Yesterday I went to see the Street Photography panel discussion hosted by Soho Photo. All in all it was very interesting and insightful but nothing new was said. I left early planning to catch an 8:00PM train so that my wife could pick me up. But as it turned out my wife said she would not be able to pick me up at that time. She had to pickup our kids from their swim practice and so I decided to take a later train and head over to Times Square for a little night time shooting.

When I conceived of this project I wanted to try to not photograph the obvious; people and the bright lights, etc. Instead I wanted to go deeper than the surface reality and at the same time allude to that very same surface. I think the images from the first post on this project almost gets there. But then I seem to have fallen for photographing the people. It’s all to easy for me to go up to someone and photograph them, with or without their permission. If I steal the photograph I usually give the person a smile and walk off. As I reviewed my take from last nights adventure I noticed that most of the photographs looked as if they could have been taken by Moriyama. Immediately rejected. I need to create something of my own, my style, my way of looking at things. This is very important for any artist. It’s great to start off imitating a favorite practitioner but the images you present to the world must be your own. While I do not want to exclude images of people they must work in relation to the greater vision of Times Square as a world within the surface reality.

All I can do is keep trying.