings about street musicians.
Initially I tried to speak with the cellist but I found it difficult communicating with him since English is not his native tongue. I figured I would go home and try to find him on the internet and send him an email to ask permission to photograph him one day.
This search lead me to Natalia Paruz’s blog, The Saw Lady’s Blog which chronicles her life as a musical saw player and subway performer.
I sent her an email and she ageed to allow me to photograph her as well as introduce me to other street musicians.
So one morning I set out to Union Square to meet her. I hadn’t taken serious photographs since my college days. I had also recently purchase a digital SLR and a digital audio recorder. I was rusty and nervous.
I met the Saw Lady and began my work.
I have long admired street musicians and I always wondered what made them put it all out there for people who might ignore or praise them, or applaud them or harrase them.
My first experience was not entirely what I expected. I was immediately taken in by the many smiling faces as they passed. I could clearly see why she chose to play in such an unpredictable environment. Many people passed by in a hurry without taking a second to notice, but when you see the faces of the people who’s hearts are taken with her music and spirit it is easy to understand why she does what she does.
