PHOTOS FOR PORTFOLIO DEVELOPMENT CLASS

I am taking a series of classes in Portfolio Development at B & H Photo. It is an opportunity to learn and stretch my creative muscles and is kind-of a boot camp to get me ready to meet the Soho Photo Gallery jury (or any gallery or show jury). (I quote from the class syllabus.)

Photos will have to be submitted on a monthly basis and I’m required to take a predetermined selection of classes and lectures from October until June. I also need a means of getting the photos to the instructors and develop a dialog that communicates this photographic journey as I go along, and I’ve decided that my blog, pushingtime.com, will work perfectly.

It was the afternoon of Halloween and I took a walk along Broadway on the Upper Westside to see what was going on. School had been out for about an hour but the kids in costumes, and the adults, too, were already parading up and down the street, hands outstretched, begging the store merchants for some candy, please.

I stopped at one intersection and this lovely family came up behind me. I asked if I could take their photo and they were very accommodating. But there was a rush of people coming up behind us and as I took the photos the passersby got caught in the photos, too. The little girl in the purple hat was thrilled to have her photo taken and when people kept standing in front of her, she raised her hand like a crossing guard in a cross walk, and shouted, “Stop!”

As one of the class instructors suggested I took some rapid fire photos but I unfortunately did not get one of the little girl giving orders to the crowd to stay out of her photo.

This woman did not change her expression no matter what was going on. Deadpan, she carried the expression of the seriousness of her mask through it all.

While on my walk I got a few other shots that were sort of interesting, but then when I got home I took this photo when I looked down from my terrace at the bus stop below. I rather like the excited and colorful energy of the little girls in their costumes juxtaposed against the somberness of the gentleman sitting in the wheel chair and wearing the surgical mask.

The following Monday I took a walk in downtown Manhattan and saw this comical mannequin standing outside a tourist gift shop. I loved that I could see the streets of NYC in the sunglasses. Perhaps I shouldn’t have cut off her chin.

A few blocks away I saw these guys carrying signs, “Repent! Follow Jesus.” and “Jesus Save Us. I Repent. Amen.” I’m sure they were deliberately in front of the Victoria’s Secret store and I couldn’t get over the contrast of these signs of protest and the two women in bras, with their sultry, come hither  poses gazing down onto the crowd.