Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/04/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 26/4/00 6:55 PM, sam at salex@idt.net wrote: > I've done a lot of Leica street "Human Traffic" shooting in the Times Square > area of NYC. In the 60's and 70's, you could pretty much do it without > reaction or confrontation. As the corporate developers let parts of the area > deteriorate prior to the "new" Disneyland, it got a lot more difficult. > There was a time (80's up to mid 90's) when you could have been in serious > danger trying to take people pictures. . .especially on 42nd street. In the US, I've shot in NYC, Boston and San Francisco with very much the same results as in the UK. People are more likely to come up and chat and less inhibited about telling you to get lost but I've encountered no more hostility and a lot more humour. The English accent is an enormous asset in these circumstances as hostility is often diverted into curiosity and you can play the innocent. "Oh, I see, you mean some people here don't LIKE to have their pictures taken? O-kay!" There are certain neighbourhoods where you better be *damned* polite and even then you certainly run a large risk (eg Roxbury/Harlem) but that is also true of the UK. I can think of at least ten large housing projects in the UK where it would be unbelievably foolhardy to venture and start shooting cold. My recent US stuff was in SF, and the mindset there is unique, so maybe that skewed things. However, 12 years ago in Boston/NYC I had no problems, except for the increased risk of crime in NYC (I got followed by people). Moreover, as Sam says, at that time Times Square/42nd street was an absolute no-go area for me... it was a truly terrifying place and I would have no more produced a Leica and started shooting than I would have challenged one of the winos to a knife fight. However, around the same era you could shoot in Boston's Combat Zone (does that still exist?) without too much of a problem. We'll see, I guess. After HUMAN TRAFFIC and when we move to Toronto I really want to do some small town stuff... somewhere like Hamilton or Buffalo or Bakersfield, CA. Easy places to get beaten up! I think this will bring a whole new raft of problems and I am sure that my HT technique will need to be discarded. But I feel excited about the possibilities. - -- Johnny Deadman photos: http://www.pinkheadedbug.com music: http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk