Anonymous Scientology Protest, 2007

Following up on my previous post questioning the tendency of press photographers to focus on violent protestors I’ll present my own work around protests I’ve photographed over the years.   I don’t have the dedication that Fred Askew (his site is well worth spending some time paging through) has shown in covering protest in NYC but I have a small stack of negatives to draw images from.

My own approach is to use a normal or portrait lens to focus on individuals within the crowd.   Some of the protests in the lead up to the Iraqi war pulled in hundreds of thousands of protestors.  As time went on the hundreds of thousands dwindled down to tends of thousands and as the war dragged on only a few groups kept up vigils of a dozen or so protestors who kept at it despite the media fatigue.

Speaking out during the RNC, Union Square

During the most recent March on Wall Street I took my newly repaired (and now perfectly accurate) Voigtlander Bessa R3A which I have only been able to afford a quite spiffy but slightly wide 40mm lens for.   This made things a bit more difficult as I was used to the 85mm portrait lens I use on my Canon T-90.  I either had to get a bit closer to people than I’m used to or I had to find a way to visually isolate them so they stood out from the rest of the crowd.

Woman with Pig Painting, Wall Street

A crowd of 10,000 is still 10,000 individuals who decided for their own reasons to get up, get dressed, and haul themselves out to wherever it is the other 9,999 people were planning on showing up.  I think they deserve a little attention.

You can view a number of my other photos from the March on Wall Street on my flickr stream.

The content has three catagories, fine art, editorial, and commercial with a $35 entry fee (entry fees are pretty common… these things don’t pay for themselves now do they?).   The deadline is July 16 which is well after the closing date for SoFoBoMo so if you have a great idea and want to keep rolling, you have a place to enter your work.

The idea is to pick a project and then you have 30 days to shoot, edit, and soft-publish a book which will be loaded onto the website.  The project and all its photography and layout tasks must be done within that 30 day period.   Rather than having an set date its just any 30 days starting during the month of May.  The book needs to be at least 35 photographs but is otherwise up to each individual as to how they’re going to get those photos and what is meant by book but you should at least have a PDF together.

I tried participating but due to Things Happening was unable to complete my project.  I choose to do panoramic B&W images of the NYC subway using my Horizon Perfekt.  I have a couple of rolls of film but I never got things together in time.  This year’s project might be the subway panoramic but I’m also kicking around a few other ideas.  I’d like to do portraits but that requires other people which doesn’t always work on a tight time frame.

I’m thinking about taking photos around the 5 places I’ve lived in NYC.  Having a record of the neighborhoods as they exist in 2009 as opposed to how they exist in my memory would be a nice way to exploring how things change so rapidly in this city.   I’ve lived on the upper east side, the west village, the upper west side, harlem, greenpoint, williamsburg, and now crown heights over the past 11 years with stays ranging from 1 week to 4 years in a variety of situations.

I’d strongly encourage others to try.   I’ve seen other people turn a simple idea for a project into excellent books that get published for reals (Kyle Cassidy did not do his Armed America project for SoPhBoMo but it started with an idea and went from there).

Solo Photo Book Month is a spin-off of National Novel Writing Month started by Paul Buzti on this blog last year.  The idea is quite simple, you have 30 days to start and finish a 35+ image book project which you either publish in triumph like the creative tyrannosaurus you are or shove under your pile of other unfinished projects like the lowly unmotivated scum you are.   All photos must be taken, selected, edited, and put into book format within a 30 day period starting April 1 with a final deadline of May 31.

I have a huge pile of unfinished projects… of which SoPhBoMo is just one of the many fascets of my inability to complete anything and unlimited capacity for starting new projects.

My project was to take a series of panoramic photos of the NYC subway system.  My rules were simple.  They were to be taken on black and white film (duh…) using the Horizon Perfekt anywhere in the NYC subway system.   I take the subway nearly every day so this seemed like a snap.

Grand Central 4/5 Platform.

