Some people say the composition is a bit unbalanced, but I think its spot on! The buildings, the lights, the perspective.

Well done.

And I just noticed you have a lot of OBX shots. I’ve been a lot of places, but the Outer Banks is probably one of my favorite places in the world – maybe I’ll see you around there sometime!

nice work Chris!

Great to see you in C’ville–just the first of many meetings I trust…

Patricia

Like the series, ‘in the night’ on your site. Some of the indoor images reminded me of Clay Enos

http://clayenos.com/portfolio/more/night/night3/index.html

Long story short… Chris, love the shot. And your photography.

Peace.

you definitely have what you set out for when you say “old new york.” it’s the first thing that came in to my mind when I looked at this photo.. without reading any text; it was instant!

the lighting is fantastic, setup is perfect (attributed to you scoping out the spot and waiting, very interesting). I love the way the couple is positioned on the corner

the vanishing lines make this image so intense to look at. gahhh i love it

congratulations on such a well done photo

cheers,
JP

In the piece at large, I’m going for mix of a classical aesthetic with a bit of a film noir/comic book treatment. I want it to be very much “old” New York and “new” New York at the same time. Check out the “In the Night” section of the website for more photos. I lived on the Lower East Side about 10 years ago and felt a strange romance about the area. The crowd was very much young and hip, everybody’s in a band or working on a conceptual art piece or just hanging out being hip. There is an innocence about the whole place, no matter how many tattoos and piercings and black boots you see everywhere. For the most part, the kids are just young, well-educated dreamers from privileged backgrounds. The irony of the situation, which I have have yet to capture, and still haven’t decided how, or whether I will, is that they are living on stolen ground, real estate that once belonged to a large Puerto Rican community and a lot of criminals and drug-addicts. The old term for the LES is “Loisaida”, which is basically just Puerto Rican pidgin for “Lower East Side”…It buts up against the projects to the east, and Chinatown to the South, but all these different cultures barely notice each other. When I was living there, Avenue C was just a little sketchy, the border into the forbidden zone. Now it has been subsumed by the hipsters, there are some nice restaurants and cool music bars up and down the street, and even people from uptown come to dine and carouse there. It’s some kind of strange La-La land. There are few children, few families, and few people over the age of 40 living there. It’s expensive as hell, and yet kids in their 20′s working catering and restaurant jobs flock to the place, piling into tiny rooms that go for about $1500 a person in a shared apartment. It’s the epicenter of hip in New York, which is pretty much the epicenter of hip in the world, or so New Yorkers like to think. Williamsburg in Brooklyn, however, has begun to take over, probably already has; the LES is getting a little tame in comparison, a little yuppie-fied…

This couple aren’t exactly hipsters, and I’m not sure why one would have to have any appreciation, knowledge or care about hip-dom to appreciate their moment. I like to think of it more as an NYC version of Doisneau’s “Hotel de Ville”, or at least something in that vein. Just a brief moment of peace and bliss in the heart of a city that never stops moving.

I especially like the way the couple are framed by the traffic lights. It reminds me of the green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby, representative of an idealized future and pursuit of the heart’s inner-most desires.

Nice shot….love the mood it conveys and the feeling of being part of that moment…

a.