West 58th Street

1. 
   charlene permalink

   18 February, 2012 10:12 AM

   I’ve been meaning to comment on this one for weeks, so here i am. Again, loving the deliberate-ness of this shot. Reminds me of the cemetary shot and the one of the forest (apologies, i am great with names but titles just never stick in my mind). For me, it possesses a meditative quality, like the slowing of a pulse, and it has stopped me every time i’ve looked at it, to take a little bit more of it in. It does generate a lot of questions in my mind though – what were you thinking when you took this picture? Why that angle/perspective?What do you, as the image maker, think when you look at it?

   Reply
2. 
   Ed permalink*

   22 February, 2012 9:42 AM

   Thanks for your observations and questions Charlene. I am very happy that it arrests you in that way. When I noticed the woman looking at her book/map and phone she seemed in her own place and oblivious to the world around her. I wanted to show that so wanted a wider view. I am very deliberate in my photography, so much so that a lot of it is made very directly, as in straight on. As I walked towards her I made the decision not to do that this time so continued past, looking over my shoulder until the angle felt right. Why did it feel right? Well that was probably something subconscious to do with the vertical and diagonal lines leading right to her. The final adjustment was made to get the siamese hosepipe behind in the image as it looked like a pair of eyes watching her – mirroring my appreciation of her activity but not anyone else because they just walked on in their own busy worlds. It is a busy sidewalk on 58th street and that wall is a part of the Time Warner Center. I think about calmness, quiet and the ability to step out of the hustle and find somewhere to concentrate on your own thing for a minute. The shrubs in the wall planters help that notion. But I also think about observation, in relation to my stopping to photograph her and how I think about the hose-pipes as eyes.

   Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required) (Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Notify me of follow-up comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email.