Music in Manhattan – A One Shot Story

I was walking up Fifth Ave heading to a student film festival at the Paris Theater when a string quartet of young musicians caught my eye. My Leica M3 was loaded with a roll of Ilford Delta 400 that I was shooting at 1600.

The young musicians looked like they might be siblings and had a distinctive style that, along with their traditional instruments, made me feel that they might have an interesting family and philosophy of life.  My imagination started with something quite exotic like rural Pennsylvania Amish/Mennonite but that seemed unlikely and a bit overstated.  Home schooled evangelicals felt like it might be closer to the mark, but it’s equally likely they might be hipster Brooklyn/Waldorf School kids — but most likely of all, none of the above.   What is clear is that they were having a nice time playing for the passersby hurrying up and down the avenue.  The kids were vibing off each other as they played while scarcely anyone was paying them any mind besides me.  That is me, someone on the left edge of the frame with an iphone, and a nice man sitting nearby with a sleek black Leica M10.  We had a quick chat the way strangers with cameras tend to do; he loved that I was going old school with an M3 and told me he had just taken a turn shooting the kids before I started.

I grabbed some shots with a 28mm Voigtlander Color Skopar f3.5; I liked having a lot of Fifth Avenue in the frame contrasting the blingy storefronts and the energy of midtown pedestrians on the move with the more homespun looking kids.  I was trying to get some energy and movement of people crossing in different directions to give some foreground and background interest.  Timing was tricky, with too many people crowding the frame the shot was too chaotic and lacked focus, without anyone it was a bit boring — just a tableau of the quartet.  This shot is my favorite with the young man crossing in front of the musicians, clearly tuned into his own music on high end wireless headphones; a modern man of the city on the go against a backdrop of four musicians who are more interested in older musical traditions, all captured on 35mm film by someone interested in a more traditional approach to photography with a 60 year old camera.

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