New York Sports Club
New York Sports Club
Image by Ed Yourdon
This is right by the entrance to the NY Sports Club, mentioned in other photos in this album; it’s located at 94th Street and Broadway.
And this is a typical scene: a young woman on her way back home (or somewhere) after a workout session, but first checking in with someone on her cellphone…
Note: this photo was published in an Oct 28, 2010 blog titled "Health Mark BT20000 Swiss Ball Chair." It was also published in an undated (mid-Nov 2010) Total Fitnesss Requipment blog titled "Because Ninjas Need to Stay Fit." And it was published in an undated (Dec 2010) Nice MobilePhone Cases blog , with the same title and detailed notes as what I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published in a Mar 21, 2011 blog titled "Swiss Ball Abdominal Exercise."
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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.
I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.
For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, homeless people, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …
The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.
