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Random Ten (selected at random):
1. Beyond The Horizon - Bob Dylan
2. When The President Talks to God - Bright Eyes
3. New Slang - The Shins
4. The Good That Won't Come Out - Rilo Kiley
5. Cheated Hearts - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. I Want You to Want Me - Cheap Trick
7. Dumb - Nirvana
8. She Doesn't Get It - The Format
9. You Don't Know What Love Is - The White Stripes
10. Cellophane Boy - No Doubt
I was tagged on Facebook to write down 25 random things about myself. Thought I'd do the same for my flickr friends. Try it, it's harder than you think.
1. I love sushi (toro is my fav)
2. I hate it when my kids have dirty, sticky hands. They are immediately washed after my kids have been around a bunch of other kids.
3. That being said, my kids hardly EVER get sick.
4. I played soccer in high school
5. I had a twin sister named Lauren that died at birth
6. I have to wash my feet every night before I go to bed, Weird, I know, but I can't sleep unless I do it.
7. Favorite wine is Kings Estate Pinot Noir, it's like heaven in your mouth.
8. I'm obsessed with good dental hygiene. Flossing is a must every night around here. One of the first things that attracted me to hubby...Gorgeous smile!
9. I got married when I was 22. Very young but we will celebrate 7 years in December!!!
10. Hubby and I never lived together until we were married.
11. I love the smell of my kid's breath! LOVE IT!
12. I can NEVER face a wall at a restaurant. I freak out thinking that someone will sneak up on me.
13. I grew up Catholic
14. I love to Vacuum! Seriously, you have no idea. The lines in the carpet make me a little giddy inside. :)
15. My house is ALWAYS clean but my car is ALWAYS messy. (I blame the kids)
16. My first kiss was Josh McClatchy in 7th grade during a football game.
17. I have Wow Wow Wubbzy songs stuck in my head on a daily basis.
18. My husband and I purchased HBO just so we could watch True Blood, gosh I love that show!
19. I have been a closet smoker off and on for 9 years. There, I said it!!! Mostly when an adult beverage is involved though.
20. I love my iPhone. Don't think I could live without it. Her name is Desiree.
21. I have to check on both my boys right before I go to bed. Every, single night.
22. I am always intrigued when people can speak more than one language. I unfortunately can't but Anthony can! Can you guess which language?
23. I nursed Roman until he was 13 months old. Very proud of that!
24. In second grade, a boy named Ross threw a no.2 pencil at me and to this day, I swear I still have the lead mark on my face.
25. Just because I have to say it...I have the best family on the Planet. Some days I feel like I need to pinch myself.
Love locks, on a bridge over the Mapocho River, with a pleasing and novel twist... hundreds of coloured ribbons blowing in the wind.
Note: I chose this photo, among the five that I uploaded to Flickr on the morning of Mar 30,2012, as my "photo of the day." I could not take my eyes off the giant sneakers the young woman was wearing. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't really show the rather bizarre tights that she was also wearing...
Note: this photo was published in an Mar 29, 2012 issue of Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10024."
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This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, and 2011 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project nearly four years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past four years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...