Justin!

Street photography is something that has always fascinated me but never really gone after it. Just the idea of capture, no creation involved. Walking with my daughter heading to buy a gift for a friend I see this guy drawing with markers on a guitar, from 10 feet away it looks like an amazing piece of art. But the art is not what is important here, the fact that this sweet guy who seems somewhat stoned, with this very heavy kind of hanging voice is creating art nevertheless. He sits there with his cup in front waiting for someone to give him a quarter or two, drawing away. While I looked through the camera I saw the scene as cinematic and totally in B&W in my head, but the color of the guitar was also important, so additional support images came in handy.

A sunny afternoon, good for ISO100, shot at 1/640 f 4.5. Here I show you a few images both in B&W and color so you can decide in which street photography looks best. There are some scenes where I always want a dramatic depth of field so sometimes I carry a 1.4 or 1.8 85mm lens, this would have been the case but left the bag at home. I don’t believe much in post work for this kind of photography except for dodging/burning, some saturation and such.

So simply I had a talk with him about his work, asked him if I could shoot him and went to it. Just 6 shots and went on my way. Possibly if I was alone I would have sat down talk some more and shoot as minutes or hours pass by.

In the little time I spent with him he explained that he has been doing this for 7 years only, that he did one for fun and people got interested. Once a guy stopped and asked him if he could buy the guitar, he needed the money so he said yes but had no idea what to ask for, the guy took $300 and gave it to him along with his card. Unfortunately Justin lost the card as this guy was a gallery owner and it seemed to have some interest in his work. If you want to have a cheap but somewhat cool looking piece of street art from NYC definitely stop by Union Square and look him up. And please give him a dollar or two for me, I had no money in my pockets when I saw him. Don’t worry what he is going to buy with it, either a new cheap guitar, some markers or something that will make him happy! This is NYC and we have to it for what it is.