The Photo Gods have been generous lately.
The shadow cast Double Feature Productions performs along to screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show the last Saturday of every month at the Quad. Tim Curry died on the last Tuesday of August, so their next performance was less than a week later, and a second show was added due to demand. They performed to two sold-out houses and ended the night as tired as I have ever seen anyone. They allowed me to photograph both shows, and I’m grateful to them for letting me make a staggering number of images, my favorite ten of which are here.
I woke up unshakably committed to working from home, but my ISP decided that Internet service was for other providers, so I had to go to the office (they sent me my monthly bill during the outage). When I arrived, the fire department was responding to a call at the building next door, which in New York City means close enough that if they’re in it, you’re in it. A crew tried breaking through the wall across from my office to find the source of the intense campfire smell, but they only struck toilet paper. They left, opening up the stairwell which offered several perspectives overlooking the action. The access the firefighters needed came from sawing and smashing through the roof, bluish smoke rose once they broke through. Habemus ignem. As all this was happening, I wrote the greatest single thing I ever will on work Slack: “I should be able to get that done by EOD today, or Monday if the fire spreads.”
Coney Island on Friday night, you just can’t beat it.
I’ve been down with cyclospora the past two-and-change weeks, but I’ve gotten better enough to be out the past few days, and had some stuff sitting in the slush pile from before the gastrointestinal Sisyphean horrors began.
The last few weeks have been filled with reminders of why I love this city.
For the past four or five years, I’ve shot almost exclusively with a 50mm equivalent lens. A year and a half ago, I got a 27mm equivalent, but it was secondary in my kit. The past week and a half, I’ve challenged myself to use the 27mm equivalent as my only lens when out and about. Wider focal lengths used to make me nervous and I was afraid that I wouldn’t like any of the images I came back with from it. I was wrong.
Over the past weekend, I spent something like 16 or 18 hours total wandering around taking photos, and I got a stunning amount of images I like. These are the early highlights.
Halloween is Christmas for photographers.
I’m usually out of The Met before the sun goes down. Most of the museum is windowless, but my favorite space, the Atrium of the American Wing, is pretty much one big window. Without day filling the room with a tremendous amount of soft light, the artificial lighting gave the space a much more dramatic mood with bright spots and sharp, distinct shadows. I was grateful for the opportunity to see such a beloved thing in a completely new way.
The Doohickey Competition was advertised on clip art-laden fliers and Internet invite platforms, and was met with equal parts amusement and confusion over what counts as a Doohickey. The organizers were not sticklers for formal definition or entry-limitations. Some of the more memorable doohickeys included a wood and metal cat with strings that could be played like an instrument, a Cursed Kermit puppet that had been adorned with human teeth and hair, a battery-powered moving diorama of Tom & Jerry waterboarding SpongeBob Squarepants, a collapsible churchwarden pipe, a 3D printed atomic bomb with internal storage (“It’s also a dildo… if you’re brave enough.”), a ViewMaster-based VR system, a rapid-delivery salt-and-pepper shaker, and an extendable back-scratcher. The contest prize was a five-foot tall doohickey with cranks, gears, a coin slot, and a tiny disco ball, which went to Rupert, the wood and metal cat whose presenter introduced as her child. The true prize, however, was the collective shocked and confused looks of pedestrians passing the event in Union Square Park, which were shared equally among all participants.
It’s always a fun place to photograph.
Is there anything better than seeing adults behave like kids? Yes: Seeing hundreds of adults behave like kids.
Over the summer a friend of mine got married. It was a lovely wedding, and a glorious excuse to see friends I haven’t spent time with in person since the Pandemic started.
I’ve been listening to Pink Floyd since high school, and my friend had an extra ticket, so I… thought I… might like to… go to the show.
I went from carrying around a backpack full of camera bodies and lenses everywhere to slinging a compact Fuji with a small prime lens over my shoulder when I leave the house. Apart from having dramatically less back pain, the primary result is the pictures I take when I go to events have become about the experience of going to the event rather than the event itself. Shooting the action on the field gave way to people-watching in the stands, keeping an eye out for the strange and interesting. I liked the former because the predictability meant guaranteed pictures, the latter I am enjoying precisely for its randomness and spontaneity. To paraphrase Cool Lester Smooth, if you shoot baseball, you get pictures of baseballs and baseball players, but if you start to just look around, you don’t know what the fuck you’re gonna see. And that is infinitely more interesting.
Central Park on a mild summer afternoon is an easy place to make images. It’s alive with the full vibrance and diversity of the city, all sharing a common desire to get the hell out for a little bit. The friends I met left early, so I got to wander in aimless solitude, to enjoyable results.
