Photographs by: Christopher Sadowski, Alex Kent, Danny Arensberg, Kevin Wu, Jason Alpert-Wisnia, Dan B.
My final project will be pictures of people in New York City Parks; people in Washington square park, in Union Square Park, in Central Park, in parks near the Hudson River piers. I want to take pictures of people doing various activities in the park because I feel like that will capture very nicely what people in New York City do when they’re out in a public space meant for gathering. So the theme of my final project will be “Activities in New York City Parks”. The subject matter will be people doing various activities; playing instruments, giving performances, singing, dancing, skateboarding, playing basketball, hanging out, smoking, trying to sell their merchandise, eating on the grass, playing frisbee, sight seeing, protesting etc. I want to do these photo shoots on sunny or cloudy but bright days to get the best lighting on the subject as possible. Maybe even photography at night to get a wider range of people doing various activities. I will be shooting with my 24-50mm lens for pictures of faster moving subjects like skateboarders and people playing basketball with shutter speed somewhere around 1/250 to 1/800. For subjects like people playing instruments or street vendors, I will be using my 75-300mm lens because I really want to get nice shots of their expression of them doing what they’re doing in the moment without needing to enter their personal space.
This is a great time of year to photograph people in NYC’s parks. You may want to focus this a bit as it could be such a wide topic. Protests especially now with the Israeli Palestinian conflict could be its own topic. Take a look at the work of Steffi Keith a photo journalist. she divides her work into politics and culture. this is of course a fine line. Is the photo above with the trans flag with the statement you will never eradicate us politics or culture? But still think about how to narrow this topic so that yo end up with a coherent sequence of photos.
https://www.stephaniekeith.com/culture-religion