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2 What is Streetphoto of the Week? It’s an Art Exhibit, a weekly sharing of a single street photograph (or five) from around the globe, and sometimes there’s an essay attached giving the back-story behind the photographs. Every five years, the Streetphotos of the Week and accompanying essays issued in the previous 260 weeks will be published in volumes called: Giving Up Lent For Cake. But no worries, because Streetphoto of the Week promises to never try to sell you anything -- -- but instead to just sprinkle a little regular Tube Candy around -- -- Guerilla Art meant solely to get overworked folks like you to Stop and Smell the Street... *Streetphoto
of the Week #53a/ Guamote Red Line Pipe Walker/
Guamote, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #54/ Bush & Crossbones:
The Whole World is Watching/ Quito, Ecuador
Dear
Jan, Janet and I were both sick that day, she with a fever and me with the dysentery that typically slows me down on day #4, anywhere I ever go. So we woke up slow and decided before breakfast that we wouldn't leave the hotel all day -- just be happily sick and tired and worthless there. The Hotel San Francisco de Quito (at $16 per night) has a sauna and cool second floor balconies that wrap around a corner overlooking two busy streets, so we knew it wasn't going to be too bad. One of the streets (the hotel entry street paved in brick) ran uphill east to west and was a heavily-used pedestrian boulevard with shops and street vendors and with only one or two cabs or delivery trucks or motorbikes going up or down it per minute. The other street running north to south was a very busy one-way paved thoroughfare squeezing its two narrow lanes through the large nearly-500-year-old colonial district of Quito leaving very little room on either side for pedestrians, the sidewalks not wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. During a typical day, electric trolleys and busses (barely fitting inside one of the lanes) race cars and motorcycles and yellow cabs down that street with horns and loudspeakers blaring and with pedestrians on both sidewalks leaning away from the traffic to avoid being clipped by a bus. We didn't know it was May 1, but at about 10:30 a.m. as we lay in bed watching an Ecuador soap opera on TV, we began hearing a commotion from the street wafting through the open air Spanish-style courtyards just outside our door. Bands playing and people chanting and such... Quito always seems to have a festive noise to it, regular explosions of music blaring out from one square or another. And wedding parties in that part of the world crowd into the backs of flatbed delivery trucks and to celebrate they drive around town singing songs and announcing the new couple to the old city. So we laid there watching the TV and ignored the noise for ten or fifteen minutes until I finally got up and went downstairs to the lobby to see what was up. It turned out that the annual Quito May Day Parade was streaming down that main thoroughfare (now closed to traffic) and now watching it myself from the second floor balcony I found out that the new president of Ecuador had just gone by in a convertible, waving to and wishing his people a happy May Day. I went back to the room to get Janet and for the next several hours we (sick, but hardly put out in the least) watched about 300,000 politically active locals stream past just below us as we gawked and I made a few photos (See tonight's SPotWEEK #55 when it comes in). We were sick and had made ourselves hotel bound, but despite never leaving the place, we'd gotten the opportunity to people-watch all those people in costume and all those people carrying signs supporting politicians or protesting local, regional, and global issues. Most curious to me was that I only saw about 65-75 Che Guevara references (I would have expected more) and there was only one block (they'd obviously all been put together by parade organizers) of anti-American protests (I'd have also guessed prior to seeing the parade that there'd be more of that too). And then near the end of the parade I witnessed several men with covered faces spray painting graffiti and stenciling the Bush&Crossbones art and such on every blank wall they could find. Looking off the balcony you could see it vandalizing every wall along the parade route for more than two kilometers. A classically regal Spanish colonial old town, its white walls now marked up in blacks and reds and sullied with political slogans and angry graffiti barbs. And Jan, what's most interesting about this story (and bringing us back to your question) is that by the time I left the Hotel San Francisco de Quito to take my regular early morning streetphoto round at about 7:30 a.m., every bit of graffiti that had been painted along those kilometers of that main parade route thoroughfare the day before had already been painted over (disappeared) by Quito and Ecuador authorities. ALL OF IT! Leaving it up for more than a few hours, I reckoned, would be bad for eco-tourism... But the government did not bother to repair the May Day damage done along the cross streets, leaving that up to pissed-off business owners -- one of which you noticed was in the process in the SPotWEEK Bonus shot of repairing the exterior of his shoe shop.
