Vaperturelonely
Posted on December 6, 2013
I saw this man rubbing his feet and watching everyone go by in Central Park early one Sunday morning, and it made me think about how lonely you can be in this city even when there are 10 million other people around.
I love the way the photo draws you into this guy even though he is such a small part of the overall image. The shallow depth of field and the blurred background help create this effect and guide your eye to the true subject of the photo. This image wouldn’t be as interesting if the entire thing was in sharp focus unless the composition was completely different which would have taken away from the ‘lonely’ story that I observed when I walked past this man.
Carl Zeiss 35mm f1.4 lens set an an aperture of 1.6 (I wish I had shot it stopped down a bit… f/2 or f/2.5 would have been perfect). Lens mounted on a Canon 5D Mark III camera. Killer combo for New York street photography, as long as your well-practiced with your manual focusing skills.
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trust
Posted on November 25, 2013
Shooting from the hip is such a tough thing to do, and this was one of those very, very lucky photos that I discovered on the camera after the fact.
It’s almost impossible to take pictures of people in New York without them making a little uneasy about having a camera pointed at them, so you either have to be far enough away that they don’t notice, or ‘shoot from the hip’ without actually bringing the camera up to your face. As you can imagine, the keeper rate for hip shots is pretty low, but when they turn out great, they really turn out great.
I love this photo because the only person who knew that he was having his picture taken was the little boy. He was clinging to his father and looking straight into the camera lens. I have no idea how he knew since the camera was on my hip and I wasn’t even looking at him, but clearly he sensed it and trusted that his father would make it all OK.
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