Caroline spotted this young man strolling through the park and was struck by his leisurely manner compared to the fathers (mostly alone) pushing one, two and sometimes three children in a frenzy of rush and disorder.
I had been stuck with an 87 year old with many war stories to tell. He relived for me the terrifying image of standing look out on the deck of a merchant vessel bound for Archangel for two hour watches with the temperature at minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit waiting to be torpedoed by a U-boat. "You'd last less than five minutes in those waters."
I caught up with them and made my excuses . "You've got to listen to stories like that, haven't you," the youth said, "You can't just walk away and say you've got an appointment."
We were looking for a background and my subject said, "What about the red wood we just past."
The sous chef at Naidre's in Carroll Gardens. He was on his break and enjoying the world outside, exchanging the din of the kitchen for the roar of the streets. Trained in Louisiana in classical French cooking with a touch of Cajun, New York City was for him, and here he is.
She has a rare look, but it was also the coral necklace and embroidered flower that made this young woman special to photograph. This was a quiet, unfamiliar moment at Provini, not often does a waitress there have the time to sit down. I noticed her crossed hands in repose and her facing out from the bar. Fortified by coffee and prosciutto panini I got to my feet and took the picture.
This child and her father had their dog with them and they stopped to let him play with ours. They too were looking for plants at the Gowanus Nursery.
The nice thing about looking for people to photograph in the street is that it combines well with one's companion (human or canine) who likes to walk and, of course, shop, eat and drink. We find many of my subjects in and around bars and cafés, or shops that we are fond of such as Gowanus Nursery in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Above, we have person A and person B (I seldom ask their names, sometimes they volunteer them), whom I stopped in a flurry of admiration outside the nursery because of their contrasting hair styles.
I found a blank wall away from the throngs of young and old heading for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, on the first warm day of March. The sun bounced off the sidewalk and road. Lindsay lives in New Paltz, New York, and got herself a very good degree at Suny New Paltz only to find there were no jobs in anything she had studied so she has returned to school to train as a nurse.
Jesse was a little uncertain about having his picture taken.
"Do her alone," he said, "She's the one."
But I liked them together; she with her woolen hat and he with his shades reflecting the bare trees.
They were standing at the bus stop under the raised section of the F and G lines over the Gowanus Canal. This monster construction on stilts, clad in the now not so fashionable New Yorkers' uniform of its time, black, shelters waiting bus riders from sun and rain. Here we have today's New Yorkers, a banker and his girl friend, whose roots are many degrees of longitude apart.
They were on their hands and knees as we past them in their front garden on Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, rearranging their plants in a neat and methodical manner. They had been in the USA since last October and they love it here. She is an engineer and he a school teacher. I was miserable because I was cold and had not been able to concentrate on our own gardening activities, that of buying plants at the wonderful Gowanus Nursery down the street.
"But this is a perfect English summer's day," he reminded me. (Temperature: 58 degrees
Fahrenheit.)
February 1962. A nice moment to see Venice for the first time - mist and rain for three days. Hardly a sole about, just Venetians enjoying the emptiness of their city judging by the spring in this man's step. Others possibly looking forward to the spring hordes.
Holding an umbrella over the camera on a tripod, I shot this in one of the several heavy rainstorms we had this winter. Old tennis balls are now strewn over the field in front of our house to keep the dog exercised.
Hurlingham Club, London, 1980, pre Wimbledon tennis tournament rained out. A few devoted fans who waited in vain to see Borg, Connors and McEnroe. That year, I think it was, McEnroe challenged all comers to the best of three points. If the challenger won, he or she could throw him in the River Thames. Nobody had the pleasure.
Caroline spotted this young man strolling through the park and was struck by his leisurely manner compared to the fathers (mostly alone) pushing one, two and sometimes three children in a frenzy of rush and disorder.
