Photographers Blog

A New York love story

Lucas Jackson

Aug 24, 2010 15:35 EDT

New York is consistently touted as a cold, aggressive, and hectic city with no personal connections possible. A populace of hyper-efficient and emotionally starved citizens, or at least that’s what I had heard before I moved here.

I arrived in New York almost 4 years ago and immediately found these preconceptions to be mostly untrue, with an exception of the hyper-efficiency. The city forces you to interact, albeit most often very briefly, with thousands of fellow New Yorkers on a daily basis – on the trains, sidewalks, buses, and bike paths that keep the city humming with activity year-round. I have used public transportation ever since arriving in New York to work as a staff photographer for Reuters. This most often means taking the infamous New York City subway.

This subterranean method of transportation probably forces the most intimacy with total strangers of any in modern society. A morning rush hour commute has you standing fully pressed up against half a dozen people. Hundreds of commuters per subway car struggle not to notice each other and keep their ‘game face’ of indifference and impatience on. It is in this most public of settings that I notice some people feeling no shame or embarrassment in kissing, snuggling, holding hands, fighting, or hugging in full view of dozens of strangers. This unabashed intimacy with a loved one within the public setting of a subway car seemed crazy. But it immediately struck me as something interesting to photograph.

This collection of images did not begin as a “project” but quickly became a creative release for me. It has become something to do as I wait for the train home from work (I almost never shoot on the train going to work for some reason). In the beginning it was a chance for me simply to photograph without the limitations or barriers that I constantly deal with while working. It is pure creativity. The process allows me to capture genuine moments that happen so often in New York. I fully credit this project with pulling me out of a creative funk and allowing me to photograph as I wish I could everywhere.

Street photography is like falling in love…

Lucy Nicholson

Apr 12, 2010 14:56 EDT

I was walking in downtown Los Angeles when I saw the two brothers sitting there. They were drinking soda by a hot dog stand. The symmetry struck me – their identical outfits, the two-tone wall they leaned against and the two bottles.

It was after a couple of days photographing Japanese baseball superstar Hideki Matsui’s home opener with the Los Angeles Angels. There were so many Japanese photographers that I had to leave for the stadium six hours before the start of the game in order to reserve the best shooting position.

Matsui-stalking was fun, but no-one gets into photography because they enjoy fighting for shooting positions or carrying heavy camera equipment up flights of stairs.

Walking around downtown with one camera and one lens (Canon 5D Mark II and 50mm f1.2) is much more like it. Street photography is like falling in love with photography all over again.

A couple kisses on a street in South Los Angeles, November 11, 2008. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

It all started a few months ago when I was given a Blackberry with my first camera phone. Suddenly I was able to snap every photo I saw without having to think about choosing a lens, setting the exposure, over-thinking the composition. Capturing decisive moments, it has become my photo sketch pad.