Except for the developing and scanning thing and the class I was TA’ing for at ICP and this project at work that suddenly become Priority Number 1!  Oh, yes, and a girlfriend that I enjoyed spending time with.  Excuse, excuse, excuse. FAIL.

This isn’t to say that is was a catastropic failure.  I did have a number of photos which came out of the project and I did learn a few things about taking photos in the subway.

1) It is entirely legal to take photographs in the subway.

This wasn’t something I learned during the project but I think it bears repeating.

A number of years ago the MTA tried to ban photography in the subway under the usual post-9/11 excuse that terrorists could be arming themselves with cameras to take pictures the subways.   There was a protest which I took part of which involved about 50 photographers who gathered in Grand Central and then took a photo tour of the system.  Its a lot easier to victimize innocent bystanders when you have 50 people with extremely large SLR’s behind you.

Subway Protest

2) Its really contrasty down there. And dark.  Real dark.

Times Square Subway Platform

The subway being largely underground is illuminated only by nasty fluorescent lighting.  This is actually fairly dim so you have to use high speed film to get much of anything.  The light also varies greatly from footstep to footstep as you can see in the difference in tone and exposure between the above photo and the below.

Times Square, NYC

There two shots were taken about 10 feet away from each other.   Its really astounding how much the light varies.   I used an incident meter to measure the light which may not have been the greatest idea as the light is hardly constant.   This is one case where using reflected light would give you a much better idea of your exposure.

Another problem was that I was experimenting with Diafine so these are primarily Tri-X rated at 1250.   Diafine is great for giving your film a little push without snapping the contrast curve through the roof but I think starting with a higher speed film and pulling would have been a better strategy.

3) Not all subway stations are below ground.

Despite having lived here for 11 years and being literally across the street from an elevated station I tend to forget that not all stations are below ground.   My favorite station, the F/G at Smith/9th Street which sweeps above the ultra-nasty Gowanas Canal is very much above ground.    The elevated platforms offer such luxuries as sunlight which gives you the wonder of shadow.

Brooklyn S at Washington

I think I might have to give this project another shot to produce a photo book.  Maybe even limit it to Brooklyn or just survey Times Square (which is an immense station).    I think the panoramic format lends itself well to the environment.

The End Of Coney Island?

The last two years has seen the closure of much of Coney Island’s amusement areas as a private developer, Thor Equities is currently locked in a struggle with the city, the Coney Island community, and the larger communities of Brooklyn and NYC as a whole over the future of the neighborhood.  Thor holds title to much of the property along the boardwalk and is seeking zoning from the city to build several large hotels and big name stores.  The city is currently refusing to grant Thor the zoning they desire and are engaged in talks to purchase the property from Thor.   Local residents are currently caught in between Thor and the city as their area only recently began picking up economically and now they’re facing the closure of much of the amusement zones which brought in a steady stream of visitor into the neighborhood.

Save Coney Island

Vacant Lot, Coney Island

The future of Coney Island is entirely up in the air.  Thor envisions a future as a resort destination with high end hotel towers, shopping, and reconstructed boardwalk.  The community groups strongly oppose this vision as they feel it is at odds with the tradition of Coney Island as a local destination where the boardwalk and mom and pop scale amusements were the draw and present the public with a continuation of the experience that has defined Coney Island for the past 10 decades.   They also argue that Manhattan already offers an endless array of hotels and shopping experiences so the draw to the very end of Brooklyn would be limited.

I don’t have the emotional ties that longer term and lifelong residents have with Coney Island but I’ve always enjoyed it.  The Mermaid Parade is always a high point of my summer.  I grew up going with my family to the boardwalk in Laguna Beach, CA so its a bit of happy childhood in my adulthood on the other side of the country.   The one thing I do miss from Laguna is the daily Hare Krishna procession.

I’ve been visiting the boardwalk and amusement zone over the past several years so I hope to put together my own experiences of the area in a huge transistion as an occasional visitor and participant in the small joys it has to offer.