Grocery

An old one.

White line

Of course, there's always Robert Frank's magnificent white line which makes all others look like cheap rip-offs.

Miss

There you have it again. Every now and then a photo which technically is a failure ends up as one that I like because it manages to capture something the "correct" ones don't. This also happens to me with other photographer's pictures and I guess they feel the same because otherwise they wouldn't have published their "misses" in the first place. At the Fotobuchtage 2010 here in Hamburg I had the chance to ask Paolo Pellegrin how he deals with this and my understanding is that his views are the same: if a photo "feels" right then take it, no matter how blurry, skewed, underexposed, or grainy it might be.

As one might have guessed, you can't really fake this. You can of course go out and deliberately use wrong shutter speeds or aim your lens into the wrong direction - but that alone doesn't make a good shot.

Partly shorn

I always thought that I didn't know about Shaun the Sheep before 2007, but this photo proves that we briefly met in 1998 already.

No diving

I wouldn't have thought of doing it anyway. (You know where this is, don't you?)

Liberty again

Yet another way to photograph the Statue of Liberty. A picture I'm publishing now because it is related to the one of from last Monday in several ways. And it's also one I like in spite of its obvious technical flaws.

M4-P, Tri-X, 1998.

Marching

Whenever I see this photo, I have connotations of marching feet in some 1984-like scenery - it certainly looks a bit menacing to me. But the unadorned reality is that I stood at this corner somewhere in downtown New York in 1998 and took several shots of the same place deliberately waiting for passersby to integrate into the image. I even ended up with more than one picture that I liked.

M4-P, Tri-X.

Temporarily out of service

Coney Island, 1998. M4-P, Tri-X.

Completely unrelated to this photo, I'd like to mention that I drove to Kassel last Saturday to attend the third International Photobook Festival there. I have to admit that I hadn't heard about this before, but I enjoyed it a lot. And I'm looking forward to a similar event held here in Hamburg for the first time next month.

A gap

I couldn't resist to post yet another one from Coney Island. I liked the light on that day.

Jogging trail

Again a part of NYC seen through a fence. This time it's Central Park and the photo (shot in 1998) somehow reminds of the Marathon Man.

The M4-P on Tri-X. (Incidentally, this is the 100th Tri-X photo in this blog.)

Beach volleyball

Another one from Coney Island. Same day, same camera, same film.

Right here

A billboard again, although a pretty abused one this time.

Shot in 1998 in New York with the M4-P on Tri-X.

Fence

A fence in Harlem in 1998.

M4-P, Tri-X.

Leaving port

Winogrand was accused of always holding the camera at a tilt in order to introduce "graphical dynamism" into his photos. Yeah, maybe, but sometimes a skewed horizon really helps to make a picture - at least in my opinion. This here's from the Staten Island Ferry while leaving Manhattan.

Taken in 1998 with the M4-P on Tri-X.

If I counted correctly, this is the 100th post on this blog. I spent a bit of time finding a picture to fit this "anniversary". As I said in its description, the blog was intended to make me think about photography on a daily basis. It has, over the last months and due to some discussions ensuing from it, become pretty clear to me that a) it will have to end sooner or later and b) there will be something coming after it (but maybe not on the Internet) with the blog having been a stepping stone into the new direction. I believe that the photo from today exemplifies in several ways (that I won't discuss here and probably can't put into words yet anyway) where I'm heading.

Deer head

This must be my favorite flea market photo ever.  Flea markets are always nice if you want to find strange juxtapositions of things that usually don't belong to each other, but this wall certainly made my day.

Somewhere in New York in 1998. M4-P with Tri-X.

A cab on Times Square

One night in 1998, I spent some time on Times Square with the Leica trying to capture the light and the movement of the cars driving past. With this cab, I got exactly what I wanted.

By now, you can probably guess which film I used.

Coney Island

A snapshot of two unknown children almost looking like one. A skewed horizon. Lots of parallel lines. Articulated shadows. The reflection of a beam of sunlight. Season to taste. That was the recipe for this picture.

M4-P on Tri-X in 1998.

Liberty

One way to photograph the Statue of Liberty in NYC.  We all know there are many, many others.

M4-P, Tri-X, 1998.

Shot from the hip

If you haven't read Shots from the Hip by "Johnny Stiletto", try to find it in a used book store somewhere. It's fun. And hipshots can be fun, too. Sometimes you might end up with a photo you really like although you can't quite explain why. Well, maybe because a dog's in there...

New York in 1998 with the Leica and Tri-X.

In memoriam

We visited the World Trade Center in 1995 but stayed at the bottom because of very bad weather. In 1998, we tried again, and this time we made it to the top. Three years later, both towers were gone...

M4-P on Tri-X.