*Streetphoto
of the Week #55/ May Day Street Dance/ Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #56/ Quito Shoe Shine Boy/
Crossing Police Lines/ Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #57/ Latacunga Marionette Runner/ Latacunga, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #58/ Sleep Walk Aware/ Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #59/
According to God.../ Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #60/
Quito Accordion Blowby #1/ Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #61/ Quito Accordion Blowby #2/
Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #62/ Looking for Mail on Queen Street West/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #63a&b/ Queen Street Street Sweep #1 and #6/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
* a back story to Streetphoto of the Week #63 ... Despite getting hit by that van (more on that in a future Streetphoto of the Week) and being sick and tired and generally being in a bad mood about a lot of things including my ever-throbbing leg and the effect of the drugs that treat it -- I was already satisfied with many of the images I was able to cull in my seventh lifetime shoot on the streets of Toronto. TIFF, the globally received Toronto International Film Festival, was about to launch and as the week on the streets went by, the fashion Toronto is known for in its everyday flow got amplified by festival fever. In my experience, when Toronto turns out -- it turns out in clogs (see Odd Man Out @ http://www.streetphoto.com/images/Toronto_Odd_Man_Out.jpg ). Huge uber-clogs, outrageous enough for any Toronto occasion. And last night, my last night in town, I played with three uber-clogged young women out on Queen Street West -- one dressed in grey Goth, one in a psychedelic post Goth outfit, and one in black and white who was just quite girly in her extra black and white uber-clogged height. And despite my mood and the never-ending heat wave and the way I was feeling about nearly the entire world as it was, I was able to capture that uber-clog series (coming up as part of this SPotWEEK exhibit later on this fall) and I also brought back with me to Lawrence on the Amtrak Train a few other stellar street moments worth sharing during my week limping about Toronto in my antihistamine and morphine fog. So as I leaned there on that mailbox at the corner of Spadina and Queen smoking, with the morning breaking out all around me and with nothing more interesting occurring nearby then had been occurring before, I took another drag on my cigarette and decided I'd done well enough and had spent my time well here in my quest for the global street and in its solace to ward off misunderstanding, the inevitability of aging, and the effects of a miserable summer cold. And I was about to go back to my room to check out and head down to the train station early, when out of a truck popped a Toronto street sweep in full street sweep regalia, an empty garbage sack in one hand and a street sweep's rake in the other. As anyone who follows my work can tell you, I love making art out of street sweeps in the wild. Often these shots I make all over the world (see: http://www.streetphoto.com/streetSweepphotographs.htm ) lean toward the subtle or toward the documentary. Street sweeps that spend their days tidying up out there after the rest of us, very metaphors (of and for) the love of all things street. Typically, like on the corner of Spadina and Queen, you'll see them in the early morning hours before most anyone else notices what last night's party left behind, alone out there, pirouetting here and there in a street sweep dance, picking up our trash. Uniformed for safety and armed with sharp tools, and going from spot to spot clearing the way for another day of business and another sultry Toronto party night of clubbing, overindulgence, clogs and ... trash. He didn't spot me working on my street photography at that intersection until the third or fourth shot, but after he noticed he immediately turned away and kept working. So I continued to mine the moment until in fairly quick order he'd finished cleaning up the corner of Spadina and Queen. The evidence of yesterday and last night now filling the plastic garbage bag and the corner clean enough for this creative late-sleeping town to finally wake up to. And when he finished he did an astonishing thing that nobody else had ever done outside combat zones on faraway exotic jungle roads and that time in Amsterdam when I was accosted by a gang of