Young man and his fiancé

"I'll bring you 50 dollars tomorrow," he shouted as he left his sisters who had been such a rich source of subjects for me. He used to live in their house, the only male amongst seven or eight women and girls. "I moved out as soon as I could afford it, to get a bit of peace and quiet."

He has a job with a moving company in New Windsor, NY and told me that his father had drummed into him the necessity to leave no stone unturned to find work. This included going to every party there was, because that is how you meet people who can help you find a job. And that was indeed how he found this one, through a friend at a party who told him that his company needed people.

 

Engaged couple

Two young men and a young woman were sitting outside their house on one of those glorious days we've been having. I climbed a few of the steep steps that led up to where they were sitting and said that I wanted their views on my proposed outdoor exhibition of mural size prints to be displayed on the wall of the Ritz Theater. (Please see my Kickstarter project.)

Something familiar about the woman kept nagging at me. At first she wanted nothing to do with my quest. She did not want to be photographed and did not want to give her views on Newburgh. "I would not be able to say good things without the bad. Anyway," she added with a good natured look, "I am waiting for a proper proposal of marriage and a ring, before I am photographed with him."

I continued to wonder where I had seen her before. She began to tell me where she thought we had met. It was Williams Street, when she was a sixteen. I had also photographed her friends.

In the end I took their picture, thanks to the gentle persuasion of her fiancé. I marveled at their beauty and style and left them knowing we'd go back and film them when we'd got a decent microphone to update our Kickstarter project

Two days later Caroline got an e-mail from her. This was who she was—13 years earlier. With, as she put it, "Her first fiancé."

Felix Salmon and Michelle Vaughan

Of the 15 or so people I have photographed in the carriage house of the Garrison Institute, Felix is the only one who, noticing a number of golf balls scattered on the floor, looked up at the window panes of the floor to ceiling windows and asked, "Is there any connection between the golf balls and the broken panes?" As there is a large lawn in front of the carriage house it is quite possible that someone had been out there practicing their swing.

Scarlet and plaid

Todd Bachenheimer, shirt designer for Brooks Brothers and his friend Christine. At lunch with Jason and Natasha, Christine wandered around with a plastic beaker. It contained a yellowy, clay colored liquid. We asked, "What is it?" 


"Cleanser," she replied. I thought, what more of a cleanser could you want than our lunch: raw carrots, raw celery, chicken sandwich and slices of blood orange with mint leaves.

Two pairs of blue eyes

At first it was difficult to stop them kissing. When they did stop, they were perfect hosts. They put back the blind that had fallen off a window where the sun was pouring in and spoiling my shot, they moved a table to give me more room and they cleared a background of clutter.

She travels to Africa to work, tending to those in need. He is an art director and designer here in New York.

Massage therapy

We were looking for an unused or disused industrial building in Newburgh NY in which to display my photographs of the city next summer, to coincide with the publication of the book. We passed this young man having his shoulders massaged.

Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley

"Good band," said my thirty-year-old acquaintance who told us that he woke up one morning the manager of a bunch of metal bands. "America? One of the best." My son Nicholas and I were resting on a bench at the local tennis courts where the metal manager and his friends were waiting to play. I told him of my recent encounter with the music world when Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell performed in the neighboring town of Peekskill on their 40th anniversary world tour. Gerry had found me on the web and I photographed them one mild spring morning at the edge of the Hudson River. The picture appears on the back cover of their latest CD "Back Pages".

They have recently been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Studio for a day

Below are two photographs that I took in this barn. I borrowed it for a day to photograph the owner Sandy Saunders and his ninety-five year-old mother, Risi. Later in the day I did the celebrated riding instructor and breeder of Morgan horses, Leona Dushin, eighty-five. The second floor loft was empty because the recently mown hay that will be stored there, was not yet dry.

I am hoping that there will still be room to photograph people when the hay is dry, baled and stacked inside. I have been long looking for such a place. I love the light from the open door; it is soft, yet sharp and crisp, and there is plenty of it. I find the clip-clop of the horses hoofs on the concrete floor below very comforting.

Risi and Sandy Saunders

She climbed the steep wooden steps up to the second floor loft without fuss, holding firmly to Sandy's hand and then mine as she reached the top of the stairs. A moment's positioning and a plea from me not to let go of the way she was gripping her son and the picture was taken.

Sandy's family have farmed and lived on the property for 200 years, where he has a herd of Black Angus cattle.

College friends

Having sworn I would never photograph any more people against the unrelenting green of the Hudson Valley summer landscape, I yesterday drove around and found a no longer used car wash at the local gas station. It had good light, a neutral background and a manager who was delighted that it was going to be of some use to somebody.

Caroline was with our dog Louis frog hunting at the waterfall the day before, when one of the three or four young people splashing around in the pond hailed her. It was the girl on the right in the picture. Caroline remembered her as a child of ten. The other girl in the picture, also cooling at the waterfall, is her friend of five years with whom she shares an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Born to be Wild

Gay Pride Parade, 1987, Washington Square Park, NYC. They were calm and affectionate, not shouting demands or slogans, just loving being there with each other. I hope they have been happy these last twenty-four years.

Rain on 5th Avenue

She protested for a moment against having her picture taken but her friend wanted it and she gave in. You do, we thought, attract attention if you dress well.

Cap and hood

High school friends on Main Street, Beacon NY.

Words couple

They were sitting on a bench on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. I wanted to snap them as they were. She was massaging his temples tenderly but the background was a car with disturbing color and contrast. I asked them if I could photograph them in the shade of a tree close by. He replied first, "I would love that." She said, "Awesome." Later they told us that he got headaches and she got rid of them for him. They both love words. She works for a literary agent and he for a magazine about infrastructure. I asked him if he studied engineering at school. "No, comparative literature." "What is that?" Caroline asked. "It's not anything," he replied. They loved Crown Heights and later we saw them again as we headed towards Breukelen Coffee House, a haunt they too like.

1920's wedding

Forty five years after my brief sojourn photographing weddings in England, I find myself at City Hall, New York City, with the daughter of a friend and her husband to be. They want a picture on the Brooklyn Bridge. I did that later, after the legal conditions were met. Here they are standing in front of the Justice of the Peace, just as the groom is being told, that now they are married, he may kiss his wife. He obeyed. In many ways this was one of the best weddings I have ever been to, or photographed. The father of the bride collected Caroline and me in his comfortable car, drove us to the city with the bride and groom, gave us a wonderful lunch and drove us back to Garrison.

Hood and scarf

They were sitting in the farthest and darkest corner of Park Slope's al di là Trattoria. I had my back to them, but Caroline said I should photograph them. As they rose to leave she was up and asking them. I saw their strikingly pale and unblemished complexions, one in a hood and the other bare-headed, but wrapped several times in a scarf, like an inflatable ring worn by those in the water who cannot swim. They stood outside against the window of the restaurant lit by the veiled winter sun of the late afternoon.

Two elbows, one bottle

In order for a digital camera to see to focus in low light it has to be assisted by a spotlight built into the camera that shines without your asking when the subject is too dim for the automatic focus too cope. This is very irritating and can ruin the shot. Here the subjects were so absorbed in each other that if you had shone a search light at them they would not have noticed.

The photograph was taken at Marlow and Sons in Williamsburg, a place where they understand the romance of candlelight (the whole room is more or less lit by candlelight), the right music, making people feel welcome, and service.

Surprise

You seldom know what people are talking about or feeling when you are observing them. Before I took this picture, I had been watching the couple and I thought from their expressions that they didn't know each other well. They were being polite and careful. After this show of aggressive surprise, I am not sure.

Smoking lovers

In this photograph, taken in London in the buffet of Waterloo station, thirty years before I took the couple at Diner (above), there is more expectancy than surprise in the young lady's expression, and not a scrap of aggression. In fact, even without their shared love of tobacco, they seem made for each other. You could not be sure of that in "Surprise". Those were still the days when it was polite to light your girlfriend's cigarette for her and always before your own. And there is more in her look than the sweet anticipation of that first delicious drag on her cigarette.

Myrtle and Broadway

We climbed the iron steps to the station of the elevated tracks of the J, M and Z line at Broadway and Myrtle Avenue. The couple disappeared through the brown swing doors into the subway entrance. I thought I had lost them in the free-for-all of shoppers returning home with their bags. But they were standing near the turnstile and had noticed Caroline with our dog Louis and I beckoned to them to come and meet him. They carried no bags. She was there to say goodbye to him. He was returning to Manhattan where he studies Criminal Justice at Berkeley College.

We had to wait for the sun to go behind the clouds. We pressed into a corner on the walkway by the entrance to the subway where the light would be good. Louis and Caroline greeted the shoppers as they banged through the swing doors. At last we felt we had found the center of Brooklyn, a place difficult to pinpoint.

At first she did not want to be photographed because she was wearing sweat pants (I explained it was just head and shoulders). After the shoot, he asked to be photographed by Caroline, with me and Louis.