AT LIBERTY 8

2003

AT LIBERTY 7

2002

AT LIBERTY 6

On the ferry, 2002

AT LIBERTY 3

2003

Many of the Statue of Liberty images were not made on Liberty Island, but on one of the ferries that run from both New Jersey and New York City. I have admit that I never took the ferry from Battery Park, preferring instead to board the ferry at the old Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal at Liberty Park in New Jersey. On the ferry, people are either full of anticipation and excited, or they are reflective and tired. Either coming or going, it offered me ample image possibilities with the Statue of Liberty as background.

AT LIBERTY

2000

I was photographing someone else and she had turned to watch me. Her father, just out of the picture to the right, smiled and nodded his approval of my request when I pointed to the camera and then his daughter. I quickly shot two frames, one not smiling, one smiling as a reaction to the first exposure. My working technique for shooting these images was to keep my 24mm lens pre-focused at about 8-10 feet, choosing an f/stop to give me maxium DOF, and merely adjust the exposure depending on what part of the island I was shooting. But never did I focus the camera nor adjust the exposure while the camera was at my face. The idea was to keep the camera at my side, and raising it to make the image as quickly as possible. This was how I observed Gary Winogrand working the crowds out in front of the University Coop in Austin, Texas. It was during the time we were both on faculty (I was in journalism and he was in art) at UTAustin in the late 60's. What I observed is that when you shoot this fast -- the camera is only at your eye for a second or so -- it doesn't register with most people they have just been photographed.

MAKING A BOOK....my way

2002

Been a little neglectful of the blog this summer, but other projects have been taking my time. For one, I'm install a new sound system for the TV -- new receiver and speakers -- and that requires a bunch of messing with the TV cabinet. And I decided to remake my old Statue of Liberty series of images into a book. When I first started shooting this series I had put together a ring binder of images, but it really needs to redone for several reasons: the printing on that first effort is really bad -- I had printed it with my old Epson 1200, and the images were not only fading, but were rapidly changing colors from the original slightly "pink" to an ugly, washed-out green. And I wanted to update the book with images that were made after the first booklet.

I first started shooting at Liberty Island in 2000 when my daughter, then a college student, said to me one day while visiting family in New York, she was too young on her first trip to remember our first trip there in the mid-80's. Off we went, just me and her. Even while on the ferry, I was struck by the number of cameras that were in use even before the Ms. Liberty came into view. As we drew abreast of the island, the ferry listed slightly to one side with the shift of people trying to either take a picture of The Lady or have their picture with her in the background. Later as Libbie and I walked around the island, it's what everyone is doing -- taking pictures of either the Statue of Liberty or themselves with the statue in the background. I was hooked, I wanted to make images of people taking pictures. Many visits later over the course of five years I came to realise that there are all kinds of reason to come to visit Lady Liberty from school field trips, to demonstrate, and to just be there. It is the societal norm that we document with the snapshot just about every venture we make.

I'm still working on the book -- the image selection, the sequencing, and trying to put my thoughts about all this to page. But one of the things I've come to realize is that one of the great things about living in a truly free country is being free to visit the most visible symbol of freedom in the world, and being free to express our relationship to this monument however we choose without fear of reprisal.