pissed-off lesbians. He approached me with his bag of trash and his gnarly 6-prong trash rake and he threatened my well being, my very life in fact, for having taken his picture doing his work in public on my (his? our?) corner. That less then two days after I'd been hit by a van in Jones Falls while taking a picture from the street. "Hey," he began, "I'm not saying that's what I'm saying I'm gonna' do to you or anything, but has anyone ever told you they were going to kick the shit out of you for just taking their picture without asking them first? Without their permission and all," he added, shaking the gnarly trash rake at me -- the sparkle in his eye indicating to me that aside from being menacing he was also humorously curious as to how I was about to react to his thinly veiled threat. I've in fact been heckled now and again here and there along my way for doing my work out there in the wild, so I was well prepared for his question, if not for his 6-prong street sweep rake. I smiled and said, "No. In 25 years of doing this, nobody's been that uncivilized as of yet," causing him to lightly moan and turn his head away from me and smile in faux denial at the 'civilized' crack. "And besides, I'm an artist who's known for rarely if ever showing anyone I portray out in the wild in a bad light." I told him that I taught students in street photography and I told him how I teach them to never make fun of people out in public. I tell them about two photographs I'd made in my early days, photos I never could stomach to use because they somehow made bad fun out of unsuspecting souls. One was at a demonstration at Washington Square in New York. A great shot, ruined for me because a man walking on the sidewalk behind the demonstration was picking his nose, his right index finger unmistakably inserted up his left nostril. The other lost photo occurred at the train station in Oslo Norway where I'd captured a man asleep on concrete steps surrounded by stainless steel handrails, a superb black and white shot ruined upon developing when I noticed for the first time that the man had a thick wad of drool hanging between his mouth and slumping chest. I told the menacing Toronto street sweep in front of me at the corner of Spadina Ave. and Queen Street West in Toronto about my teachings and my philosophy of caring and I ended my answer by reminding him that aside from not being immoral (based on my long track record), that taking his photograph in public on the street was legal and that if anyone in the free world ever would kick the shit out of me for taking street photos, that it would be them I'd later photograph being carted off to jail, not me. "And besides," I said, "whomever I've photographed and later met for whatever reason -- I've always offered them a signed print if they'd tell me their name and give me their address. I consider that karma." Well, he liked my answer and apparently respected it for coolly addressing his concerns following his threat and in light of his rake, so instead of stomping me, he smiled, lowered the rake, took off his glove, shook my hand, and told me his name was Peter. I took out my pen and Peter wrote down his contact information on a card and told me if I got anything good I should please send one along. We looked each other in the eye, shook hands, and then Peter put his glove back on and we both headed off in separate directions. He east to clean up the rest of Queen Street -- and I south toward home...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #64/ Toronto Market Apple/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #65/ Let Sleeping Dogs Lie/
Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #66/ Toronto Blue Wall Blowby/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #67/ Punk Street Box Cross/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #68/ Bags Bikes and Boots/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #69/ Toronto Parasol Pedestrian/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #70/ Toronto Ipod TIFF Boarder/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #71 a, b, c & d/ Toronto ClogFest 2007 x4/
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
*Streetphoto
of the Week #72/ Chicago Elevated ArrowScape/
Chicago, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #73a/
Overgrown Amsterdam: In Honor of Sinterklaas Eve/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #73b/
Amsterdam School Bus Home: In Honor of Sinterklaas Eve/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #74/ Milwaukee Bus Stop News Break/
