The Chen wedding was on City Island in the Bronx. A life long New Yorker and still there are places I am going for the first time. I jumped into my car in Brooklyn and drove down Eastern Parkway to the Jackie Robinson Expressway where I sped through zigs and zags emerging onto the White Stone Bridge and then finally, an hour and a half later, City Island. I arrived early. Met the bride and groom, walked around the space, unloaded my gear, set up and started to photograph. There are so many cultural components to being a wedding photographer that one has to be sensitive to. I love photographing action and events and making visual narratives out of candid moments. Most of the people at the wedding, especially the elderly, were from Taiwan. As soon as I would point my camera at a group of people they would freeze up, stiffen out, pause their candid moment, look at the camera sternly, a kind of pose, and then continue. It made my job difficult. I just photographed more. Then I started to feel like people were turning their backs on me. I spoke with people, asked people to pose, directed […]
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On the weekends in NYC, the subways break. They just stop working and reroute into a surreal world where nothing means what it says. The F train turns into the A train which turns into the D train which stops on the local tracks– but only for a few stops then it becomes an express 3 train to 59th street, but going downtown is a whole other story. The L train is at a halt in both directions because someone jumped to their death in front of a train in Brooklyn. There was an “incident” on the Q train which has stopped all Q services. Someone pulled the emergency alarm on the 1 train which is now stuck waiting for the police before it can resume service. The C train has track work on the uptown side so is rerouted over the E line. Everything becomes hopelessly chaotic and straphangers search for the most abstract transfers to get home while tourists open wide their subway maps punctuating and pointing in confusion while scratching their heads. Parents pull children up and down stairs, some lug carriages and elderly people clutch to the hand rails moving slowly. If only I could get […]
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