Thursday, April 9, 2009

Take My Picture

New Haven, 3/15/09

Reveling is now incomplete unless you record it with your cell phone and send it on to the unfortunate few who couldn't make it to New Haven.


New Haven, 3/15/09

A lot of the people at the parade actually looked Irish.

4 comments:

lyle said...

Carl,

I really like this new sequence! The range of expression in just a small grouping of people in one photograph is pretty amazing - not to mention, on a first/quick viewing, the ambiguity of what hand belongs to whom and what is actually happening - many stories in one image. How are you able to work so close to the crowd without getting the 'look at the photographer' reaction? Also, in the last one, 'center for BRITISH....' on the wall ???? Finally, is this the same area that we talked about the differences between 'depression' in city v. rural areas? If so, just density of population gives rise to the idea of 'down but not out'.

.lyle

Carl Weese said...

Lyle, "center for British" is a museum (an excellent one): the Yale Center for British Art, across Chapel Street from the main Yale Art Museum.

As for working close, that's actually a feature, not a bug. The best way to be conspicuous taking pictures of people is to stand back with a huge lens: everyone on the block instantly assumes you are taking their picture.

Many years ago I spent a great deal of time practicing physical techniques to remain inconspicuous while taking pictures. I may have had to work extra hard at it since I'm quite tall. I wondered if I'd be really rusty at it, but evidently it's like riding the proverbial bicycle, something you don't forget.

A Pentax K20D with 21mm pancake lens isn't as nice to work with as a Leica M6 with 35 or 28, but it isn't a terrible substitute and lets me work in color digital capture.

Scott Kirkpatrick said...

I'm impressed that you manage to attract little attention shooting at eye level. which seems to be about the top of many of the heads in your pictures. But I am curious to know where was the camera when you took the first shot posted on the first day of this series -- down about shirt pocket height?

scott

Carl Weese said...

Busted!

Scott, OK, you caught me. When the crowd was incredibly gridlocked, I did do some shooting with the camera tucked about midway from that shirt pocket to my shoulder. This was more to avoid getting a black eye from an inadvertent collision than from sneakiness. I've mentioned before that I had nearly an abusive amount of marksmanship training as a child, and it still hangs around in things like hand-holding slow shutter speeds or getting pretty much exactly what I expect in the frame without using the viewfinder. A significant minority of the pictures in this series were made this way.