Nothing announces summer more than the jingle of Mister Softee trucks, especially in New York City. It's like the inner child is brought out of every one of us when we hear that familiar song or get handed a cone or sundae through the open window.
Harlem
For this final week of color theory exploration, I chose monochromatic. During a recent visit to the Highline, I spotted the most adorable friends, laughing and enjoying one another's company. I couldn't stop watching them and taking photos of their conversation - New York City kids mature well beyond their years.
Please click HERE to visit our collective blog, Who We Become, to see all of our images in one place.
Friendship
For our final week exploring compositional balance, we incorporated some or all of the elements of weeks prior into our image(s).
There is a corner in Harlem that has always appealed to me. Despite the building being rundown and abandoned, I've always managed to see great beauty in the muted colors, rough textures and various signage across each entryway. The two doors on the right not only balance the gate on the left but also divide the image into halves, rife with similar patterns, colors and rectangle shapes.
Please click HERE to visit our collective blog, Who We Become, and see all of our images in one place.
Promise Land
Continuing with our monthly theme, this week we sought to balance objects with the people in our frame. My image below has a fairly standard template for balance: lone figure balanced with lone object, in this case a lamppost. The fence carries the viewer's eye from the left side of the frame to the right, thus dividing the image in half while the dark contrast of the figure and the object give perpendicular grounding to it. Balance is of course more complicated the more objects you have within the photo, and components such as contrast, the brightness of an object, patterns and size all become important in achieving a good composition.
So let's see how the others choose to work with balance this week.
Please click HERE to visit our collective blog, Who We Become, and see all of our images in one place.
Lady in the park
This week begins a new month of compositional study : Balance. We will be tackling first the use of people within the frame. Quite simply, balance is an issue of weight distribution and as a photographer you never want too much "people weight" on one side. Instead you want the viewer's eye to move about the photo with the visual weight evenly apportioned.
Below is an image I captured at the opening of the Museum of Natural History. The figure in the foreground and the sign are the counterweight to the line of people ascending the stairs. The staircase railings also cut the image into two balanced triangles.
Please click HERE to visit our collective blog, Who We Become, and see all of our images in one place.
August, our month dedicated to creative settings. For our third week: a late afternoon Harlem starburst.
Please continue along the circle to see the rest of Photo 52's work for this week starting with the supremely talented Kennedy Tinsley.
This past Saturday I participated in the first New York City ClickinWalk 2012 with local photographers, some of whom I know quite well. ClickinWalk takes place annually in cities across the globe, giving women photographers the opportunity to come together with their cameras and delve into the art of street photography. The facilitators, who happen to be friends of mine, Justine Knight and Stacey Vukelj, led us from the New York Public Library through Times Square, down Broadway to Madison Square Park, on to Union Square, and finally across town (via the subway) to the HighLine on the west side for sunset and drinks. It was such a beautiful fall day in NYC and I found myself enjoying the company I was with so much that I sometimes neglected my camera. However I did walk away with a newfound appreciation for street photography and a few images to share.
