Thoughts? Comments would be appreciated below……
Hi Keith. I’m glad I had the chance to review your work. These photographs clearly have an edgy quality to them that captures a distinct aspect of Herald Square. It’s kind of funny how the images fly in the face of the common belief that New York City has lost it’s edge.
I think my overarching comment would be that the moments are really strong. You definitely have an ability to find intriguing subjects engaged in genuine and deep emotional experiences. I like the sense of tension that is established in these photographs; but mostly the tension is with the world or perhaps NYC not with you the photographer. That being said, I feel that the photographs are often very centralized on the subject. Both literally (as in the subject is in the center of the frame) and in how the compositions sort of fall off beyond the subject. I recommend that you think about all parts of the frame when creating these moments. Think about how the edges are ripe areas for narrative and content. And think about how those areas can be used not only as a support for the central subject, but also a separate place all together. If you look at similar work like Richard Sandler or Bruce Gilden… and Winogrand too, they all are considering the full frame.
Along these lines, I think once you start working with the entire frame, the necessity for heavy vignetting and post processing colors will fall by the wayside too. I personally find these techniques a bit distracting and only in rare cases does this sort of post-processing work well for photographs like these.
Again Keith, I like the content of these images a lot. And there are clearly a lot of strong images in the selection. My comments are based on some small changes I feel that could make some of the images even stronger. Wishing you the best of luck!