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #75/
Christmastime UmbrellaSnow GarlandScape/
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #76/
The Best Christmas Pageant EVER/
Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #77/
2007 to 2008: Making a Stormy Entrance/
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #78/
Milwaukee Primary Color UmbrellaScape/
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #79/
Tuba Dogs/
Otavalo, Ecuador
Dear Gary, I love Tuesday nights-Wednesday mornings because I know I'll likely be getting another glimpse of the world through your lens. Gary, are those men street performers? Jan
Hi Jan. As it turned out, they weren't street performers in the "Busker" sense, although every time I get a good street photograph with an instrument in transit in it, they are turned into "street performers". These four guys (and the other 25-30 like-dressed musicians out of frame ahead of and behind the tuba group) all gathered on the balcony of a large and ornate colonial-style building on the main Otavalo square (Otavalo government headquarters) and together they played the Ecuadorian national anthem followed by a snappy traditional tune I didn't recognize. A daily occurrence to raise the flag and start the government day, I was told, sort of like a changing of the guard -- but with more rhythm and style. The dogs had apparently seen it all before and were genuinely unimpressed... Gary
*Streetphoto
of the Week #80/
Club Madonna Blow-By/
Miami, USA
*Streetphoto
of the Week #81/
Guitar Busker Blow-By/
Quito, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #82/
The Morning After: Coconut Stand with Tourist Blow-By/
Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
*Streetphoto
of the Week #83/
Mexico Disembodied HeadScape Blow-By/
Nuevo Progresso, Mexico
*Streetphoto
of the Week #84/
Herenstraat Boot Walkers/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #85/
Stop Light Bike Wait/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #86/
Amsterdam Tattooed BootScape/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #87/
Dam Square BootWalker/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #88/
BootBikers in Paradise #1: Amsterdam Cowgirl Canal Cross/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #89a/
De Wallen TattooScape/
Amsterdam, Holland
I was taking a swing through the Wallen (the famous Amsterdam Red Light District) on my 2008 mid-Winter in Amsterdam shoot, and it occurred to me that it was high time I finally acquired a decent streetphoto starring that provocative tattoo parlor sign on the district's upper main street, the Oudezijds Achterburgwal. Over the years I've gathered a decent collection of streetphotos on the Achterburgwal, but although notorious, it's not my favorite street to shoot in Amsterdam because it's typically a bit too crowded with gawking tourists and cluttered by more ne’er-do-wells than on a normal Amsterdam street. The North African hard drug dealers work that place and become camera shy quickly and aren't afraid to tell you about it. So on every third or fourth sweep down that street, I'm forced to hold my ground and explain myself to the ne’er-do-wells -- risking my safety and well being, wasting a lot of street time, and blowing my fly-on-the-wall streetphoto cover. On account of this regularity, I've had dozens of mostly-humorous five-to-ten-minute relationships with a lot of Moroccan hard drug dealers over the past quarter century, and although I've been blessed with the opportunity to study them on the cheap in this fashion, they distract me from my camera work and sometimes they unknowingly clutter a street photography free-fire zone I'm stalking. On the day I made StreetPhoto of the Week #89, that Red Light District street was pretty quiet. It was a Tuesday in the middle of the Winter. It was 1 degree Celsius, and a very cold and damp wind chill factor was blowing down the canals from the direction of the North Sea. But I was bundled up fine and after about six or eight minutes and not much opportunity to capture anything more visually bold and intellectually stimulating than a stray gawking tourist -- I was about to give up. I remember laughing to myself and thinking, there's another eight minutes, maybe two or three hours total over all these years, that I've spent at that place trying to get and failing to get a decent streetphoto -- painting that Tattoo sign into my work as the color of Amsterdam and waiting for something to happen around