Yellow smart car

As noted in various other pictures in this album (and elsewhere in my Flickr archives), the "smart car" is relatively unusual here in New York City. I passed another one earlier this afternoon, but (a) it was a dull black, and (b) it was in deep shadows on 72nd Street ... so I didn't photograph it.

This lemon-yellow smart car went zooming past me on 95th Street, as it raced across Broadway to beat the traffic light. I didn't have time to raise my camera and photograph it ... but then it made a sharp left turn on Broadway, and came to a screeching halt at the corner. I was pretty far away, on the other side of Broadway, but I had my 18-200mm zoom lens; that turned out to be sufficient for the job...

P.S. If you search for "smart car" in my Flickr archives, you can find a few other photos of red, black, and gray smart-cars here in NYC, as well as black, gray, and pink smart-cars that I've photographed in Rome. I'm not sure this is the most productive way for you to spend your time, but that's up to you...

Note: this photo was published in a May 16, 2009 blog titled "9 Steps to Building an Exceptional Marketing Organization." It was also published in a May 26, 2009 blog titled "12 Greenest Cars of 2009," as well as a Jul 5, 2009 blog posting with the same title in the FootprintFreer Web Spot. It was also published in an Aug 4, 2009 Daily Bragger blog titled "Cash for Clunkers – Car Destruction."

**********************

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, 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.