NYC and The Beach Boy Lovers
These small moments can portray big truths.
Welcome back to Negative Space
With April in full swing I hope each of you are enjoying the warmer weather. Earlier this month I was able to enjoy the warmer weather in New York City, a place I haven’t experienced spring time before this. Maddi and I went with our good friends Josiah and Amelia where we did a lot of walking, good food eating, and photo taking.
If you like to eat and are looking for good places in NYC in the future, Amelia has her own Substack called “Ceremonial” where in the most recent post she breaks down everything we ate. You can visit it here:
Ceremonial is “a place where we celebrate the rhythm of creating weekly menus full of quality ingredients you know and love.” Ceremonial helps Maddi and I plan out meals every week while also making sure we take time to cook good and healthy meals together. Go subscribe to Ceremonial!
I’m walkin’ here
I’ve never really taken my camera out for a significant amount of time on the streets of New York. Anyone can attest to the fact that there is something new happening every second and everywhere you look. But when you have a camera, those moments become more prominent. It honestly took me a while before I started to notice things. There would be times where I would be looking at something happening and then walk away. It wouldn’t be until 10 or 20 seconds later when I’d realize that moment would’ve been a beautiful moment to photograph. The longer we walked, the more I started to become aware of small moments that were happening and I’d try to be quick to capture them.
The Fleeting Moments of the Street
Street photography has a rich presence in photography, and I believe it’s one of the most raw forms of documenting life. To be able to step into a moment of someone’s life without them necessarily knowing it and capture a one-thousandth of a second of their time on earth is a beautiful thing. These small moments can portray big truths. Not explicitly per se, but maybe in a broader sense. I really like this photo I took of a mom helping her son wrap his hoodie around his neck:
This photo is filled with motion, so much so you can almost finish out the action in your mind. The mother’s hair is blowing, her purse is half way down her shoulder trying to keep it from falling, and she is helping her son wrap his hoodie around his neck. The photo is cut in the right third of the frame and in it you see a dad holding his daughter’s hand. This photo is filled with care. Care that can only be known by a parent, and if not a parent, a child.
I can imagine that this young man put on the hoodie to face the cooler morning. Maybe before they left to go out his mom warned him it was going to be warm and he was gonna be hot. Even still the boy wore the hoodie, and even still the mother helped him wrap it to where he can be cooler. This is a beautiful moment.
The Beach Boy Lovers
They showed up to the little cake cafe in the Lower East side shortly after we had. She was carrying a small dog in a sling on her front and he had a small hole in his shirt in the back. As they were waiting to go in and order their sugar block, his leg muscles took refuge on a small post, and hers on him. I was standing behind them and watched as he placed his arm around her. They were in no rush and had all the time in the world. I on the other hand, remembering how fast moments fade, did not have all the time in the world. So without hesitation I got a little closer and snapped the photo that would become April’s print:
They never noticed I was there and yet I stepped into a moment of their lives, a moment where they were the main character and the subject; the climax and the resolution. A moment where they can order their cake and eat it too, literally.
I love this photo, and I went back and forth on which photo to print this month. I love landscape photos of beautiful scenes capturing golden light or a crisp evening, still reflections of giant mountains in glass waters, or wide open spaces. But there is something about photographing moments on the street, moments that I think the majority of people can relate to in one way or another.
A Quote and a List
I want to leave you this month with a quote from a well known street photographer and a list of a few great street photographers for you to go discover on your own, if you haven’t discovered them already.
List of a few great street photographers:
Joel Meyerowitz
Jill Freedman
Gary Winogrand
Susan Meiselas
Andre Wagner
Vivian Maier
Gordon Parks
Joe Greer
Devon Allen
Andrew Cenci (Louisville Local)
Bruce Gilden
Fred Herzog
Faizal Westcott
These are just a few. The list goes on and could go on for days but these are a few people that I really enjoy their work.
“You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.” — Joel Meyerowitz
I hope that these couple of photographs that I shared left room for you to squeeze in. Enough room to maybe remember a moment where someone cared for you, or when you cared for someone else.
Thanks so much for reading, until next time,
Cheers