it ... ... ... and then suddenly the magic I work so hard to be around for when it happens, happened. On the verge of giving up and wandering half a block up the District and one canal over to The Zeedyke to stalk my next favorite Wallen spot, in the matter of a few seconds a loud metal-on-metal click rang out, an upper story apartment stairway door popped inward from the street with a thud, a motor scooter fired up, and out of the wall, out of nowhere, in near-perfect composition popped a real Amsterdamer, out on the street and ready to get it done in Amsterdam style -- an ear toward the melody of winter in his ear ... The wait, the whole several hour wait at that place on the Achterburgwal over the last 26 years -- and particularly the last eight minutes wait on that cold and windy morning -- was well worth the decent streetphoto image I came out of the Wallen with early last month. February in Amsterdam, wrapped in a coat and a pair of gloves. Amsterdam painted into the frame showing a naked Amsterdam Tattoo culture of naughty independence and the toleration of such. The things that lure the tourists in. The sex. The bawdy temptations and pointed come-ons. And this streetphoto I ended up with for all that patience also shows the architecture and some of the charm of Amsterdam and the Amsterdamer who graciously decorated the scene at the spur of the moment also hints at the music and motion and pace of the city -- -- -- and his scooter is very Euro-Cool as well...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #89c/
Amsterdam Tattoo Biker #1/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #90/
April Fools: Freedom Lives When the State Dies/
Amsterdam, Holland
Probably the most astounding graffiti I've ever witnessed (with a local accent at the end), just where I'd expect to see it ("the 'A' in Amsterdam stands for Anarchy," I was once told by a young Amsterdam woman ). After it showed up, my Dutch friend Bart and I wondered how long it would last. Three weeks later, it was still there! I asked Bart if (post 9-11) he thought there was anyone in the Netherlands security community searching for this guy? He giggled, turned around and shrugged, "Perhaps that's why it's still up there..."
*Streetphoto
of the Week #91/
Rock Chalk JayHawk!/
Elgin, Ontario, Canada
This weeks edition was made off a dirt road near Elgin, Ontario -- not far from where the inventor of basketball (and Kansas University's first Jayhawk coach) James Naismith was born and raised. Since I made this photograph in the early 1990s, I've called it "Ontario Basketball Barn" and I've held it dear because the house that Mr. Naismith lived in during his life in Lawrence is only about 75 yards from my StreetPhoto studio and Janet's and my home -- both his and ours in the shadow of the fabled Phog Allen Fieldhouse. However, because of what happened last night, today this Ontario Basketball Barn becomes Streetphoto of the Week #91, and for today (and perhaps for the next some months of NCAA Basketball Championship afterglow to come) I'm renaming it: KU 75 - Memphis 68!!! KU Rock Chalk Jayhawk!!! (It's a Kansas thing...)
I wrote SPotWEEK#91 in the immediate afterglow of the stunning KU Jayhawk 2008 National Championship overtime victory in San Antonio. The confused Memphis Tigers dawdled away the last 10 seconds up on the TV as the Jayhawks dribbled about celebrating and as Janet and I danced about in the living room -- screaming at the top of our lungs, scaring the cats and alarming none of our neighbors. That's because they, like us, were all heading toward their front porches to add to a community-wide primal scream that could have probably been heard all the way over in Desoto, if it weren't for the fact that all of them there were also out screaming too... We screamed our way back inside and spent the next ten minutes between getting dressed for a cool rain night, watching the celebrations on TV, and screaming into the telephones at and with family and friends. We got in the car, glanced at Allen Fieldhouse across the field, drove past the James Naismith house and negotiated our way only a quarter of the way downtown, cars everywhere with distracted drivers all speeding in the same direction. When we beat Davidson to make the Final Four we were able to get all the way there, parking at South Park on the edge of the downtown melee. When we beat North Carolina we got close, but had to walk an extra couple of blocks in the much larger rush on downtown. This time, in the first fifteen minutes of Jayhawk