Sometimes, I will make a photo that, if I only took one that entire day – sometimes entire week! – I would be content. For some reason, something technically, aesthetically, compositionally… something “clicks” at just the right moment.
Now, the caveat of this… for some reason, they are photos that some people don’t actually like! Its usually the photo that I think nothing of – the photo that was simple and uninspired – that the most people like. A particular gallery print that has sold over a dozen copies, I almost didn’t print because it was just a “I stood there and pressed the button” moment. Nothing to it.
But it is a photo such as this…
…that I truly make, look at and “like.”
Many street images I photograph the “human condition” and all that jazz, but much of it is naturalistic. It is capturing what is there. I stand there and make an image and whatever is there… is there. This image lends itself to the true art, the classic timelessness that photography can capture.
Walking down the street in Madrid on any given day at any given time there are hundreds and thousands of people. Here captured is one of those pretty but faceless European beauties. She wears a classic dress, could be any era since the 1930’s. And, besides the moped on the curb to the right, it just as well could be any time period.
But frozen, for just a moment on the crosswalk or sidewalk or coming out of a store, you meet eyes with that archetypal pretty face, a pleasant smile is exchanged, and she walks on. Not a story of “the one that got away” or some other dramatic, romantic dribble… just a person on the street who you crossed paths and shared something simple. A smile. Practically nothing at all.
And it is gone as soon as it happens…
…perhaps even as brief as the time it takes for the shutter to close… and nothing more.
This was what I felt at the moment this photograph was taken. I kicked the aperture down in broad daylight on purpose. The composition, the subject placement… all purpose.
Because this is what photography is for me. I can express a feeling. I can express a thought. And, just maybe, it isn’t really about expressing that thought to anyone else.
Selfish? Perhaps. But the reason I made images in the first place was to not make money or travel the world, it was to show my future self that I had done something with the time I was given on this earth.
And now it has gone from there. So, now, any job I do, I’m photographing for myself as well as the client. And somehow the client is pleased by simply me making an image that I could be proud of, first and foremost.
When it comes to the street and just me and my camera alone in a foreign country… it may be the things you can’t see in the photograph that I will remember and go as part of me for the rest of my life.
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
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PS: You know I couldn’t go just ONE picture, right!?
Anytime I spend this much time walking the streets, there’s going to be something to show for it… no doubt there…
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Unusual streets in Madrid. Many of them are built on subtle slopes so composition is unusual and all the photos look as though they are tilting…
…when really they are not.
…or at least not as dramatically as they seem.
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That evening light filtering down through the streets…
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