Paul Goldfinger photo. Ocean Grove. 12/5/22. 5:25 pm. Click to enlarge.
December 5, 2022: I was on the OG side of the New Jersey Avenue bridge; test driving my camera in the dusky light with a full moon.
I saw her coming from A. Park. She had been shopping and she was happy. As she reached the OG side I snapped a photo. I wanted her in my picture, but she thought she was ruining the photo, and she exclaimed:
She: Oh, I’m so sorry.
Me: Don’t be, I wanted you in my photo.
She: No pictures!
But she was still smiling as she rode by. And she didn’t know that her image was in my camera.
I have her happy about Christmas to come.
People often don’t like to be photographed unless they can pose. But that is just what I don’t want. I want people to be revealed as their natural selves.
And the fact is that most of my subjects never know for sure that their picture was “taken.” And that is OK.
In the 19th century the photographer would stick his head under a black cloth, using a camera that weighed perhaps 50 pounds, and with a shutter speed that could be several minutes or much more. Matthew Brady, the famed Civil War photog could never get action shots so he mostly took pictures of dead soldiers.
Compare that war photographer with Robert Capa the Pulitzer winning photojournalist who went in on D Day with the first wave, splashing in the water, under fire, as he took a couple of rolls using a small hand held Leica camera.
And now there are more photographs taken than ever before.
ETTA JONES: Jazz for a Christmas Present.