Championship afterglow, we only got a quarter way there, parked and hoofed it the last six blocks -- everyone slapping high fives, screaming Rock Chalk chants, and hugging perfect strangers. Car horns blew everywhere in a deafening crescendo, people hanging out of every window of every car waving and screaming for all of Jayhawk nation to hear. We hacked our way through the crowd up Massachusetts Street five blocks to Liberty Hall where we celebrated with our friend Genelle who manages the place and let us drink free beer. We went on a food run that scored some cold pizza, just what the doctor ordered after all that basketball anxiety and all that Free State beer. A stop at the art studio on Mass and a few stops in the middle of Massachusetts Street with horns and tubas for a few last inebriated choruses of the alma mater and the Jayhawk fight song. It was about to rain, and began doing so a few moments after we got home. It was after 2 am and Janet went right to bed and right to sleep, the continual screaming outside in the neighborhood beginning to dwindle, yet still constant from every direction around our Allen Fieldhouse neighborhood home a full four hours after the nets had been cut down. So there I was, a couple of hours later, nearing the 4 am hour. At my office easy chair upstairs with my computer on my lap, a huge smile on my face, the window open to the pouring rain and thunder and lighting outside which had apparently finally silenced a town weary with exultation. I'd spent the time between getting back to the house from the crush of the 50,000 fans in delirious basketball fits downtown Online reading the first news reports and wallowing in the kind of fan satisfaction you get out of reliving for the first time such monumental events -- such monumental plays and steals and misses and made shots. Clutch, monumental nothin'-but-the-bottom-of-the-net last-seconds shots. And writing the weekly Streetphoto of the Week column attached. I'd finished the piece, edited and reviewed it as best I could in the conditions I was in, and sent it away over the wires to the outside Jayhawk world. I fired up my last smoke of the night, a very, very, very satisfying and triumphant moment, the hard rain now the only sound I heard through the window screen outside -- I hadn't heard a big flurry of car horns or an energetic scream in several minutes. It was quiet, except for that marvelous rain with its rumbling thunder and cleansing waters -- when from out of the rainy night came the last act of a very memorable performance in Lawrence, Kansas USA. A drunken college boy living at one of the college rental houses nearby stood in the rain in his yard and sang the Rock Chalk chant at the top of his lungs for God and everybody else still awake to hear... Roooock Chaaaaalk JayyyyyyHawk -- KUuuuuuuuuuuu. Roooock Chaaaaalk JayyyyyyHawk -- KUuuuuuuuuuuu. Roooock Chaaaaalk JayyyyyyHawk -- KUuuuuuuuuuuu. RockChalkJayHawkKU! RockChalkJayHawkKU! RockChalkJayHawkKU!!!!
*Streetphoto
of the Week #92/
Grafitti Rain with Wind and Fruit/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #93/
Amsterdam Brodjie Deli Crime Spree Blow-By/
Amsterdam, Holland Nearly every workday that I find myself roaming the streets of Amsterdam Centraal -- generally enjoying myself and trolling for streetphotos -- I end up stopping at my favorite sandwich shop tucked into the dark and narrow Zoutsteeg alley off Damrock (street) near Dam Square. I've been eating at that joint ever since I stumbled onto it and found out how good (and cheap!) it was on my fifth visit to Amsterdam in 1990. It's a tiny, tiny little deli with a big case of delicious meats, fishes, and cheeses and only five seats to dine at, and it has one of the more consistently unpleasant proprietors I've ever encountered in all my travels. I can't tell you what his name is, although I've surely ordered his freshly sliced roast beef sandwich on a Keiser roll with butter and a couple of quarter-liter cartons of low fat milk at least a hundred times. He's so reliably dour and glum, this proprietor, and so impatient with dawdlers and sometimes nearly nasty -- that he eventually reminded me of a character on the popular US television show Seinfeld, and I quietly began referring to him around my wife and Dutch friends as the "Brodjie Nazi." Brodjie? That's the word for bread shop (sandwiches) in the Netherlands, and although traditionally topped with haring or other fish of the season, on more than 100 occasions I've ordered my regular roast beef meal with butter and