Screaming for a Reason
The few unshakeable images that I have engrained in my mind when I think about the times I’ve visited Coney Island is the long stretch of beaches, the rowdiness on the boardwalk, the smell of sunscreen and fast food, the radio playing accompanied by cheery Hispanics dancing and of course the rides.
Being a tourist in a place one’s visited countless times is an odd thing. Everything is familiar. One knows the way rather well from place-to-place and yet there’s always an allure to come back with the expectation that each visit will be different and that’s mostly reliant not so much on what you see but on what you choose to do on each visit. I’m anxious once again to spend some time in this prominent summer destination that’s been welcoming New Yorkers since the 1930s.
What will be different this time around? I no longer care for photographing the obvious which pretty much encompasses everything in sight you’re as you arrive. I’m inquisitive about something else and with the help of a good friend, I hope to explore and share some of my findings through a photo project that I’ll be working on in Coney Island this summer which I’ll talk about more as June gets closer.
As for now, I came across this photograph I took last year that I apparently failed to share. The amusement park and Coney Island as a whole officially opens this Memorial weekend.
Loading...
Over Priced Food on Boardwalk
To address the elephant in the room, it’s no surprise that I publish a lot of photographs from Coney Island and that’s largely for one reason. This may be a subjective appraisal but time seems to slow down slightly on recurring visits. The slew of new impressions one usually gets when visiting a place for the first time doesn’t happen as much after a while, so you’re almost given more than a few chances to what you didn’t notice the first time around the first time around.
The place is generally the same. I feel I’m what’s different in the overall picture is me the photographer. When a place is new, you have all the choices in the world to photograph anything and which subject you choose doesn’t matter so much, but when you only have a few choices, they become very important.
During this particular visit, I happen to be more attracted to the food stands setup along the boardwalk as oppose to the people who are more than willing to pay for overpriced food.
Loading...
Touring Coney Island Never Gets Old
The purpose with the photograph is to provide you a glimpse of what a beautiful day it was walking on a Wednesday afternoon in Coney Island. Based on my amount of visits and the photographs I’ve already published, I can’t possibly think of anything that I haven’t mentioned about this place other than recognizing that I have an obsession with it. It’s the same old style fairground every year, blended with a rundown boardwalk yet perhaps with one of the best people watching opportunities available anywhere.
With each visit, I’ve yet to actually stand in any of the long lines to mount a ride but I think if that’s all I did, overtime the experience would become monotonous for me and yet even though the process of walking around with a camera is just a repetitive, that for me never gets old. The experience of a ride may always be the same but the days of discovering something new with your camera is endless.
Loading...
Parachute Jump & Orientation
I once overheard a photographer say that “the best time to take a photograph in portrait orientation is right after you’ve taken one in landscape” and it’s been a guideline I’ve stuck with. I think the reason we rarely deviate from shooting landscape is because we stick with the default orientation of the camera and we can’t bare the thought of excluding so much from a photo like you would if you were to shoot in portrait format.
The correct orientation to utilize is the right one for that shot. It all depends on the subject matter. We’re all intrinsically visual people so when I approach a subject, I simply follow my eyes. If what’s attracted me makes me look vertically, then I shoot portrait and the same goes with landscape mode. I like to think I shoot a mixture of both formats but a quick inspection of my work reveals that I shoot largely in landscape and that’s because I’m always thinking about the platform in which I’m going to showcase any of them.
Where we share our work also influences which orientation we choose to shoot. Up until this point, if my fascination with Coney Island weren’t obvious already, for the longest I’ve wanted to publish this photograph of the boardwalk I took last summer but I was always indecisive because as attracted as I was with it, the fact that it was in portrait format turned me off and I never felt it flowed with the way I typically publish anything on the site.
The Parachute Jump that arises above the Coney Island boardwalk is among one of the iconic frameworks of this tourist attraction and the only way I think of where you can completely admire and isolate it from every other form of distraction taking place is to frame it the ways it’s intended to be seen and that’s vertically.
Loading...
Tiny Triumphs in Coney Island with the iPhone
When I started photographing, I equated the ability for anyone to deliver great photos from using great cameras and those great cameras should not only have bared a hefty price tag but they should be packed with bragging right features regardless if they knew how to implement them or not.
I spent the first 6 months shooting with an Olympus E-500 and I didn’t bother trying to understand this new capacity of controlling aperture, shutter speed or ISO because I was convinced that any I shot taken would render equal to the high caliber work I drooled over when browsing Flickr.
Fast forward 3 years later and the pure absence of those silly thoughts is what’s made me absolutely comfortable not just photographing with a dSLR but in trusting oneself to shoot anything with the simplest of cameras like an iPhone and knowing that the merit in your work is as valuable as with any other image taking device. I thought very little of cell phone pictures and for a long time I never uploaded any to my Flickr stream because you could never compare the image quality to that of a dSLR and the fact is that you can’t and you shouldn’t because they are there own entity and they should represent the characteristics that make them unique. I share my iPhone photographs more now than ever before.
I could care less what type of camera I use as long as you put me in a place where I can wander alone for hours purposely getting lost. Making decisions on what to shoot is not something I struggle with but I do enjoy the challenges involved in capturing a really good photo, both technical and physical and that was the case this weekend at Coney Island.
I’ve visited this famous landmark about 5 times before but with each visit, there’s always this ongoing series of tiny triumphs where each one motivates me to keep going back and seeing what else I can find. Somehow your perspective changes when you swap the gear you normally use and I absolutely encourage you to choose a location you’ve photographed many times before with the exception that you shoot with something totally different like an iPhone.
Whether these series of Coney Island photographs are better is all relative but I do feel they’re unlike the material I’ve shot before. With the iPhone, I somehow always unintentionally tend to shoot more in sequence as oppose to trying to get 1 or 2 shots that will stand above the rest. My only qualms about shooting relentlessly with an iPhone is realizing how much your battery drains.
I did have the Nikon D90 with me on this day but I used it for about 15mins and opted to shoot entirely with the iPhone instead because it was less conspicuous and more inspiring.
Loading...
Admiring Astroland
For as long as I can remember, Coney Island has never been the glitzy summer retreat you would envision if I showed you no pictures of the place and just told you it’s been a popular amusement park that attracts a strong amount of residents and tourist every year.
This summer, for about 45 minutes I sat in front of the Cyclone photographing people when I realized that this is truly one of the most terrifying rides in the park mainly because it has the look as if it’s going to fall apart. Aside from that, it also still has the stomach twisting turns going for it which accounts for most of this screams.
As much as I try to recount my visits as a child, I can’t think of the time when the boardwalk didn’t appear to be falling apart or when the rides didn’t seem to shake and rattle more than they sped yet when you’re 10, moving targets and cotton candy can make you oversee what most people would worry about.
Loading...