milk from that Brodjie Nazi. And the most I'd ever gotten from him in return aside from the expertly made and tasty cheap meal was a grunt of recognition for being a semi-regular patron and a feebly forced half smirk, half smile. Despite himself, I like the brodjie Nazi. And I like his little tucked-in deli off the little Zoutsteeg alley off the Dam. And I especially like getting to sit in the window seat, where I can both eat my little brodjie meal and continue to make streetphotos at the same time. I use the sandwich shop sign painted on the window as a foreground color splash, and I try to capture close-up pedestrians as they flash by down the narrow alley -- generally head-and-feet-chopped-off photographs I like to call Blow-By Streetphotos. Over the years I've gotten that window seat about 30 times and during all those shoots (lunches) I'd managed to collect exactly zero noteworthy images for my portfolio. Zero! But that hardly mattered to me, really. I love the Brodjie Nazi's little roast beef meals, I always love being in Amsterdam, and I always love making streetphotos -- even at places where I never seem to score ... ... ... And so there I was at my dinner break one afternoon last February -- fortunate enough to have gotten the window seat -- and elbow deep in buttered bread, rare paper-thin-sliced roast beef, and low fat milk ... ... ... and suddenly I heard heavy frantic footsteps pounding toward me down the alley from the Damrock to my left ... ... ... and I quickly dropped the brodjie and swung the pre-aligned camera up and pushed the trigger ... ... ... "I think it was cops," I remember thinking ... ... ... and then another policeman came whizzing past and I captured him as well ... ... ... and then it got quiet .
I lowered the camera and picked the crumbling brodjie back up and took a bite. Then, the fellow sitting next to me in one of the other four seats in the place eating his lunch giggled and I paused mid-bite and looked over at him. He smiled and said in Dutch, "Nice shot! I smiled back at him and said thanks and we struck up a conversation that was a minute or two old -- chatting about the current level of crime in Amsterdam and why I was taking pictures through the window ... ... ... when I sensed movement coming up the alley from the right and I stopped talking, dropped what was left of the sandwich onto the plate, raised the still pre-aligned camera and comfortably captured the last of my little Amsterdam crime spree drama series (It was one of the police who'd ran past the minute before, bum-rushing a suspect back toward her destiny) from the window seat at the Brodjie Nazi deli off the Zoutsteeg Alley off the Dam ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #94/
Amsterdam Queens Day Beer Run/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #95/
Ecuador Early Morning Man/
Otavalo, Ecuador
*Streetphoto
of the Week #96/
Amsterdam High Gloss Bike Park/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #97/
Amsterdam High Gloss Painted BikeScape x16/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #98/
Most Wanted Amsterdam/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #99/
Amsterdam van Gogh Baby-Buggies-and-Boots StreetScape/
Amsterdam, Holland
I love old Dutch things. On this year's regular streetphoto stop in Amsterdam I particularly loved focusing in on Amsterdam charisma and European sophistication juxtaposed against and amid old Dutch things. Here in StreetPhoto of the Week #99 -- In my effort to compose Winter BootWalkers of Amsterdam -- I've used a (Jaardan) neighborhood mural of old Dutch master artist and notorious Amsterdamer Vincent van Gogh and a lone Amsterdammertje (roughly pronounced Amsterdam-mer-gee). Those are the notorious phallic-shaped Amsterdam traffic posts emblazoned with the symbol of the city, a simple stacked triple X. I love to put Old Dutch Things in my Amsterdam streetphotos. That way my compositions automatically express place -- as I then use patience and anticipation and the perfect moment to add a story depending on what elements serendipitously come into the scene in my time at that spot, which I then choose to add to the Old Dutch under painting as a narrative point, choosing how to arrange the converging characters in time to highlight each street element as a crucial focal aspect of the overall work. The theme is subtle, if not just simple (less is more). A modern Dutch mother flowing through old Amsterdam, she and her daughter and van Gogh -- all three (despite the blooming flowers) bundled against the cold wind. In Streetphoto of the Week #99 there are four additional By working this way sometimes -- stalking a theme and adding a final stanza -- I get the old, I get the Dutch, I get the Amsterdam, and I get (from the BootWalker's fashions) the fact that this photograph was made in the early part of the 21st century. Aside from the intellectually stimulating parts, I also like the visually bold actors in this streetphoto: The XXX; The primary colors red, yellow, blue and green; The triangulated three-wheel buggy (circles) amid the many rectangular bricks and several rectangular doorways and windows and door vents; Vincent van Gogh's hat and camera-aware eyes and his hand that reaches out toward the viewer; And I also like the way the strap hanging off the Bootwalker's shoulder bag flutters in the winter wind as the new Baby Buggy BootWalker motors down the ancient sidewalk past the old Amsterdam artist ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #100 a, b, c & d/
Amsterdam BootBikers in Paradise #3, #4, #5 & #6/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #101/
Amsterdam BootWalker DreamScape with BootBiker in Paradise #8/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #102/
Amsterdam Smokin' Scooter Blow-By/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #103 a, b & c/
Old Wave Drawbridge; Turquoise-headed Delivery Driver #1, #2 & #3/
Amsterdam, Holland * A back story to Streetphoto of the Week #103 ... One morning in Amsterdam earlier this year I decided to stalk the drawbridge barriers on Kostverlorenstraat bridge over the Kostverlorenvaart (canal). While there I ended up getting some wonderful images I'd intended to use in one of my x16-panel Amsterdam DreamScapes. Consistent bike traffic was flowing past my stalk and so I wasn't pre-selecting bikers by sight but instead I set myself on instinctive autopilot mode and was working through sound and movement to capture the fast bikers peddle strokes in the gap between the green bridge barrier foundations. I had successfully captured five or six of that shot with different bikers when, BAM -- -- -- -- -- -- instead of just getting another drawbridge DreamScape image, I suddenly and surprisingly produced a wonderfully old Dutch (her bike) with contemporary Amsterdam (the hairdo) streetphoto. (See SPotWEEK #103a)
I got such a charge out of having run into a shot that so colorfully depicted the charm and cultural impact of drawbridge-thick modern Amsterdam, that while walking away from the house the next morning I decided to spend another five minutes on the drawbridge frame. When, BAM -- -- -- -- -- -- for the second day running the same new woman on that same old Dutch bike filled the screen and ... ... ... ... ... click!! (See SPotWEEK #103b)
I was bemused. Yesterday I was stoked that she and I had crossed paths in the manner it occurred. Today it was eerie, bemusing, and just a little bit creepy too ... ... ... So when I left the house and got to work the following morning I skipped right over the drawbridge (less it become too creepy) and I moved right on through Frederik Hendrik Park, over the Singelgracht (canal) and the Lijnbaansgracht (canal), down Westerstraat -- and I rounded the corner at Noorderkerk (church) ... ... ... ... ... and there she was again! The third day in a row!!! Less surprising, because this time she was off her bike and delivering letters and small packages she kept taking out of her bicycle saddle bags. It turns out that was her job and that was why I'd seen her in the neighborhood three days in a row. She and I, as it happened that month, were working the same route. So I stalked her for a delivery or three as she popped on and off her old bike across from the old church. (See SPotWEEK #103c)
The next time I'm in Amsterdam I'm going to have to take a hardcopy of one of the pictures with me and I'm going to spend a little bit of time tracking that woman down. I think she'd probably like the shot, and who knows -- maybe she'll let me follow her around for awhile and I can borrow a bike from a friend and spend a couple of hours working the old-bike/new-girl concept a bit further. And besides, she looks like another Amsterdammer I'd like to know more about! And I wonder what color her hair will be by the time I track her down? (Check out her 'Daily Shoulder Bag' fashion choices...)
*Streetphoto
of the Week #104/
High Winds & Hard Rains in the Jordaan: XXX Amsterdammertje UmbrellaScape/
Amsterdam, Holland |
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